Luang Prabang - Luang Prabang Bang Baby

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Hi All,

Well, we have arrived in Hanoi and I'm just sitting down in our stinky, damp, loud hostel to (re)write the blog that I already wrote the other day before Alex came along and turned the computer off before I had published it. Thanks Alex, I have nothing better to do. Of course it was my fault because I didn't save it as I went along. Sure.

Anyway, I had written a glowing review of our 2-day trip down the Mekong and the 4 subsequent days that we spent in Luang Prabang. And it went something like this:

We got up bright and early at 7am last Thursday in Chiang Khong because we had to cross the border into Laos and catch the slowboat that would take us to Luang Prabang. After fighting two old, French lesbians to get our exit stamps, and seeing a poor old English lady fall over flat on her face (shame), we had to get on a long tail boat across the Mekong to Laos. There we had an even bigger fight with everyone else clambering to get their Laos Visas ($35 each) in what is the least organised border crossing I have ever crossed in my life. I got into another fight, this time with the poor old lady who had fallen on her face before, she kept pushing me further and further forward when there was no space, so I swung my back pack a few times to knock her a bit. She clearly took offence, telling me to "watch it mate", to which I explained that if she was going to continue pushing me forward I would not be able to avoid her with my back pack. Anyway, point is that we got through before her, and my earlier sympathy for her waned - I'm glad the stupid bitch fell over, and I hope it hurt.

Next thing we fell for a bit of a con - we got our slow-boat tickets off the first tout we saw for 950 Baht each, but you could get them slightly cheaper directly from the boat. Luckily, the lady gave Alex all her money back by mistake, so we got 2-for-1 anyway! But we had all this done by about 9:30 - little did we know that the boat would only leave when they had enough people...we finally left at 12pm! Then we fell for our second scam - not knowing what Pakbeng was going to be like, we fell for the story, g"get tickets for my hostel in Pakbeng, there are only ten beds but this is the best place in town" - we knew it was a scam but we wanted to have a guaranteed bed so we went with it, when we got there the place was actually 30% cheaper, and it was a shithol anyway.

It was a long 6 hours on the boat, but the views were fantastic, and we had good seats so it was pretty relaxing. The boats are loud and the toilets are dirty, but they sell beer so it was ok. We chugged into Pakbeng at about 6pm that evening, went to our pre-purchased dive with shower/toilet combo, Alex had an ant sandwich (seriously, when we told the guy he just laughed and got her another one!), we both gave up and went to sleep ASAP. We were glad to be out of there the next morning!

The next day was more of the same really, only this time we were in the back of the boat, so it was really really loud, but we had space to lie down so in some ways it was better. We arived in Luang Prabang at around 5pm that evening, and what a lovely town it turned out to be! Luang Prabang is everything you want from a travel destination - it sits in a great location - clinging to the banks of the Mekong, it has great food - a mixture of traditional Laos cuisine and French baking, it has loads of little shops and markets - even more impressive than in Chiang Mai, it is sunny, its laid back, its cheap (mostly) and there is lots to do.

Day one, we hired a bicycle during the day, and had a traditional Thai massage in the evening (this is a whole story in itself, but I will just say that I never thought I would have a man go that close to my penis in my life - more worringly, I quite enjoyed it). Day two we went on two tours, one to the Pak Ou caves just up the river, where there are two big caves full of buddha statues, and the other to Kuang Si waterfall where you could swin in the waters and also see some rescued bears. Finally, day three we shopped around and went up Phu Si which is a little hill in town where you could get some great views of the city. All of this was interspersed with coffee and croissants for breakfast and lovely Indochinese food for dinner. On the last day I had some Luang Prabang sausages - I feel they could appeal more to the English crowd by calling them Luang Prabangers........................yeah Alex didn't find it that funny either....

Anyway, that is really just a brief summary of a town that we both thought was really great. Of course we are already in Hanoi after a short flight earlier today, and while we loved Luang Prabang, I would love one day to go back and explore Laos a bit more. But now we are looking forward to Vietnam...its raining here, but with Halong Bay around the corner things should start looking up.

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Comments

[Jacky Young]

Great to read about your trip - I would love to see photos of you both on a bike! The massage I presume was as a result of all that cycling?! xx