Luang Prabang

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While the breakfast in Oudomxay, we met a couple from London, which traveled also by motorbike. They drove all the way from UK to Laos! Crazy! With them was a lady in a car (Landrover?) with german lincense plates. Turns out she is travelling since 2 years with her car. She also drove from Germany to Laos. We all were on the way to Luang Prabang which is the biggest town in northern Laos. So we drove all together trough the mountainous roads to Luang Prabang.

While waiting for each other on a big junction, we met a Australian expat who lives in Luang Prabang. He is the manager of the bear sanctuary there. He tells us about a Australian bar which serves the best fish'n'chips in town and eventually we all meet us there to eat something different than just rice and soup. The road to Luang Prabang is not that good and it's not easy to drive. It's curvy and many deep potholes makes it dangerous to drive fast. But we saw nice nature and also interesting stalls on road, which sell living bamboorats.

As mentioned, when we arrived in Luang Prabang we went for the fish and chips and after, Vy went to find a guesthouse. She found a nice and cheap one right next to the aussibar, which was now our base for the next few days.Later that evening, we wandered trough the city and we were lucky because there was some kind of celebrating. The monks lighted laterns and the people sent this asians hotair balloons to the sky. There were many stands, selling floating flowers with candels on it. The people lighted the candels and let them float down the river. Each of these rituals should bring luck and health to the people. Because we are not really superstitious, we didn't attend, we just enjoyed the views that evening.

Next day we had planned to visit a waterfall outside Luang Prabang, but we took our time at breakfast and at a coffeebar and after we eventually ready to go, it began to rain. So we spent the afternoon in our guesthouse, to use the Internet and catch up some sleep. For dinner, we wanted to try the laotian version of Hotpot. This Hotpot version consist two cooking styles. While you cook vegetables and noodles in the soup, you can cook the meat and seafood on the grill. The juices from it will flow directly to the soup and add some flavor to it. It's delicious. We will definitely try to make that at home.

On the next day, we went to see the Pak Ou cave. We drove trough many little villages and eventually we reached a pier, where we took a boat to the other side of the river, where the cave is located. The cave was not worth the effort. It's actually a hole in the rock and there are many Buddha statues in it. We drove back to Luang Prabang took our bathing clothes and then we drove to the Tad sae waterfall. On the way we met two germans. Walter and Carmen and together we took a thin shaky boat to reach the waterfall. We really liked this waterfall. It was not a high one, but the water falls several small steps to reach finally the river. Vy and Carmen took the chance and bathed with elefants. They loved it. On the way home, Carmen managed to ride on the back of Walters, while carrying her bicycle the same time. True Asian style!

We all met again in the evening, to visit the nightmarket together. After 15 min, Jan and Walter had enough and went to a bar, while the girls bought at least the half of the market.

On the next day we drove to the famous Kuang Si waterfall. To be sure, it's not crowded, we set off early. The waterfall is nice, but we found that one not that nice, as the small Tad Sae waterfall. We took some pictures and hiked to the top of the fall. Before you reach the waterfall, there is a bear sanctuary and we were lucky because the bears were fed at the time we were there. We saw Mike who invited us to a private tour and we were able to pet one of the bears. This bear had a brain surgery 2 days before and was a bit shy, but really cute.

We really liked Luang Prabang, although its a bit touristy, because its have a international airport.




• You have to buy tickets to visit the sights like the waterfall.
• While there are restaurants at the waterfalls, we brought sandwiches which you can buy everywhere in Luang Prabang for about 15'000 kip
• 20 minutes swimming with the elefants at Tad Sae waterfall is 100'000 kip
• Be the first who buy something at the nightmarket. The sellers are mostly Buddhists and their goal is to sell something as early as possible, to touch the goods with the money from the first customer this day. They will likely sell you something for a cheaper price just to have money to touch.

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