Enchanting Luang Prabang, Laos

After a wonderful two day boat trip down the Mekong River originating in Thailand, we arrive in beautiful Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This enchanting area in north central Laos will be our home for the next week.

We caught the minibus taxi with our new found friends from the boat. First stop, our hotel. The driver said “this is your hotel”. The hotel he pointed to was under construction. Cute but not nearly finished! It looked like it had been gutted for rehab. We thought to ourselves “surely it is just around the corner”.

There is not much English spoken here, as we went to the next guest house and the gentleman pointed and said “closest”. He meant closed! So much for Orbitz taking our money and not notifying us of the hotel closure for renovation. Anyway our first bad experience in a year of travel.

We walked to the “Golden Lotus Hotel” where some of our new friends are staying. No rooms there but the owner, Bill Nguyen, served us some great ice cold lemonade and then walked us over to a sister hotel. Room there!

We have used Orbitz to book travel over the past year from time to time and have had OK experiences. We have often times found their deals they arrange are lower in price. This time, however, Orbitz could not understand that the hotel was closed. They kept insisting that “we” wanted to cancel and they wanted to charge us a cancellation fee. Then they insisted on talking to the hotel, before refunding us. Yes, the hotel that was closed and had no staff to talk too, lol. Anyway we were finally refunded after a very long call and will avoid Orbitz in the future.

All is good. We are very close to the night markets and enjoyed walking and eating at them. They are a bit quieter and seem a bit more organized than what we experienced in Thailand.

We ate grilled chicken breast on a stick, vegetable dumplings, coconut pancakes and stir fry. All delicious! We retired to the room early looking forward to the week and ahead exploring the area.

We woke around 7:00 for our first full day in Luang Prabang. We dropped our laundry off to be done for $3 by the end of the day and had a great breakfast at our hotel. Our hotel host, Loan, sat with us for a bit and provided us directions, a list of things to do and places to eat while in town. I am glad we have seven days here!

After breakfast we sat with our beautiful Aussie mates who are at the same hotel. Surprise, surprise, it’s a small world! We solved all the world’s problems at breakfast. Well, at least talked about all of them.

As I mentioned, Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site. This town is beautiful, its architecture and it’s people. We hit the streets at ten am and walked all the way down Sisavangvong Street. This is the wonderful long main street where the night markets are located. As you continue to walk the street, it becomes lined with beautiful French inspired buildings. They remind us a bit of New Orleans, without the loud drunks.

There are plenty of restaurants, mostly Laos food, of course, but some with western style food on the menus. We stopped in for lunch at the Nam Khong Cafe which was on he river and very good.

We had street food for dinner as we sat around a table with other eaters. We watched our noodles with vegetables and chicken being prepared, khao piak sen, kow beeak sen, noodles similar to the texture of udon.

Afterwards we stopped at Tangor for a drink. Tangor is in an absolutely gorgeous building. Looking out into the street lights and street scene is an absolute magical picture! A definite spot for relaxing and taking in the surroundings.

The next day, Monday, we rented a scooter and drove 30 km to Kuang Si waterfalls. These were impressive. We saw so many waterfalls in New Zealand and Australia we were thinking “just another waterfall”. But are we glad we went! Very beautiful, very impressive.

There are many cascading falls, aqua marine colored pools and a series of very large long falls at the top! We had a nice lunch overlooking one section of the falls.

The Asiatic Bear Rescue Center is at the same park as the Kuang Si falls. They have a coupe dozen rescued animals here, mostly the Black Bear. We caught a glimpse of a few of them hanging out.

The drive to the falls were an adventure, as well! Mostly a pretty decent road but there are patches of potholes, some of them deep. We passed over several old single lane wooden bridges and by several rice paddies with workers in the fields. We passed a few water buffalo along the way, making sure to steer clear, no pun intended.

Back at the hotel there were plumbing issues, so we were actually moved to a nicer room with a balcony over looking the street. Once settled in we spent a couple hours with our Aussie mates sharing travel ideas and getting some great tips and itineraries to future destinations on our travel list. We saw our friends off as they were catching a ten hour “sleeper”‘bus to Vientiane. We learned later from them the “sleeper” part did not work very well, lol.

After having a week of Laos and other Asian food we opted for pizza and garlic bread. We picked The Pizza Restaurant. How could you wrong with a name like that? It seems every time we order Western food we are disappointed, but it was still a good change of pace.

The next day, Tuesday, we changed hotels as expected in our revised plans. We moved over to the Golden Lotus. We promised to stay here when the young man, Bill, that manages it helped us find a place to stay after we discovered our booked hotel was under construction. He also moved our bags for us and much more. He has the hospitality part of the business figured out.

Our new hotel is located on the small street that hosts the daily morning markets for locals. This market is nearly all food where locals shop. There are stalls and vendors selling everything from live frogs, fish, snake, to meat and vegetables. We could hear them from our room setting their markets up around 5 a.m.

Most of the vendors seem to be ladies. They are certainly hard working individuals conducting their business everyday in these street markets.

We spent a nice relaxing casual day, visiting a temple and school for the monks, a nice lunch at a French bakery, and conversation with our new found Dutch friends. They are 70 years old and have been most everywhere! They have done many active vacations, e.g. Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and hiking in Nepal.

We enjoyed a terrific dinner at Cafe Toui. I loved the Pet Pad Prik Kee Nuu, or stir fried duck in coconut, chili, basil. Tracey enjoyed her Kua Gai Sai Het, or chicken mushroom basil. We sat at a table with Julian, a Frenchman who worked for a Swiss pharmacy company. Great conversation and perspectives. Meeting good people is what it’s about! We actually ate here a second time because it was so delicious, Saep lai lai!

We stopped for a night cap at Chez Matt, a good place for cocktails. It was a great way to top off a beautiful day in Laos on a beautiful evening.

We did make it up before sunrise one morning, around 5:30 a.m. to see the highly revered Buddhist Alms giving ceremony. About 200 Buddhist monks flow through the city at sunrise to collect there meals for the day from locals. Visitors also participate. Common gifts are rice, fruit and traditional sweet snacks. Givers kneel down as the monks pass and receive the gifts.

Temples and Royal Palace

There are many Buddhist temples in Luang Prabang. We made a visit to a couple, including the Royal Palace Museum. The Royal Palace was built in 1904 for King Sisavang Vong. It sits on the river and was placed there so official visitors could easily disembark and be received there. The palace was occupied as late 1975 by the Crown Prince Savang Vatthana. He was overthrown, then, by the communists and the palace was eventually converted into a national museum.

Old cars that were once the Royal family’s are still on the property and were interesting to see. These cars were gifts from other countries, including the US.

The Haw Pha Bang or Royal Temple sits on these grounds. It was built to hold the Haw Pha Bang Buddha image. It is a spectacular temple that is a focal point from the main street in Luang Prabang.

We visited one of the larger Buddhists temples Wat Xiang Thong. The temple was built in the 1500’s and is where the Mekong river joins the Nam Khan river. Because of the location, it was once the ceremonial gateway to the town. The buildings here are beautiful with many detailed elememts, facades, roofs. There is a “tree of life” motif here as well.

On the grounds of this temple, as well, we visited with a mynah bird, who belongs to the monks. It took the mynah bird just over a minute to perfectly mimic my whistle. The birds whistle sounded much better than my poor whistling!

We visited the Wat Visoun near the Old Bridge in Luang Prabang. It is the oldest temple in Luang Prabang. It was once once home to the revered Pha Bang Buddha from 1507 to 1715 that is now housed at the Royal Museum. The temple is undergoing rennovation supportd by international funding, including from the United States.

The Old bridge over the Nam Khan River is interesting, an old busy, two-laner for motor bikes that has walkways on each side. It was built over 100 years ago under French rule. It has beautiful views over the river and mountains. The walk back to the town center along the Nam Khan River is a nice walk with a few cafes and small hotels along the way.

There are other temples worthy of visits to see their beauty and the lives of the monks and novices. They are scattered throughout the town and are numerous!

Other Highlights

The climb to the top of Mount Phousi to watch the sunset is worth it, absolutely beautiful. It is a bit of a climb and crowded, but has a wonderful view of the city on one side and the sun setting over the mountains and Mekong River.

We also enjoyed an outstanding Laos dinner at Tamarind on the river. The sampling plate was excellent with several tasting dips served with sticky rice (Khao Niaw, a Laos favorite) and Mekong River weed. Yes, lucky for us the river weed is in season! It tastes a bit like nori. We enjoyed the BBQ pork, lemongrass chicken, and a steamed pumpkin and coconut custard dessert.

An absolute highlight of our visit was being able to spend two evenings with locals working to improve their English, at Big Brother Mouse. Those attending are so driven to learn English and be successful. They are warm, energetic, ambitious, hard working and hopeful individuals. We made some great Laos friends here.