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Published: March 6th 2010
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We had a pretty lazy day today just wandering around exploring the town a bit. We booked a couple of tours for Friday and Saturday so that we can get out of town and explore the more rural surrounds a little bit too while we are here.
After a bit of shopping at the Hmong craft market and some salad baguettes for lunch we visited the Royal Palace Museum. When we arrived, Bernie noted that someone else had left their identical aqua and grey Croc thongs in the shoe rack while they visited the museum. Bernie very deliberately put his thongs in a separate rack before we bought our tickets and put our camera bags in a glass fronted locker!!! Hmmn, not only can people see what’s on offer, they only have to smash a flimsy pane of glass to take it??? I guess we were a little reassured by the fact that there was an attendant to notice the sound of breaking glass??!!!
The palace was built in 1904 during the early French colonial era as a residence for King Sisavang Vong and his family. The site was chosen so that official visitors to Luang Prabang could arrive
by river directly below the palace and be received there. The building is an eclectic mixture of traditional Lao with some French influences. It is a bit like a time capsule having been pretty much preserved just as it was when the royal family was forced into exile. The museum is also home to the Pha Bang, a 53.4kg Khmer-styled standing Buddha cast of a gold, silver and bronze alloy that is one of Luang Prabang’s most revered artefacts.
Upon completing our tour of the museum we returned to the shoe racks to the shocking discovery that some dirty rotten tourist had made off with Bernie’s size 11 aqua and grey Croc thongs!!!!!!!!!!! Let’s face it, it must have been a dirty, rotten tourist because not many Lao men have size 11 feet!! So, with Bernie barefooted we made our way around the rest of the museum grounds where we visited the Buddhist Statue Restoration Project, a photographic exhibition featuring images of Buddhist monks and a garage housing a number of vehicles that were used by the royal family. On the plus side, Bernie didn’t have to keep taking his shoes off and putting them back on each time
we entered these exhibitions!!
We were going to get a tuk tuk back to the Lotus Villa to save Bernie’s feet, but he decided that the pavement wasn’t too rough and he made it all the way back to our room in his bare feet. One of the owners was in the foyer when we arrived and we were chatting to him about what we had been to see and then mentioned that Bernie had had his shoes stolen from the shoe rack at the Royal Palace Museum. The owner said that he had been quietly wondering if Bernie was just a bit of a born again hippy??!!
Tonight we went a bit further afield to check out the night market. They close off the street and there are stalls set up on both footpaths and in the middle of the road. We were a bit taken aback at how many stalls have the same merchandise on offer. It makes it seem a bit mass produced rather than it being the individual handicraft of the stall holder.
For dinner we ventured down one of the side streets to the Blue Lagoon restaurant. It had a European influenced
menu - we couldn’t agree whether it was German (Bernie’s opinion) or Swiss (my opinion). Whatever, we opted for a taste of Italy, ordering some pasta tonight, Bolognese for Bernie and Napolitana for me.
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Janet
non-member comment
market wares
I was just wondering if any of the market stalls featured size 11 croc thongs, aqua and grey to be more specific? used?