Day 59

28/08/2009

After breakfast (bacon and eggs) we explored the town a little more by bike. The old (and best) part of town is really three parallel streets occupying the peninsula of land between the Mekong and the Nam Khan, one of it's tributaries. The main (middle) street is almost exclusively made up of tour operators and restaurants, with the other two streets having the rivers on one side and a wider range of shops and hotels, including ours, on the other.

A visit to the Buddhist temple, dinner by the river, cycling the full length of each of the streets and a visit to Laos massage house (purely to compare their technique to the Chinese of course) filled the day, with a stop off at our hotel for a cup of Earl Grey mid-afternoon. Life is so hard out here.

There are wide range of excursions to choose from with elephant riding, visits to waterfalls and caves, tubing further down the Mekong just a small selection. In the evening, a market takes over much of the main street selling Laos hand made items like clothing and bags, T-shirts, jewellery and lots of other stuff. Bought some chop-sticks so I hope we don't loose the knack of using them after our three weeks in China of using nothing else.