Sweet city of Luang Prabang
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2009
1
34
53
Trip End
Apr 12, 2009
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Luang Prabang,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, February 26, 2009
It's the only country that still flies the hammer & sickle flag on government buildings. This was quite strange for A2, as she has not seen that flag in action since she was 8 years old in communist Russia
1 - over Laos
. When we landed in Luang Prabang airport, there was some sort of dignitary being escorted to their own private plane. Lots of men in uniform stood in formation at the foot of the airplane and we watched a bunch more get out of an SUV procession and get on the plane. The city is very laid back and there's not much else which hints at the political situation here, but the occasional military guard in uniform in the street. There was a power outage the first night we were here, and boy is it dark here! The lights of the motor vehicles helped guide us to a café, where we waited it out over a beer and candlelight. Most people, including tourists, had flashlights with them; guess this means it's a fairly regular occurrence here.The city is littered with monks, since it has one of the highest concentrations of temples in the country. To practice English, they talk to the tourists, so we had a very nice chat with a young monk. He was from a farming family two hours outside the city; he came to study as a monk and to learn English in order to get a scholarship at the University. He hopes to study computing, in order to one day do troubleshooting for a living. If Bill Gates keeps making software, getting a job for him should be no problem. Good luck to him. We also spoke to a boat operator for a long time, about where he's from and how long it took him to learn English and become a boat operator. He said he misses his simple life in his home village up river. Luang Prabang is a huge and crazy city to him, while for us it's a simple, sweet, slow, town. That's perspective for you. We don't know what he would think of Bangkok should he ever go there, he would probably have a stroke.
The highlights here have been three sunsets at the Mekong River bank - the sun was bright orange (due to burning agriculture and very high humidity) and turned to red before setting
2 - over the city before landing
. So, there are many photos of each nights' blazing sunset. Additionally, this is a street-food extravaganza city - we don't have many photos since it's dark when the vendors are out and it's not polite to take photos of the locals, so we had to do a lot of stealth photography (which is hard to do at night, since the flash is difficult to hide). B2 was more daring about trying all the street food than A2, but once we found the Chinese dumpling parlor, A2 dove right in and ate more than her fair share. We have some pics of the woman frying up our second batch on the spot (that's 24 dumplings in one sitting for those who care about numbers, not our record but a fair attempt).We practiced our haggling skills at the night market and got B2 a ring as a simple replacement for the one stolen in New Zealand. We don't know what metal it's made of, but we hope it will last until the end of the trip. Hopefully our $2.5 USD ring won't flake off its silver before the end of the trip.
We didn't end up going out into the countryside since we were pretty lethargic and just wanted to spend the days doing nothing, after having run around like crazy seeing all those temples in Cambodia. So, this was an excellent stop to make. Since we had pre-booked out flights onwards, we did not have any extra days to explore the area around, which would have been nice. As the tuk tuk drivers will tell you every few feet you walk here, there are "caves" and "waterfalls" to see in the countryside, in addition they make some kind of kissing sucking sound at B2 but we don't want to know what that is.
We are sad to leave this tranquil, sweet city, but glad we stopped by to absorb its lovely peacefulness. It's worth coming back one day, but maybe in cooler weather, after the rainy season and before the agricultural burn blocks all the views.
