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Published: December 21st 2010
We flew the short distance from Chiang Mai (which we were sad to leave as we'd loved it) to Luang Prabang, our first stop in Laos, the smallest country in SE Asia. We landed and caught a tuk tuk to the centre of town with a guy from America who we had met at the airport to find a place to stay for a couple of nights. We were dropped off but saw nothing we liked the look off and were deciding where to go when a guy on a bicycle pulled up to us and said he knew a nice guesthouse a few streets away, so we went with him and the place was nice and just £8 a night for a big room with tv and balcony!
The three of us had a drink on the balcony and as it was getting dark, we didn't really know how far we were from the main street in the centre of town and it was raining we just walked a couple of minutes to an Indian restaurant someone had reccomended to us which was really good and cheap. We chose to call it a night afterwards as we wanted to
get up early to see what the small town had to offer us...
We walked towards the town and noticed straigt away how bad the driving was! It was so slow even though there was no traffic and there were dogs running accross the roads...we got to the town, which actually consisted of just one main street but it had a real French feel to it with bakeries and patisseries lining the road which was nice. It was raining quite heavily so we went into the tourist info centre to find out what there was to do in the rain, and got really frustrated when they couldn't speak english...why have a tourist info centre then?! We continued walking and after a bite to eat we went into a few tour and travel shops to see if there wer any activites we wanted to do. Although some of the treks sounded good we didn't really fancy staying for another 2 days as although nice, the town didn't really have much to it,and the tour agencies weren't even that bothered anyway. We had heard Laos was laid back but didn't realise quite how so!
We then found a half day
trip that went to some waterfalls 15km out of the centre of town and as it had stopped raining by now we booked on to it and went back to our guesthouse to change. When we got to the waterfalls we were surprised but pleased to see a bear sanctuary with a few big black bears in it roaming around. We walked through to the waterfalls which were nice and Scott enjoyed jumping off rope swings and trees into them while Vic watched (and called him Mogli from jungle book haha). We then had some time in the small village next to the falls before going back to LP. When we got back the night market was being set up so we had a quick walk around that before going back to our guesthouse where we booked a bus to take us to the town of Vang Vieng the next morning. We then went for some dinner at a cool bar/restaurant where you ate on cushions on the floor before going back for another early night. Luang Prabang has a curfew anyway and everything shuts at 11pm!
The next morning we were up at the stupidly early time of
5am as we had heard about something called 'giving alms' to local monks at sunrise. These types of monks don't have money to buy things like food so every morning they walk through the town and people give them things like rice, banana leaves and biscuits which you buy from local women so we thought we'd take part. You have to kneel down when you give the monks the food and snacks so we sat on the pavement waiting for them to come past for a good 40 minutes until they finally did. Getting up so early and sitting in the dark wasn't great but giving the food to the monks and seeing the process was really interesting and we were glad we did it. Then we had time for a coffee before getting our bags and going to the bus station.
So our first taste of Loas was like this - very very laid back place (compared to the business of Thailand), a bit old fashioned, nice to while away a day or so and if you have time do an overnight trek so see local hilltribes, but it didn't wow us although LP was a nice town.
With this in mind we were looking forward to Vang Vien for a bit of liveliness and the main activity, tubing!
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denise
non-member comment
hi
I'm sure that you have been told that the weather is terrible here, the worse snow ever..........even in London. so I guess that you are both in the right place with some warmth and sunshine. Hopefully by the time you get home we'll be over this weather situation. In case I dont get the chance to email you before xmas, have a wonderful time and enjoy the time you have left travelling. Before you know it you'll be home, so take in every hour, especially the sunshine. lots of love Denise