Laid-back Luang Prabang..

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I’ve been told that Laos is supposed to be the most relaxed country in Asia.. Could be true. Our time here in Luang Prabang could for sure be described by this word. Very laid back, everything here.. No eating on the street, like in Thailand, but a nice lunch with a fresh baguette (notice the French influence, bread does actually taste like bread here..). Furthermore we’ve been reading books about Buddhism in a nice tea/lounge room, watching a movie in a movie room, doing sights (Luang Prabang is so small that we’ve already seen about 50% of the sights we wanted to see by foot in a few hours.. makes your life very relaxed too…), having a coffee, you get pretty much the idea.

This evening we’ve just seen a Lao ballet show, pretty expensive for the standards heer (8-15$, guess that’s like a month salary for poorer Lao people or so), but really awesome to see. The ballet was more like a little theater show with only dance and music, with all the costumes and everything. Actually that’s really cool, it was a lot more amusing to see and a lot easier to understand without knowing the story than many of our ‘modern’ ballet pieces. In the end they also showed a ritual dance from one of the Lao minorities in the North, also cool. That showed that the fact that you don’t have a tv doesn’t need to make your life boring.. You can do other things, like teaching yourself how to carry a big vase of water, weighing tens of kilos, with only your mouth.. (was part of the dance). Also an interesting way of spending your leisure time… 😉

Now we have one more day left in Luang Prabang, which we will use to, besides others, make a trip to the caves of Pak Ou, caves full of Buddha’s, should be really nice. And then we’ll be leaving for Vang Vien by bus this Saturday.. We’ll keep you guys informed.. 😉

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