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Romantic Luang Prabang - a world heritage sight
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Luang Prabang is concidered a world heritage site, because it still retains the French colonial buildings that make the town quite romantic; and it also has many ancient Buddhist Wats (temples). This is quite important, because when the communists took over Laos, they actually made practicing Buddhism illegal! But, now they have loosened the belt quite a bit, and are allowing Buddhism to flourish (so now it seems that 1 out of 3 men are monks!) Culturally, we were told that it is quite respectable for evey man to be a monk for a short time in there lives (just as short as a few months) for it gives great honor to the family.
Luang Prabang itself is quite beautiful, with a heavy French infuence. We noticed that it can be quite expensive if you stumble into certain restaurants and establishments (it caters to wealthy French tourists). You will find many french restaurants and fine foods here (which give it that romantic... and PRICEY feel!)
We were in Luang Prabang for about 5 days. We spent our days walking down river beds, exploring the Wats, eating exotic foods (like Mekong River Weed!), exploring all the water ways that surround the town, reading, relaxing, and journeying to the local waterfall (pictures of that are on the next blog). We also browzed around the Hmong markets (the local hilltribe peoples). But we didnt get anything. Other than opium pipes and snake juice, there just didnt seem to be anything original, worth its cost or even worth carrying around with us. For food, We especially enjoyed Laos BBQ! IT is so fun to eat and very social: you get your own little BBQ for the middle of the table, and then they give you your meats and veggies and onion broth; you then cook the meat on the center, while you make a soup that circles around the center. SO DELICIOUS! We also continued to hang out with Tom and the others that we had met from our slow boat journey. One night, we all found an actual night club! It was a trip, because curfew is midnight but this place stayed open till about 1am. Here, you can hear club music of the 90's and I met some local Laotian girls that taught me how to dance traditional Laos style. It was so fun! YOu can see in the pictures that is was quite hilarious and Mathew and TOm actually had to ride on TOP of the tuk tuk in order for us all to get around. ok - well, that about it for Luang Prabang
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