By Hook or by Crook - or by Bicycle!!

Sunday was our last day in Luang Prabang and we decided to visit some of the town by bicycle.

It took some convincing for Luke to feel comfortable that he could negotiate the diverse road manners of the Laos like riding on the right side of the road and bargaining, negotiating and working your way through Tuk Tuks, Trucks, Cars and motor Bike (often all at once) but considering the alternative was for him to be doubled behind me (and look into my day pack) he soon decided to ride himself.

We road about 5 or 6 ilometres out of town stopping for lunch at the Phousi market which is the locals market where everything is on sales from clothing, garden and household goods to vegies and cut meet (carefully guarded over by women with plastic bags who shoo away any flies). Let's just say that it definately was not the market where most tourists go (I'm sure a number of tourists wouldn't eat meet or fish in Laos again if they did) but it was great fun.

For lunch we had the option of noodle soup, noodle soup or noodle soup and we had Noodle soup - No western cutlery available (only chop sticks), not a word of English able to be spoken by anyone (nor an effective word of Lao from us either) and no drinks...I think we became the tourist attraction for the locals though and I'm sure they made a healthy profit from us as well as the 40,000 kip we paid (4 US dollars) for all of our meals was guaranteed to be much more than any Lao would have paid...oh well.

We were intending to ride a little longer around the Luang Prabang Peninsular in the afternoon but for a family who don't ride bikes very often our back-sides were telling us that enough was enough so we called it a day when we got back to town.

As we walked back to our guesthouse we passed a motor bike with a lead attached to a tiny Monkey...he was adorable and eager to show affection so we sat and played with him and he climbed all over us (Jordan excluded himself as he felt our antics were just a bit too much). We have the photo's and video evidence of this charming experience to show when we get back to Oz. That's all. David