Luang Prabang: the city of Chill

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We have left Thailand, somewhat sadly, but absolutely love it here in Laos!

I seemed to have forgotten where i left off, so please forgive if Iam repeating.
The rest of our time in Chang Mai was amazing, a city I would love to see again. Carla and I took afew courses here, a Thai cooking class (absolutely delicious and so stuffing we were all waddling out of the house), a fruit and veggie carving course, and my personal favourite ws the Thai massage course. In the massage course it was only me, so it was wonderful to get one on one instruction. And really, I found that Thai massage is more painful than I thought it would be, but very good for sore muscles. In Chang Mai we stayed at a very inexpensive guest house run by a not so friendly Scottishmen but was right across the road from a health food tea shop. We had a few of our meals here, as well we tried their fruit wine, which although dry was very tasty!

Our experience crossing the border was very interesting. We took the bus/boat option which we thought was a good change to see the Mekong River. The bus portion of the trip was very smooth, and we got the chance to meet some lovely American girls. The whole visa scenario was all over the place, but we managed well, and finally boarded the boats (we took the slow boat option because we heard the fast boat was pretty dangerous - you wear helmets which is interesting since on one wears them while riding or driving motorbikes or bicyles). The slow boat would take two days to get to Luang Prabang. After going down the Mekong River for 1.5 hours the boat broke down. We docked at the side of the river for 3-4 hours before they sent us another boat. Due to the delay we didnt make out checkpoint for the night and ended up having to dock on a random beach for the night due to sunset. There was very little communication...actually there was no communication for the longest time and finally we realized that we were staying the night. We had the choice of sleeping on the beach (at the mercy of the weather and the mosquitos) or sleeping on the boat. We all slept like sardines that night trying to stake out a claim on the boat as soon as possible. Carla and I found a good spot which we shared with a couple (one from France the other from Korea) and I managed to get a few hours of sleep. Since we were all expecting to be in a town that night our food provisions were non-existent and my water rations were low (but not empty). The wife of the caption of the boat found some soup and boiled litres of water for us. The next morning we started at 6:30 am andwent down the river for an hour before stopping at the town for breakfast. We did make it to Luang Prabang before sunset on the second day, and we basically managed to find accomodation, then food and then slept very well until the next morning.

I love Luang Prabang. Its such a beautiful city and with tons of interesting things to do and see. Our first full day (yesterday) we spent doing a walking tour of the city, visiting the temples, textile shops, cafes, interesting architecture, and running into loads of people from the boat. We met up with a bunch of them for dinner at the night market...street food is so delicious and so fresh!! Today we got up early and went with a few others from the boat to Alms downtown. This is where you get up at 5 am and go to the market to buy fresh rice to give as offerings to the monks. What an amazing experience! We kneeled down and I would scoop up small portions of sticky rice and put it in their offering pot. So many monks, and so many tourists...some tourists were quite distracting, taking photos very close to the monks'faces - very interfering. After the Alms, Carla and I took a Laos cooking class, which was so different from our Thai class. I almost enjoyed this one more, although I do prefer Thai food.

We are heading toVan Vieng by bus tomorrow, hopefully we will get a chance to go tubing!
Hope you are all well!
xoxo

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