Today was a noteable day as we had our first ride on the Laos-China Railway. It is a new joint venture between China and Laos and runs a new high speed railway line from the Laos capital Vientiane, via Luang Prabang to the Chinese city of Kunming. Today we travelled the 230km section from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. It was an impressive experience from the enormous new terminal buildings at Vientiane (unfortunately it had holes in the roof so they were mopping up water in various places) to the new station at Luang Prabang. The speed; which regularly reached 265km/h meant we completed todays journey in under 2 hours with a few stops along the way.

We were in Luang Prabang by 10:00am so once off the train we set about our day of sightseeing starting with the obligatory Buddhist monastry which for some strange reason had an old VW Beetle car on display in its own building. Next came a temple consisting of two buildings, one housing three empty coffins of previous kings of Laos.

A nice lunch of western sandwiches and good coffee was followed by a visit to the Palace of the last King of Laos. The last king died in 1959 and after his death the building was turned into a museum. On the same property there is a temple building that houses a small statue of Buddha made (almost) entirely of pure gold. This is a historic relic of Laos and was once stolen by Cambodians but obviously has been returned. The statue is named Prabang and the city gets its name from that statue. The words Luang Prabang translate as city of Prabang.