Exploring Luang Prabang

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Nellie and Monk decided to spend the day exploring Luang Prabang on a walk set out by Monk's trusted Lonely Planet guide.

The walk was supposed to take 4-6 hours but, after 6 hours, Monk and Nellie had only completed half of it. There were so many intersting diversions.

Luang Prabang has literally dozens of temples known as wats. Unlike wats in some other places, almost every one that Nellie and Monk visited was full of monks going about their business. That's not really so surprising because there are probably thousands of monks in this town. It's quite refreshing to be in a place where there are far more monks than there are tourists!

While looking around the grounds of one wat, Monk was approached by a young monk who said he'd been learning English for 6 months. Monk and the monk, whose name was Bee, chatted for 10 minutes before Bee offered to open up the temple to show Monk the Buddhas inside. On coming out, Monk was 'stung' by Bee for 7000 Kip as a donation toward his study costs. Monk didn't really mind, it had been an interesting 15 minutes and he thought it was well worth the 50p he gave to Bee! Many of the young monk novices never go on to become full-blown monks, it's often just a form of higher education for them. It seems many of them study English during their time as a monk. It's recommended never to give one's email address to these young monks - it can lead to a series of emails back home asking for the money to buy the latest must-have monk trainers.

Luang Prabang has a bustling food market for vegetables, meat and just about anything. The market also has many 'street food' stalls. Now Monk has no aversion to street food, in fact, he loves the Bangkok scene and the Singapore hawker centres. However, he's not too sure about Lao street food here in Luang Prabang. The vendors do their best to keep the flies away with their makeshift fly 'scarecrows' - or should it be 'scareflies'? These comprise a bamboo stick with a plastic bag tied to the end which they wave constantly across their goods. However, the Lao people, being such a sociable bunch, can get distracted into noisy conversation with the neighbouring stall-holders, The flies, sensing their moment of glory, move in - in swarms! The food in the process of being cooked over charcoal is safe from this invasion - the flies obviously can't take the heat. However, other dishes such as soups, salads, sausages and meat already cooked all succumb to this onslaught. It's good to see that the Lao stall-holders have overcome the problem of how to re-use plastic bags, but, before Monk eats 'street' in Laos, he thinks he'll wait for another more high-tech solution.

On his way back to his hotel, Monk passed through the night market which starts setting up just as the sun is going down. There are so many stalls selling so much aimed at the tourist. However, even though much of the merchandise is of good quality and is locally produced, there are just not that number of tourists around to support such a large market.

At one point Monk saw a bit of a fracas going on and stopped to investigate. A small rat, the size of a large mouse, was running between, and burrowing into, the garments and textiles being laid out on mats on the ground. Eventually, after much laughter from the men, and screams from the women, the rat was caught and handed to a young boy. He delicately held it by the tail and walked up the hillside with it before placing it gently on the ground to let it run free - rattus rattus had survived another day. This respect for life, no matter how low, is an endearing characteristic of the Buddhist religion. Even Buddhist meat-eaters excuse themselves by saying the animal was dead in any case and it would be wrong not to afford it the respect of eating it. In the case of fish, which have clearly been caught purely for eating, it is said that some salve their consciences by claiming that the fish was removed from the water to save it from drowning!

See some of the photos from Nellie and Monk's day.

Eating and Drinking

On his walkabout during the day, Monk had sought out a couple of restaurants recommended as serving good Lao food and had noted their location for his evening sortie.

While monks must spend time on their devotions, Monk must spend time updating his blog. Tonight, the hotel wifi was working so Monk sat at a table by the river drinking a Beerlao while writing up his blog and making a few Skype calls back home.

By the time Nellie and Monk hit the streets, it was already 21:00. Both of the restaurants Monk had identified were closing up so he resolved to get out earlier in future. Mostly everywhere in Luang Prabang closes early and, come 23:00, all but a few places are closed and shuttered. By law, they must close by 23:30 in any case.

Monk found a reasonable restaurant on the main street and ordered fish laap, sticky rice and fried aubergines. Laap comprises either chopped-up pork, chicken, fish or beef, mixed with lime juice, garlic, onion, mint and, of course, chillis. This is served with lettuce leaves. The procedure is to take a lettuce leaf and roll it up in one's fingers with some of the minced fish and some sticky rice. However, when raising it to one's mouth, invariably some of the mince falls out. After a few tries, Monk perfected his own way of doing it. His trick was to place a wedge of sticky rice at either end of the roll-up with the mince sandwiched in the centre - nothing could ever escape through the sticky rice wedges. Sticky rice is a very versatile dish that could have many uses in the building trade and heavy industry. Monk feels that the economy of Laos could be catapulted into the 21st century if only the Lao people would realise the enormous potential of their national dish.

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