Bangkok Airways takes us to the beautiful and royal city of Luang Prabang. It's not hard to understand why people are very positive about this town. It's very beautiful, surrounded by the Mekong river and Nam Khan river, nice scenery and is in general very quiet and peaceful. We decide to take in the scenery and the amosphere and leave it at that for our first day. Maybe 4 countries in 5 days isn't such a good idea afterall, we simply need time to adjust and process all experiences!

After a day of rest, we did a trekking to a Hmong village and through the jungle. Amazing nature, crazy plants, and sounds we hade never heard before. On the downside: leeches, soooooooo many mosquitos, and even more rain. Yep, it's the rainy season and it does make itself known to us. Next day, we therefore take a cooking class :) Let me tell you, that was GOOOOODDDDDD! We first went to the local market to see some of the ingredients that we were about to cook. And yes, we saw some stuff that is crazy to our Western eyes, like alive rice paddy eel, frogs, waterbuffalo belly, and gellified pigblood. Lao food is something completely different from the food of its neighboors, and has a lot - and when I say a lot, I mean a lot - of taste. Herbs, spices, wood, vegetables, sauces, everything that can give taste to a meal is used. And lots of chilli as well :) We learn to make a steamed fish dish in banana leaves, a water buffalo stew, lemongrass filled with chicken, dips, sticky rice, and a desert of red rice and coconut milk. Men, so very good! I start druling all over my keyboard here, so I will tell you about our elephant adventure.

Close to Luang Prabang, there's an elephant village in which former working elephants are given shelter, nursed back to health, offered a better and still useful life. If the elephant village would not exist, these elephants would either be killed or would die of starvation, because the lumbering jobs they were used for until recently are now banned by the government. So, we rode on an elephant. First in the saddle-like basket, and afterwards on its neck. Absolutely fabulous! You're balancing from right to left when riding and you can feel and see the thick skin and all the little hairs on the elephant's head. We even got to feed the elephant some bananas :) She gently took them from me and afterwards tried to get some more from the table closeby. Smart ass!

From the elephants, we took a kayak back to Luang Prabang. Nice scenery, and the sun had come out, so our trip was really beautiful. In LP itself is much to see as well. We visited the main temple from the 16th century, and some of the other temples as well. We also saw the alms procession of the monks in the early morning, in which they receive small amounts of sticky rice from the villagers. This is a ritual that has existed for some centuries and it is special to be a witness to it. Take a look at the pictures to know what I mean. Closeby to LP is a lot to see and do as well. We headed up north to the small village of Nong Khiaw. This sheds a completely different light on life in Laos, much more rural, much poorer as well, but with super friendly and welcoming people and gorgeous scenery. LP already was quiet and had a low pace, this town has it even more. We also had upstream along the Nam Ou river for a day to the village of Muong Ngoi Neua, which can only be reached by boat. Again, beautiful scenery, and very special to experience a little bit of the lifes and work of the Northern Laos people. The boattrip back from Muong Neua to LP is gorgeous and we feel very priviliged and thankful to have experienced these couple of days.