Advertisement
Published: July 19th 2008
1
First Beerlao!From the hussle bussle of Hanoi, we got a direct flight to Luang Prabang, which was well worth it as an alternative to the 24 hour bus ride that can sometimes turn into 36 hours depending on the road conditions. We did have to get up at about 4am to get the shuttle bus to the airport, but it meant that at 10am we were landing in Luang Prabang in a completely different world.
Luang Prabang Landing in Luang Prabang was just so amazing and relaxing, the air strip was in the middle of the jungle, just surrounded by greenery, and maybe a few houses dotted around the place. The airport was so small, and you could feel the relaxed atmosphere straight away, with nobody hassling to take you anywhere or to sell you anything. This is definitely the land of 'take it easy'.
Nevertheless, we didn't get away with a bit of getting ripped off. We changed some Euros at the airport, and the confusion of working out the amount of money and the new looking notes (Kip), counting 2.5 million kip was not easy, so I failed to notice one of the bundles of notes had a 50 thousand
2
Rush hour in Luang Prabang... kip note missing (only about 3GBP... always count your change properly).
We got the 'jumbo' tuk-tuk from the airport to drop us straight by the Oudomphong Guest House, which our Swiss friends told us about. The Oudomphong was a small rustic house (concrete block downstairs and wood upstairs, in the traditional method of Luang Prabang houses), run by Mamma, a charming Lao lady who showed us the rooms and made us feel like at home offering "free coffee, free bananas, free water... take it easy". So we stayed in one of the double rooms upstairs with the common bathroom/shower next door. It was very basic, but with a spacious room, large double bed, mosquito net and fan. And for 50 thousand kip per night it was as cheap as we were going to get.
After having a short sleep and a nice cold shower we went out for a walk around the town.
It was about 1pm and it was boiling hot, but the main street was pretty much deserted, and you could feel the peace and quiet in the second largest city of Laos, and everywhere you go people greet you with a friendly 'Sabadeeeeee' (hello in Lao). Luang
Prabang is a small town really, with one main street running along the middle, with lots of restaurants, bars, guest houses and temples, and beautiful colonial buildings with a lot of French influence. It is also surrounded by the Mekong and the Khan rivers, with extensive forest and trees all around. You can feel that people there have no rush to do anything and they are just getting on with their lives and waiting for the next day to come by.
The first night sleeping at the Oudomphong was unbearably hot though, there was hardly a breeze in the air, and the temperature must have been near the 40C, so the next day we were desperate to find a cooler place to stay, maybe with air conditioning. But it was hard to leave the hospitality of Mamma behind, and fortunately the weather changed a bit and we got some cool showers and some clouds to cover the sun every now and again, so the following nights we slept really well, and stayed with Papa and Mamma.
Adrien and Celine (our Swiss friends we met in Bangkok) arrived the following day and we went for a great Lao barbeque dinner with
some delicious Lao Lao (local rice wine) cocktails. One night we stayed at the guesthouse having a few BeerLao, and Papa came out with his lethal concoction of LaoLao, and together with some fried fish, and other snacks, we stayed all night drinking with Papa and finishing the LaoLao. This became a nightly event with the BeerLao and then Papa would bring out more free LaoLao to get us drunk, and get drunk himself in the process (a good excuse for him to sneak a few drinks away from Mamma). Adrien also discovered the snake wine man nearby, and one night we went to sample his produce, which had jars full of snakes, scorpions, and all kind of strange worms. We all downed them like it was nothing as you can see from the fotos.
We ended up staying about five days in Luang Prabang doing pretty much nothing, just relaxing, walking around town, seeing the temples, going to the night market in the evenings, which was absolutely beautiful and full of people selling all kinds of crafts and clothes. Only one day we got a bit active, and went on an elephant ride in the morning, which was really
great fun, and then we went to see the Kuang Si waterfalls in the afternoon. These were an amazing bright blue stream with swimming ponds and waterfalls, all completely natural and beautiful... it was probably the closest you will ever see to paradise.
Luang Prabang was definitely a charming place, and the relaxed mood and natural surroundings really make it one of our favourite places in our trip so far, definitely worth going to again and exploring much further. There are many more hidden away places further north of Luang Prabang that we would like to visit one day with more time.
After that it was time to start heading south in order to make it back to Bangkok for our flight to Australia.
On our way to Vientiane (the capital city at the border with Thailand), we stopped at the infamous town of Vang Vieng. We were not really sure about whether we would enjoy it or not, because of the reputation of being a party town full of backpackers getting drunk, taking drugs and going 'tubing'. But we went anyway.
Vang Vieng The bus trip from Luang Prabang was a bit of a nightmare, going through the
6
Luang Prabang from the hill top temple most curvy and narrow roads you can imagine, up and down the mountains, but through beautiful forests and rivers, as well as a lot of agricultural land. This part of the world also looked a lot like some places in Colombia. After about six hours we got to Vang Vieng and got a tuk-tuk from the bus stop, looking for the Thavisouk Bungalows, which Rakel recommended to us (we met Rakel briefly in Luang Prabang again). We got to the bungalows in the tuk-tuk with Mo and Claudia (a guy from Trinidad and a girl from Canada). The place was great, next to the river and away from the main street, with some amazing rock mountains in front of us, and a bar and restaurant on a veranda right on top of the river. The bungalows were just great with a good bathroom too.
That day we just relaxed the rest of the afternoon by the river having a chat with Mo and Claudia, and in the evening we went for a walk in the town for some food. The main street was just like it was described in the books, full of bars and restaurants either side, with backpackers
slumped out in front of the TV watching 'Friends', 'Family Guy' or some film, and recovering from the last days hangover. The tables in the restaurants were even centered around and facing the big screens. We went to play some pool, and then ended up in the 'Bucket Bar', drinking Lao Whiskey cocktails from a bucket with four straws. Mo slowly transformed from american Mo into Trini Mo with his accent changing the more drunk he got. That night we got completely soaked walking back to the bungalows, and the rain continued for most of the next day.
So we spent the whole morning having breakfast and sitting by the river talking.
In the afternoon the rain stopped, so we rented some bicycles and went for a ride through some beautiful mountains and rice fields, looking for a cave and a nice spot on a river to go swimming. We had a great time, and had a refreshing swim before going back before dark, and waiting for Mo to walk to the bike repair place to get a puncture fixed.
The next day it was time to either go tubing or kayaking in the river. Claudia had to go to
Vientiane in the morning, so we went with Mo after he convinced us to go tubing instead of kayaking.... and we had a great time!
We got the tubes (large inflated tire inner tubes) from a place in town, and they take you on a tuk-tuk up river to let you float down. This is after they take all your details and mark you with a number in your hand, in case you never come back!
The catch about floating down the river is that there are loads of bamboo bars built on the sides of the river, with people 'fishing' you out to go drinking in their bar. They also had these huge tarzan type swings where people jump off into the river. The whole thing is quite a lethal combination, a fast strong flowing river, with drunk people jumping off, and some of them probably full of drugs too.
But it was a great party atmosphere, with good music and everyone having fun. We ended up jumping off all those swings and it was such good fun. We stopped in about six bars on the way down, but were taking it easy on the 'buckets' and the beers,
and had some food too. Nevertheless, we were still quite drunk and floating down river in the dark looking for the place to get off and return the tubes.
We made it back thanks to Lorena spotting the 'end of tubing' sign, and the locals even offered us some nice fried meat with a delicious chili soy sauce dip. After having some of it, some German people asked us if we new what we were eating... they told us it was duck, mmm... nice!... 'no, dugh!'...what? duck? quack, quack?...'no, dugh woof, woof!'... so it seemed like we also tried some dog, but I must say it was not bad, and the sauce was delicious. That night we had some food after a shower, and went to bed early. Don't look for any pictures of the tubing because we did not take our cameras.
The next day it was time to go to Vientiane on our way to Bangkok. So we got the 5 hour bus ride which should have taken less than 3 hours really. But at Vientiane the bus dropped us right next to our hotel.
Vientiane Fortunately Adrian and Celine booked a room for us at the hotel
where they were, because it seems like the city was full, and all the cheap hotels were booked up, so we payed a whole $22usd for this very luxurious hotel (compared to what we had been used to), great deal.
After dropping our bags and having a quick shower, we went to meet Adrian and Celine for a few beers, and then we went for some nice food by the Mekong river. We only stayed one night in Vientiane, and the next day we were getting the night sleeper train to Bangkok. In the morning we went around the city tourist streets, and visited two nice temples, before going around the streets looking for some souvenirs and hiding from the sun and the baking temperature in the air conditioned shops and cafes.
We had lunch with Adrian and Celine in a nice Indian restaurant, and at 1pm we got onto a big tuk-tuk to take us across the border to Thailand and to the train station in Nong Khai. Our train was leaving at 6pm and we bumped into a lot of people who had also been tubing in Vang Vieng and shared all the stories.
The train had some
interesting seats that turned into beds, and a man came around at bed time to make your bed. We even had some food ordered to our seats. After a pretty good sleep, we arrived in Bangkok again, where we spent two nights and just relaxed and rested before our flight to Sydney.
This was the end of our Asian section of our trip, and from here on will be visiting countries where language will not be a problem (Australia, USA and Latin America), and everything will probably feel a bit more familiar, so I am sure we will miss some of the hassles and the feeling of being in a strange place. We will definitely miss being in some of these places, and hopefully we will be able to come back to them one day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.028s; cc: 9; qc: 47; dbt: 0.055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
derek
non-member comment
charming words and gorgeous photos.......absolutely envious to bits...... ! danny you ve lost weight ! you re not trying enough local delicacy ???? lorena seem to blend in so well - you were born to do this trip ....^^":