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Published: October 29th 2013
Soon enough we were in Luang Prabang…..well outside of the city, it seems the slow boats drop you off quit far out just so that the taxis/Tuk Tuks get all the customers they want as it’s just way too far to walk. Once 6 of us had been squeezed into the back of a makeshift taxi we were driven to town and so began the challenge of trying to find our hostel as the driver didn’t understand a word of English, and plus the taxi wasn’t in the best of conditions and so took a little bit to get it started, which soon just decided to die and we didn’t have a clue where we were with a driver who didn’t speak English and so we just decided there was nothing we could do but to wait and see if he was getting someone to fix the taxi so he could hopefully take us to where we were staying.
About 20 minutes after breaking down one of the drivers mates pulled up and moved us to his Tuk Tuk and so it seemed as if we were starting all over again trying to tell him where we were staying for
the next few nights. After arriving at the wrong hostel 3 times we eventually spotted the one we were staying at as we passed and got him to stop before he decided to take us on his own little tour of Luang Prabang.
Our next home for the next 4 nights was right in the center of town on a little quite road so we didn’t have far to go for anything, and it actually turned out to be a really nice place to stay aswel, the dorm we stayed in had 16 beds and was nice and clean. We seem to have got in to the routine of getting ourselves the cheapest place we can get as money is slowly going down and to be honest the cheaper hostels are just as good, if not better than the more expensive ones, so recently we’ve been staying in hostels for £3 or less a night and it’s been very rare that the rooms haven’t been a place where we can get a good night’s sleep. On arriving on our first night we straight away decided to go out and try and find some food. Even though we had been
told where to go we soon got lost down the many dark unlit streets and were about to give up and just find our way back to our hostel when we found another westerner approaching from the opposite direction and they soon showed us the quickest way to get to the nearby night market which is one of the main attractions in Luang Prabang. This market does everything from clothes, bags and the normal tourist souvenirs to pretty much every Laos street food dish you can think of.
As you go down the main market street there’s a small alley on the left which has many different food stalls crammed into this small space and so we decided to venture into the chaos of the crowds all trying to get past each other without landing themselves on the food stalls either side of them. We soon found a good looking stall which turned out to be a kind of buffet with about 30 different dishes on and decided to give this a go as it was only 10,000 Kip a person for all you can eat (about 78p!) and so we both pilled our plates up as much as
we could and sat down with the many other locals and westerners all crammed in on little tables beside the food stalls…….it turned out to be some of the best Asian food we’ve had so far aswel! And so we visited this little alleyway many times while we stayed here. The only downside to this was there is what seems like hoards of Chinese tourists with their massive cameras and they all seem to find us fascinating! So on many occasions we’ve found ourselves being ambushed by a few Chinese all trying to get the best picture of us, which I don’t think Jade appreciated as one lady found it really fascinating that we were using chop sticks to eat and so waited for Jade to have a mouth full of noodles before she began snapping away! On another occasion I found myself turning around to have a giant camera lens pointed at my head while he waited for me to turn, so if you come here don’t be surprised if you become a local celebrity to the Chinese!
Luang Prabang is an old French Protectorate and so you can find many old Colonial buildings here along with many
bakery’s and other little stalls beside the road selling the best French baguettes we’ve had since we left home, and also very cheap (as long as you stay away from the main chain coffee shops and the like which there are also plenty of). Over the next few days we visited one of the old royal palaces and a few other little tribal museums, which were good to get out of the heat of the day, since coming into Laos the weather has just been getting hotter by the day, not that we should complain really!
Whilst here we did manage to get down into town bright and early on one of the mornings (about 5 am!) for the Alms, probably what Luang Prabang is most famous for, this is when all the monks come out to get their food for the day and walk in a long line holding there pots receiving food from the locals who line the streets beforehand. This was one of the things I had heard about before we had come and was glad that we finally got to see it actually happen.
On our last day we managed to rent out bicycles
from the hostel and cycled a little way out of town to a small village where they make paper, which was something different and interesting seeing all the locals making notebooks and large pieces of handmade paper. Jades been here to Luang Prabang before when she last came travelling so none of this was really new to her, so later that afternoon with there only really being one thing we hadn’t yet done while we were here, and that was climb to the top of the nearby hill, which is pretty big and looks right out over the city and the surrounding area and with Jade having done this the last time, she didn’t really fancy climbing all the way to the top again and so we parted ways for a few hours and I climbed up to get some pictures from above. It’s definitely worth the climb once you’re up there, not recommended when it’s too hot though, it was bad enough when I went up there late in the afternoon but with the views it was definitely worth it, it was a nice clear day aswel so the surrounding mountains were all visible, and so soon, knackered as
I was I made my way back down the hill to the hostel so we could plan the next part of our journey further into Laos. That evening we had found a show which is put on in the evenings by the local students from the university at a local bar which is basically a fashion show lasting for around 40 minutes and having the students modeling all the tribal costumes from the many hill tribes in Laos, it was certainly something different and was worth going to as it was free and all you had to do was get a drink from the bar. Well the times come for us to move on from Luang Prabang and we are now heading a little further into Laos, next stop Vang Vieng!
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