south to luang prabang around july 18

so anyway, we left muang sing the next day and went back to luang namtha, stayed the night, then headed south to luang prabang, which was supposed to be really nice, according the the lonely planet.

it was maybe an 11 or 12 hour bus ride. lots of people throwing up (this is a theme on the bus rides here) we got there and took a tuk tuk to the center of town. it's a cute little place on a peninsula between the mekong and nam khan rivers. we soon realized that it's also kind of a major tourist destination. so all the accomodation was expensive. we looked at lots of places and finally found one for a decent price. turns out, it was a decent price because it's dark and humid and has no a/c. so it smelled all moldy, and a roach crawled out of the bathroom drain. and there were ants. so foo was panicking (another theme of this adventure). the next morning we went and found another one for only a bit more money, but much cleaner. we even got our laundry done there! also, the electricity was out city-wide for that whole day. we went to lunch at an indian food place. and i was suspicious of the food and picked at it a bit while eating because i get nervous when i can't tell what's in my food. then i saw foo picking at her naan. turns out, there were weevels in it. gross. yet she ate it anyway, and didn't tell me about the weevels til after the meal. awesome. and then the owner of the restaurant came up and was offended that i had been picking at my food. oh. extra awesome. in luang prabang we rented bicycles and rode around outside the major tourist section, which was really nice. we went to the market, found probably the only working atm in the city, road around the peninsula. it was pleasant. we ate one fancy dinner there. it cost maybe $20, which is wayyy fancy for laos. but unfortunately it was only ok food. that was sort of disappointing. our daily budget is $20 per person. we went over that day. the next night we had beer and pizza. much better deal. we also both got lao massages, which weren't very good and both ended 20 or 25 minutes early. i didn't complain because i didn't really want to finish the massage. it seemed like the last 15 minutes of it the girl was just making stuff up. like she was just sort of pounding on my back aimlessly.
there was also a night marked with lots of neat crafts and silk and clothing. but everyone who was shopping was white, which means the price doubles, and nothing is really 'authentic lao culture' anyway. so we didn't buy anything. mostly luang prabang was not that awesome. at least the parts we saw. and up until this point, i was not feeling very impressed with laos.