LUANG PRABANG

7th - 8th August 2015

We took the midday flight from Hanoi to Luang Prabang in Laos. The scenery when we were descending into our 7th country of the trip was green green and more green. The landscape was undulating and lush and we could tell we were going to like it here. This feeling only increased when we drove into the town from the tiny airport and it was worlds apart from busy Hanoi. This was a sleepy town with one main road, dotted with many many Buddhist temples.

We ditched our bags at the nearest backpacker place then headed off in search of lunch with our new friend Julianna who was originally from Brazil but had been living in London for 4 years! There was a street filled with baguette places that all looked like they served exactly the same food, so we picked one at random and ate.

Then it was time to explore the town, so we ambled up the main street, stopping often to wander into shops full of incredible Laos jewellery. The surprisingly lightweight metal necklaces were beautiful, and they had incredible turquoise and silver jewellery on offer too. As well as this there were a lot of beautiful wooden objects on sale. We wanted to buy it all, but instead showed our usual constraint! We popped into a bar for a beer when there was a quick rain shower, but other than that it was a glorious sunny hot day, again in contrast to Hanoi!! The main shopping street does not allow vehicles - including motor bikes, wahoo!

We walked to the end of peninsula and stopped at a posh bar/restaurant perched where a tributary meets the mighty Mekong and had a delicious mojito while the sun went down. The Mekong was a vivid orange/brown colour and the smaller river was much more clear, so where they met was a definitive line. We headed back in the direction of town, spotting a few gorgeous guest houses on the way down flowery crooked side streets - maybe we shouldn't have been so hasty to get rid of our bags!

On the Main Street we found a huge night market had sprung up and was in full swing. Of course, the usual traveller aimed stuff was on offer (beer t-shirts, elephant pants, etc) but there were also some gorgeous handicraft items like hand woven scarfs, jewellery and traditional clothing.

We had some pretty average street food for dinner down a bustling narrow alley way full of food stalls and packed with locals and travellers before heading to a cool bar for a few more beers. There was also the small matter of sorting out transport to Huoy Xai - a small town on the border with Thailand where we were booked to go on The Gibbon Experience. We had read that there was a speed boat that left every morning and bombed it up the Mekong in 6 hours. However everyone we asked said it would only leave if there was 6 people and seeing as were only 2, it would be unlikely to be full and so wouldn't leave. That left the options of getting a night bus the following evening, or taking a 2 day river cruise the next morning, both of which would get us there in time. We opted for the night bus, as it meant we got an extra day to explore Luang Prabang. Plus a day in Huoy Xai as the slow boat wouldn't arrive until the evening. Transport sorted.

We awoke before sunrise to witness the alms giving ceremony. This is a daily occurrence where the monks walk out of the temples in single file past the kneeling women of the town who provide them with food for the day. The women must wear a white scarf over one shoulder and take care not to touch the monks at all. The monks all carry a simple metal bowl in to which the women put their offering.

In recent times it has become a tourist circus, with far too many people not reading up about the customs and appropriate behaviour. There are many posters in the town that explain that you should only make an offering if it means something to you, that you should be appropriately dressed, that you should stand on the other side of the street to observe/take pictures, you shouldn't get too near a monk or stand in their way and you should be seated or kneeling so that you are lower than the monks. We saw many people completely disregarding this advice, and though it made me angry, I thought either they've not read up at all on what this is about - which seems unlikely because there are posters everywhere OR they do know and they have chosen to ignore the advice completely. Either way, it was extremely disrespectful.

Once people had got the photos they wanted, they disappeared off, and we were able to observe a second group of monks coming by, and they were much less disturbed by the Westerners and it was a much more peaceful sight. Once they were ready to go back into the temple grounds, they turned to the women lined up on the floor and chanted a haunting tune and then slowly, quietly and purposefully they strode back in.

In the morning we rented bikes to make sure we squeezed everything in to our one day. It was bloody boiling, but cycling actually gave you a fair amount of breeze if you got up enough speed! We headed to Phu Si, a temple on the hill for excellent panoramic views of the town and the rivers. At the temple there were ladies selling the usual flowers, and offerings, but they also had something for sale we'd not seen before. Tiny birds in tiny bamboo cages, that you take to the top of the hill and release. We wondered if they caught them each morning to be released by worshippers throughout the day! On the way up to the temple was a small wooden temple that had amazing old paintings on the walls.

We managed to visit the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, where I got my much needed pattern cutting/clothing fix, looking at the traditional dress of the Laos tribes people. The clothing was very detailed and all the embroidery and pleating was done by hand.

We went for an expensive lunch at a restaurant called Taramind and had their tasting platter. As we had such a short amount of time in Laos, we wouldn't get to sample much traditional food, so we thought we'd get it all in one hit. It was completely different from anything we've had in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam!! We had aubergine and tomato dip, a spicy jam, sticky rice, chicken cooked on a stick of lemongrass, amazing beef jerky, a vegetable stew that had very unusual flavours, and local sausage. For pudding we had coconut sticky rice with sweets.

In the afternoon we called in at a brilliant photography exhibition inside a temple that focused on monks and meditation. There were some beautiful black and white images of the local monks meditating whilst seated in the forests.

We spent the rest of the afternoon cycling round, and drinking fruit shakes. Finally it was time to wander back to the hotel to pack up before being picked up for the night bus to Huoy Xai. Ohhhh the night bus... I'll let Will have the joy of talking about that in his next post!