Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is situated about 700m above sea level at the confluence of the mighty Mekong river and the Khan river.  We were there right at the end of the rainy season so both rivers were in full flow.  It’s a picturesque village with a large hill called Phu Si being at the heart of the town.  The town is of great religious and historical significance with numerous wats and a royal palace of the former Luang Prabang monarchy.  It became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1995 quickly promoting it to the top of the list of Laos tourist destinations.

Due to the elevation is it was a lot cooler than what we were used to and air con wasn’t required.  We found a nice cheap guesthouse when we arrived and settled in.  It was quite homely apart from the owner of the guesthouse being constantly parked on a sofa outside our room watching any sport that was on TV 24hrs a day.

When we woke up the next day, we decided to opt for the walking tour as suggested by the Lonely Planet.  It conveniently started off at a wat which was just a few yards away from our guesthouse.  The wats in Luang Prabang were plentiful, but not really much to look at.  Some of the Buddha images looked like they could have been done by children.  Maybe that’s a bit harsh, it’s probably pretty hard to build a big statue, but surely they’ve had a lot of practice, there are probably more Buddhas than people in Luang Prabang. 

After wandering round a few Wats and watching the monks go about their duties in the attached monasteries we ended up at the palace museum.  Now this was impressive, externally and internally.  The outside had a grand stepped arched roof with fantastic swirly flourishes, it was very South East Asian.  And on the inside there were crazy glass mosaics of every colour of the rainbow.  There were the typical palatial items, thrones, fancy swords and there were also a fair amount of old standing stones with inscriptions housed in glass.  It wasn’t much of a museum, but it was very attractive to look at, and we spent the best part of an hour walking about and taking photos.

We continued with the walking tour, visiting various Wats, but we were starting to get Wat fatigue.  We were near the end of the tour though and our last stop was Phu Si, with the Wat on the hill.  Phu Si is a dominating feature of Luang Prabang, it’s a large hill right in the centre of town and an excellent landmark if you get lost.  From the top the views are spectacular, the mighty Mekong in full flow meeting the smaller Khan river.  The whole town is visible with an abundance of Wats dotted across the landscape.

The next day we decided to embark on a day trip tour which was split up into two halves.  A cruise down the Mekong with a visit to the Pak Ou caves with Buddhas images of all shapes and sizes followed by a visit to Tak Kuang Si waterfalls.

The cruise was enjoyable, the landscape was beautiful with rolling mountains covered in jungle.  We stopped off at a typical tourist trap selling souvenirs, myself and Nev enjoyed a fair few free rice wine and rice moonshine samples.  We had a bit of a “head on”, as a Dingwallian would say, when we clambered back into our boat. 

Our destination was a disappointment, the Pak Ou caves were small and absolutely rammed with tourists.  There were a lot of Buddhas but as I’d seen so many on my travels so far it would have had to have taken a real biggie or a huge number of them to impress me.  Fortunately our stop there wasn’t too long, due to the nature of these types of tours you’re shuttled off to your next destination with just enough time to take a peak, a few snaps and “tick the box”.

On the way back it took half the time as we were going with the current.  We had a quick lunch, packed our swimming shorts and towel and met up with the minibus that was to take us to the Tak Kuang Si waterfalls.  We knew beforehand that this was a popular tour but we didn’t expect the sheer number of minibuses, there were nearly a hundred of them!  Tak Kuang Si is very picturesque with many tiered waterfalls tumbling over fiercely white limestone into a series of turquoise pools.  But the beauty was somewhat tarnished by the hordes of tourists lining the banks of the falls and swimming in the pools.  We managed to find a quietish spot and went in for a dip. 

 Near my home town of Dingwall we have a couple of waterfalls near us.  When I was young there was nothing I liked more than on a hot summers day to go swimming, scrambling and jumping of the rocks of Oran Falls or Silver Bridge.  I enjoyed these experiences so much it didn’t have to be a hot summer’s day and I would often swim when the weather was grim and the water was freezing, once visiting Oran Falls in November.       

Anyways, swimming in the Tak Kuang Si falls was a glorious experience, we were the only people at are quiet spot at first.  We waded into the icy cold waters, Nev somewhat more cautiously then me, and swam around.  We swam to one of the larger falls, we couldn’t get near due to the big waves being generated by the pounding water.  We lingered near the edge of a pool watching the water fall while the waves tossed us around.  We scrambled over some rocks to make our exit, and found another quaint spot at the end of our main pool.  We found another great spot with cascading water, rocky rapids and a great wee pool which we dubbed the Jacuzzi.  It was the same size and depth as a Jacuzzi and had a constant flow of water hitting the bottom and causing it to bubble and froth.  If it only it was warm water I could have stayed there all day. 

We then moved on from our quiet spot down to the main pool which we passed earlier and noticed that there were far fewer people.  There was a jump that you could do off a tree, there was a rope attached so you could swing off Tarzan style.  It wasn’t Nev’s cup of tea but I had a few goes and it was great fun.  It was also quite amusing watching some other numpties attempting “the Tarzan”.  Two different people, back to back, made exactly the same humiliating and hilarious mistake. I don’t know maybe it’s human instinct if you’re high above water holding onto a rope, you don’t want to let go.  Both guys held onto the rope for dear life and swung over the pool then straight back whacking the tree.  It took about three or four bashings until they realised that they had to release their grip on the rope and drop into the water.  One guy was particularly funny, he made it seem like that he meant to do it by kicking the tree and looking all macho after his second bashing.  As you can imagine there was a fair audience too which added to the humiliation.  While I was watching “Macho man” little did I realise that his girlfriend was right next to me recording the whole thing on her camcorder.  During his attempt, while he was getting closer and closer to hitting the tree he would have had my commentary in is video footage, something along the lines of, “let go, let go, LET GO…   What a f***ing numpty”.

Doing the Tarzan

The next day I left Nev to it and hired a bike and cycled round.  The roads were excellent for cycling, they were like off road biking trails, massive boulders, bumpy as hell, and these were the main road infrastructure of Northern Loas used by cars, buses and trucks every day.  I had a great day out, the scenery was fantastic and I visited another smaller waterfall where I was the only person there.

We’d been under budget in Luang Prabang so far, so on our last night we decided to treat ourselves.  We’d heard of a restaurant across the river and the menu sounded good.  As it was the end of the rainy season they were in the process of constructing a seasonal foot bridge which they dismantle at the end of the dry season when the rains come.  It wasn’t complete though so our mode of transport was by rowing boat.  It was quite a hairy journey, the current of the Mekong at the end of the rainy season is pretty strong I can tell you.  I was the last person in and I didn’t get a seat, so instead I had to squat.  It was difficult to balance and every time I moved ever so slightly to the right or left I rocked the boat.  It was a long pain staking 5 minute journey that seemed to take forever and I was continuously aware that I may be responsible for everybody’s death if I didn’t keep perfectly still.

Nev on the Boat of Death

We made the crossing fortunately, without loss of life and enjoyed a fantastic slap up meal.  We had a great starter platter, followed by traditional Luang Prabang barbeque.  The Barbeque basically consisted of a hole cut out of your table where they place hot charcoal and what’s like an upturned metal bowl over the top.  The upturned metal bowl has a shallow trough in the bottom where they put soup and veg, and all over the metal surface there are lots of slits cut out of it to place meat onto, fondue style.  It was a quality meal for our last night.

We then moved onto our local bar we’d been going to pretty much every night.  It had a pool table and a winner stays on rule, and through this we got to know a few of the locals and westerners who frequented the bar.  As it was our last night in town we decided to have a bit of a sesh.  Luang Prabang has a midnight curfew, although there is one place in town which seems to be exempt, the ten pin bowling alley.  Our new Laotian friend, Phout, who turned out to be the owner of the bar, offered to give us a lift in his car.  He was decidedly worse for wear and it probably wasn’t a wise decision but we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  I’m ok at pool but I am dreadful at bowling and I found out that night, so is Nev.  We got well and truly thrashed and there were girls playing against us, but it wasn’t about the bowling really it was about the experience.  The place was rammed, and everybody was steaming!  At pub kicking out time, everybody comes here, it was hilarious, I’ve never seen so many drunk people bowling in my entire life.  We got a lift home with Phout, had a few more drinks then everything became a bit hazy after that. 

Myself and Nev woke up with horrendous hangovers, packed our bags and made our way to the airport for our flight to Hanoi.  When we arrived at the airport we found out our flight had been delayed by four hours.  We hung around the airport felt very sorry for ourselves, and became increasingly bored as there really is nothing to do in Luang Prabang International Airport.  Eventually we got on the flight and instantly felt a whole lot better.