Advertisement
Published: March 3rd 2010
evel knieval or just another bus ride
obiously its not just backpackers and chickens that ride chicken busesThursday 17th February
Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang
We awoke to the sound of the cockrel, packed our things, ignored breakfast and headed for the bus station to catch the 0900 bus to Luang Prabang, the old capital. Now Luang Prabang has had varied reports, some fantastic, some say expensive, too touristy, too full of mature tourists with wads of cash, etc etc. We thought it lovely.......the first commercialised-ish place in Laos but not overdone, still quirky but ...ok lets face it we could get the biggest baguette chicken salad sandwhich you have ever seen for 70p and a smoothie for 40p from a lovely lady market style trader who smiled and laughed so much that at first we thought she might be poisoning us but soon realised that she made her living serving great sarnies and loved doing it. That about somes it up!
No seriously, rather like a large town not a city, with a really personal feel, lots of french colonial buildings, great temples, restaurants and bars if you want them or more local, inexpensive places if you walk off the main drag. The night market was fantastic, on every night with some really lovely, different
cheap rubbish to the usual cheap rubbish (that we all love) so that was a nice suprise! We had to stay 5 days as we were waiting for our Vietnam visa to return and to be honest it was a lovely place to hang out and do pretty much nothing! On the journey from Lunag Namta we met Cockney Ian who lives in Leeds and so we hung out together for a few days, fantastic shopping partner for me (he does stalls at the festivals so was really interested in the market) while Dave had a few beers, relieved that he did not have to accompany me!
We spent the first 2 nights in an ok guesthouse, 150,000 kip per night (12 quid), a bit steep but right in the centre, we actually moved to another place for 4 nights, really nice except for the walls were paper thin and we could hear Dave from Blackpool coughing all night next door. So we spent our time in Luang Prabang just wandering about, cycling around, eating baguettes and cakes, drinking coffee, etc. The town is clean and not overun with scooters, most people ride bicycles, there are many beautiful temples and
Laos coffee by the Mekong
It was bloomin freezing for one day, Ian our fellow traveller from up north at all times you can see monks in bright orange robes wandering the streets. All boys after the age of 16 should spend at least 1 year being a monk. We hired a bicycle one morning and decided to eat our rather large baguetttes by the river, we ended up quite a way out of town but by a river anyway. It was very interesting to see young women actually stood in the lake fully clothed, with motorbike helmet on, doing their washing.......Another lady wandered down to the river with her 2 puppies, proceeded to lather them up with shampoo and chuck them in the river to see if they could swim!! They did'nt know it but they could swim, they were not too happy about finding out in this way!
The food was ok, nothing special really, Laos food seems very similar to thai ie Stir fried vegetables in various sauces, rice, some attempts at european fodder, some nice chilli jam but the baguettes and cakes were the absolute best!! The people here were friendly and spoke english if they were in the service industry, all very nice and not in your face. There are quite a few trips
Ian haggling at the market
He handed over 1,000,000 kip for 50 skirts...78 quid! you can do from Luang Prabang however we had recently trekked, seen waterfalls and temples so we decided against booking up for anything.
(Dave: basically, a well needed break in hostilities for me; I arrived from LM feeling weak kneed, billious and had a nasty pain in my neck and headache. LP did the trick for me and slowly I started to feel better and look forward to things again, including my 4 oclock beer appointment which had actually been a struggle for quite a while. Am particularly grateful for Ian's company and his shopping escort duties which saved me from nights of torture - cheers mate!!! Generally I would recommend visiting LP and I'm glad the visa's took as long as they did)
Anna: by the way when I as out at the market Dave was by no means alone, he hooked up with 2 70 something Australians, Bob and Jim who were still giving it loads with a thirst to match Daves..in fact he's got a roofing job on the Gold Coast if he fancies it!!!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.133s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 14; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0808s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
leenabose
non-member comment
budha
budha is light of world