Goodbye Laos

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Adventures in Luang Prabang

We woke up earlyish even though we drunk the mini bar out of booze after our bus trip. We decided to make the most of our free brekky and moved on to do some wat-hopping. Again I'm struck by the chilled atmosphere and easy-going people in Laos and especially LP. There is also a shitload of dogs, well-fed and curious (Amanda adopted three). The place definitely has a touristy atmosphere.

The wats seem more real here, as the monks actually seem to live in them. I feel weird taking photos of the monks so We've been papping (papparazzing for the newbies) them through trees. We came across a set of stairs with more then the usual amount of tourists (and tourist profiteers) on them so we bought a gift for the gods and started or walk up the stairs halfway up I looked at Amanda who is as unfit as me and asked if she could carry me. The stairs went for what felt like 3 days and as Amanda pointed out we were probably supposed to think of our spiritual place on earth, all I could think is build a friggin escalator. We only sropped once on our epic journey up (Mt) Phu Si the view from the top was amazing. You could see throughout LP and I tried to make a mental note of our surroundings as Amanda and I have an unnatural ability to get incredibly lost in the shortest amount of time. We didn't think it would be as much of an issue in LP considering the towns population is only 26000. We took some lame photos with buddha's and gave our gift at the temple and headed back down the mountain.

On one of our many strolls around LP Amanda said "I want to marry Luang Prabang" and I accidentally said "Why don't you marry the person who brought you here" even before I finished my sentence I new Amanda would make me pay for it she has been putting shit on me all day, calling me fiance and pointing out wedding rings. I've decided I'm going to find a good Laotian wife who brews beer Lao, gives Laotian massages, cooks Laotian food and owns an oppulent tuk tuk for our family to drive and live in.

We had a bit of lunch and headed for our well deserved massage. The massage was excellent. I hoped Amanda had picked up a few tips so we don't have to pay the exhorbitant price ($5 each). The massage had made us rather thirsty so we decided to have a few beer Laos which I forgot to mention are mainly served in the long neck (I love this place) we managed to get a bit of a glow up as we Pub/restraunt crawled it to the night markets. I wont tell you what we bought only that I'm a hopeless barter after a few beers at one stage I said the same price as the lady and walked away satisfied until Amanda informed me of my stuff up (that would explain the bewildered look from Amanda and the shop keeper). I managed to get hold of a beer Lao on our market expedition which resulted in the enivitable need to use the toilet. The problem was we were in a maze of stalls that never seemed to end. We found a side street and asked in the guest house he said the house 2 doors up has a toilet. The house was someone actual house and the whole family were sitting down having dinner. I walked in and said "toilet" (by this stage I wished I wore nappies) and the dad said "2000 Kip" (toilets are usually 1000) so I said 1000 and the guy laughed and said 2000. I said "ok ok where is the toilet" they pointed and as I ran to the toilet I heard the whole family in hesterics. I came back out feeling like a new man, the family still all laughing (as well as Amanda) offered us some of their dinner and a seat. It was very tempting and probably one of those things Tony Bourdain would do but we moved on, I thought it was rude not to take them up on their food offer though so we grabbed a lettuce leaf filled with some unknown substance and headed off. We spent way to much at the markets and headed home to bed. I need one of those shirts "I heart Laos".

11th to 13th of Jan

I'll try to quickly summise the rest of our time in Luang Prabang as the internet is slow and not cheap and we have a flight to catch tomorrow morning (which we'll miss at this rate due to my slow typing, this sentence has taken me 5 minutes already). We had the cooking course today it started at 0900 and we just made it thanks to our Laotian wake up callm we asked for an 0800 oclock wake up we got the phone call at 0835 luckily we predicted this and Amanda's phone was our back up. The cooking course was good especially thr trip to the markets. We learnt how to make sticky rice and also found out that Laotian food is typically meat with a few herbs apparently they have only recently sold vegies at the markets as the western tourist influx increases. The food was OK and Amanda and I both agree that were not opening a Laotian restraunt in Aus. We had some nice Indian for dinner and went to bed.

Our last day in LP didn't live up to expectation as I woke up constantly through the night with stomach pains. We got up and watched the Alm ceremony in the morning. Which wasn't what I thought it would be, I can imagine 100 years ago the ceremony would have been extremely enchanting. Now the ceremony is surrounded by disrespectful tourist in the face of the monks taking photos. I was astounded and ashamed of their blatant disrespect for the Lao culture. The Lao people seemed very tolerant of these arseholes, Amanda and I tried to keep a respectful distance and keep the photos to a minimum. After the ceremony which only went for 30 mins we crashed out again. We woke up and grabbed some brekky but Amanda was feeling sick the whole time we headed back to the hotel room hoping Amanda would feel better in an hour or two. Unfourtunately the sickness was worse than we thought and both Amanda and I had come down with a bout of food poisoning probably the food from the Laotian family. I felt OK after an hour or 2 and Amanda was a trooper and came out for a few beers for our lastnight in LP. The sickness left a sour taste in both our mouths (literally) but the trip up to LP was definitly worth it.

We caught the bus back to Vientiane the next day at 0900. The bus teip back had lost a bit of its charm, especially as I was a bit seedy and we got to our hotel aroung 1930. I leave it there, there are some really annoying Laotian guys playing Warcraft yelling at each other. This time I'll hopefully put up some pics. Most places don't have USB etc.


We arrived back in Vientiane last night around 7pm, after a fairly uneventful bus trip. However our adventures in Luang Prabang were far from uneventful.

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