lovely luang prabang...

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After our crazy ride from Nong Kiaw we arrived in Luang Prabang. The downtown area is very pretty and clean but completely touristy. Being a UNESCO world heritage city they have to preserve the architecture and keep it nice and clean, which is great because it's definitely beautiful but I can just imagine that during high season it's like you are in a small french town and not in Laos at all - all westerners, french food, french architecture... oh but I guess I forgot about the wats. There are dozens of wats in the city only one of which I looked at. Hisham is a great travelling buddy but he is just as lazy as me and as a matter fact he makes me look like a go getter in comparison. So as a result we didn't really get into exploring the wats. The one we did look at was nice. They are always so extravagantly decorated.
We did manage to dip into the Lao Lao again... which I will blame on Sioban and Wayne. They are a bad influence. We managed to find the dodgiest stand to drink in. It was on the river and the owner and his friend had clearly had an early start with the whisky. They were pretty stoked to have costumers and just sat and watched us the whole time with huge smiles. So Lao Lao... when you buy it one the street it comes in a clear bottle and is usually stopped with newspaper or plastice bag... lovely I know. This time he had to decant it into a smaller bottle from his giant bottle of it. He picked up a grimy looking pepsi bottle and then picked up an even filthier funnel to decant it. But we weren't too worried because I'm pretty confident that Lao Lao could kill almost any bacteria out there.
The dice games lasted two bottles of that vile liquid with Wayne getting the brunt of the shots... I'm pretty sure he did over a dozen in less than one hour. The plan was to catch the final soccer game so we headed over to a bar and on the way there was the most bizarre sight. Three lao kids just sitting in boxes. In the middle of the sidewalk and no one else anywhere. It was very wierd. Hisham and I played with them for about 15 minutes just pulling them around in their boxes. They loved it. Still it felt wierd leaving them in the middle of the street at midnight. But they had food so their parents must have been near. Veeeery strange.
The next day was a little rough... I made a terrible hungover mistake of getting my hair cut. WHO gets a haircut in Laos where the hairdresser doesn't speak english and is a man with a terrible haircut of his own? Me. I almost felt like crying - hungover, tired and now ugly. Agh, it's definitely the worst haircut I've ever had. Way too short and when he was done I looked at the back and he'd left like a whispy tail thing... ahhh it was terrible! Hisham was useless. You'd think he could have told me what was happening. Ahh well, I decided to turn the day around and do something active and fun. So Hisham and I managed to get to the waterfalls which were very beautiful. It was damn hot and they were so refreshing.
Other than that... hmmm... not much else was accomplished that day.
Sioban and Wayne left the next day for Vietnam which was sad because they had really grown on me and Hisham. We were leaving for Vang Vieng that morning but got up extra early to catch the monks collecting alms. Hisham wasn't very happy with me because I got us up about 1 hour too early... oops. In our hour to spare I dragged Hisham up Phousi hill to catch sunrise. Unfortunately after all the effort climbing up the steps it was totally fogged in and there was no sunrise : ( Again, he was not happy with me. When we got down though the monks had started coming out to collect their food. It was pretty cool to see. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries so I have only one terrible picture... no flash, but hopefully you can make it out. It was definitely worth the early morning wake up and a great way to leave Luang Prabang.

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