May 27: Luang Prabang

Nothing like the adventure of Friday, our last day in Luang Prabang turned out to be nice and relaxing, just what my legs and feet required after a long hike through the jungle.

For $5 each, we took a half-day boat tour up the Mekong, stopping at the "Buddha Caves," where thousands of statues of Buddha are stashed in two different caves; the Lao whisky village, where I now wish I had bought that $3 bottle stuffed with a scorpion pickled with Lao whisky; and the Lao paper village, where Shelly bargained hard and came home with a bunch of handmade paper.

After a short nap for me, and some wandering around for Shelly, we met at 4:30 for massages, foot for me and head and hand for her, before climbing Mount Phousi again.

"It'll be romantic," she said. "We can watch the sunset from the top."

"My legs are tired," I grumbled.

"Come on. It's our last night in Laos together."

Griping the whole way, I once again climbed the 328 steps to the top of Mount Phousi, where I found Shelly -- and two dozen other foreigners -- waiting for the sun to drop behind the mountains.

"It's not really as romantic as I had hoped," Shell said. "But it is beautiful."

And it was.

Also of note: On our last day in Laos, I finally got the currency figured out. There are three currencies circulating freely in Laos: the Lao kip, the Thai baht and the U.S. dollar. The kip and dollar are easy: $1 = 10,000 kip. (My efforts to find an ATM machine that would show me my balance in millions of kip was, unfortunately, unsuccessful.) At 40 baht to the dollar, or 40 baht to 10,000 kip, the conversions weren't exactly hard, but they could be tricky, especially after a bottle or two of Beerlao. We've spending baht, primarily, because a) it was easy to get from the ATMs in Thailand, and b) I'll need the dollars that we have in Cambodia and Vietnam, where baht is less useful. (Apparently, I can use baht in western Cambodia, near the border, but not elsewhere.) It wouldn't be tricky at all, except that prices could be quoted in any of the currencies, and can be paid for in any of the three, or a combination of the three. I paid for dinner one night in baht, and received kip and dollars in change. Hmm.

Tomorrow, Shell flies back to Bangkok for her Monday flight, while I'll take the bus back to Vientiane.