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On the third and last day of the Pimai water celebrations, the weather decided to join in the fun with huge forks of lightening, deafening thunder and torrential rain. Although it seemed a little redundant some people carried on the water fights, but generally festivities tailed off and once the storms passed over the streets became eerily quiet. We found ourselves walking a fair distance through the town with Drew carrying a large super-soaker, and the looks on most people's faces as we approached certainly suggested they wouldn't be too amused if he opened fire. It was strange, but not unwelcome, to see the town returning to its normal sleepy relaxed atmosphere - spots where recently passers by had to expect a thorough soaking now saw men dozing perched impossibly on top of parked motor bikes, and chickens pecking at the side of the road.

The storm also cleared away the thick haze that had been hanging over the city to reveal the dusky mountains encircling it. We enjoyed a couple of days drying out and seeing some of the many temples Luang Prabang is renowned for. Although the water-fight part of Pimai was now over, the celebrations continued for a few more days with several small family parties to be found down quiet side-streets and in houses around the place. Some were recognisable by loud (and often slightly cacophonous) karaoke and numerous empty booze bottles piled up early in the day. We were invited to join an altogether more serene affair by the sisters who run our guest house; this involved a small ceremony attended by the family and local friends who all sat on the floor around a small centre piece display made from banana leaves and marigolds (the flowers, not the rubber gloves) whilst a wise looking old man chanted some prayers to wish the household and attendees a safe and prosperous new year.

At the end everyone tied small strings around one another's wrists, with three knots which symbolise the wish for good luck, good health and a long life (the aim being 120 years, apparently - one or two of the guests looked like they may be well on the way to this target). These rituals were followed by a big lunch time feast, with delicious traditional Lao food and lots of cold beer. As mountains of food were continually delivered to the table, we were told Lao people eat long and slow at such affairs, and often indulge in a snooze afterwards. In this vein, our hostess told us that this country is called Laos PDR, where PDR stands for People's Democratic Republic, but that Lao people are fond of saying it actually stands for Please Don't Rush. We've mostly enjoyed this extreme laid-backness, but have fallen foul of it once or twice; for example ordering a drink at a riverside cafe when our boat was due to depart around half an hour hence - we eventually had to go into the kitchen and hurriedly ask for our drinks to take away as the other passengers all climbed aboard. We then inevitably sat on the boat for half an hour before the captain decided he was ready to shove off.

With the air cleared and time to spare before we moved on, we decided to head into the countryside, to a village up the Nam Ou river. Having thought we'd done our last long road journey we found ourselves packed into a small, very hot minibus for a five hour white-knuckle ride into the mountains. The driver seemed to find his foreign passengers' gasps quite amusing as he played chicken with oncoming traffic whilst overtaking in all the most inadvisable parts of the road. From the end of this road it was a couple of hours via a small ferry to Muang Ngoi, which is only accessible by the river. We were back into limestone karst scenery, with the river winding through towering cliffs with small villages of bamboo construction built on the sandy banks. Muang Ngoi is one such village, and offers a lovely place to stop, watch the comings and goings on the river, and enjoy the breathtaking views. It hot and sticky when we got there and found ourself some lodgings (a beautiful and very luxurious wooden bungalow), and Heather was by then desperate to mimic the numerous children we'd seen playing in the river along the way. It was certainly a picturesque spot to cool off.

There was no mains electricity, but some power is provided by generators in the evening (shame that solar does not seem to be used as much as we've seen elsewhere, but we did see a few Heath Robinson-looking turbines in the river). As we settled in to relax for the evening, a Pimai party boat arrived with massive speaker system on board and the revelers installed themselves into one of the buildings nearby. With the mountains on all sides the sound seemed to reverberate in the peaceful basin. It may have been due to their enthusiastic afternoon consumption of Lao Lao (rice wine spirit), but we were quite grateful when the party petered out fairly early on in the evening and peace and quiet broke out once more.

Just as the generators went off for the evening and complete darkness fell, another violent storm was announced by lashing winds and heavy rain. Flashes of lightening and booming thunder soon followed, and we were glad we'd chosen one of the more solidly constructed bungalows. The storm didn't last long though, and we fell asleep to the sound of thousands of insects and very little else.

The next day we decided to take a boat all the way back down the Nam Ou river to Luang Prabang. The whole journey took about 8 hours which on hard seats made for quite numb bums, but the stunning scenery made it all worthwhile. Along the way we spotted buffalo cooling off in the river, fishermen expertly throwing their nets, kingfishers and other birds, and an incredible number of white butterflies in mesmerising processions along the river banks. Our boatman managed to navigate the boat through several sections of rocks and rapids, pulling some impressive manoeuvres in the process. As we neared Luang Prabang we unexpectedly passed some small gold-panning operations with mechanical diggers sitting in the river dropping bucket loads of rocks and silt into mechanical sifting pans. Small groups of people were manually sifting through the material flowing out of these pans. We passed by fairly quickly but have found a blog post by a kayaker who was able to take several photos and find out more about the gold panning.

Although we don't regret the decision to do the whole journey by boat, it was quite a relief when the temples on the hills and larger boats at the riverside let us know that we'd arrived back in Luang Prabang. The first beerlao in one of our favourite riverside haunts was ice cold, and barely touched the sides.

We're enjoying our last couple of days in Lao time, and getting ready to fly to Hanoi tomorrow (we did investigate getting there by bus, but apparently the journey takes around 3 days on terrible roads and tests travellers' will to live). We had all our fingers crossed, but have come back to the horribly disappointing news that the Icelandic volcanic ash is still causing planes to be grounded across Europe, and it's looking very unlikely that Drew's brother will be able to join us in Vietnam as planned. We were really looking forward to our holiday together, and are feeling thoroughly deflated, as he must be also. Only five weeks until we're back home (if all goes to plan), so we'll see him then.

[edit] Thankfully it looks like the volcanic ash has caused Steve's visit to be delayed rather than cancelled; we're having to shuffle our plans about a little, but we're really happy it looks like we'll be meeting up in Vietnam after all. [/edit]

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