Falling in love with Luang Prabang

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We arrived in Luang Prabang in good time and set off to find a guesthouse near the river. After settling on a clean but rather expensive room we grabbed some food at a little place overlooking the river. Unfortunately the food was not as good as the view. It was getting late by then so we took a walk around the night market and headed back to the guesthouse with a pineapple smoothie.

Next morning we decided to find somewhere else to stay. We found another place for the same price which included air con and our own balcony. We rented bicycles from the guesthouse to ride around town. We visited Wat Xieng Thong temple which is covered in beautiful mosaics, stopped for cake 😊, then walked around the Haw Kham Royal Palace Museum. We also climbed up to see Wat Chom Si, the view alone was worth the steep climb. We rode our bicycles around town a bit more before returning to the guesthouse.

We again took a walk around the night market. The market is small running along the town’s main street and was pretty quiet. An alleyway between the night market end of Sisavangvong Road and the Mekong is full of street food vendors. Angelo opted for his beloved noodle soup while Debbie paid 10,000kip to help herself to a buffet of Lao food. It was probably some of the best food we had eaten in Laos so far.

We got up at 5(ish) in the morning to watch the Alms giving ceremony. This is where, every morning, hundreds of monks from the various monasteries walk through the streets collecting food from the locals. It was quite a spectacular sight, but spoilt a bit by the tourists snapping photos in the monks’ faces.

We had booked a tour to Pak Ou Caves. We were picked up and taken to the pier where we were to take a boat to the caves. We sat waiting for an hour with two other tourists, a girl from Malaysia and a guy from somewhere in Europe (he fell asleep on the bench so didn’t really hear much from him). The Tour company then decided to tell us that we could only do the tour if we all paid extra money as they needed at least 5 people – if not we could get a refund. We had already paid a lot for the tour and didn’t really want to pay extra. We were about to leave when the European guy woke up, listened to the situation and then without hesitation paid for the missing 5the person’s ticket – ‘alright, we go now’.

We boarded the rickety boat and made a brief petrol stop at a floating petrol station before travelling for about an hour. We stopped at a ‘whisky village’ where we assumed we would be shown something to do with the locals making whisky, instead they just tried to sell us things. We stocked up on crisps and water and got back on the boat. Around 20 minutes later we reached the caves. The lower cave is full of thousands of Buddha statues, some big some tiny. The upper cave also houses a smaller collection. After round 30 minutes we got back onto the boat to head back to the city. The caves were interesting and the scenery along the river was beautiful but all in all we were not sure the tour was worth the money. We paid 80,000kip per person but later found out if you go direct to the pier you can pay 65,000kip.

When we arrived back in Luang Prabang early afternoon and set off to find a bakery for lunch. We found a place, we can’t remember the name but it was on the main road, where Debbie had what she thinks was the best sandwich she has ever had and Angelo had an average burger. That night we booked a minibus to Phonsavan for the following morning and took a final walk around the night market, making a few purchases, before some more tasty street food and bed.

We really liked Luang Prabang and wished we could spend more time here, but we had decided to change our plans and go east to see the plain of jars and cross over to Vietnam at the apparently difficult but closest to Hanoi border crossing. So we were picked up early in the morning and taken to the bus station to board our minibus to Phonsavan along with a British guy, a Russian guy, a couple of German girls and an interesting Italian lady. “Peas!!......”

Deb & Ang

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Photos

Beautiful Mosaics
This one showing some 'erotic' scenes apparently

Wat Chom Si
Ang looking a little sweaty after the steep climb!

Russian anti-aircraft turret
at Wat Chom Si

buffet style
...its no Red Hot...