Laos - Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang, Laos

Wednesday 1^st - Wednesday 8^th February, 2012

A small Laos Airlines turbo jet took one hour from Chiang Mai and we sweep down out  of the clouds and see jungle-clad peaks, like the opening scene from an episode of MASH, in fact, John was cheerfully whistling “Suicide is Painless” as we walked the tarmac from the plane.

The Peoples Democratic Republic has a slightly arcane and confusing visa process – just remember to always carry some US dollars in varying denominations and spare passport photos.

"Mekong . . . "

We get in a taxi and reach town and, as we turn a corner, there is the mighty river – we are both speechless – just turn and look at each other wide-eyed and mouth “The Mekong”. To see this majestic water as it curves round the promontory that Luang Prabang sits on is a wonderful sight to behold. It's huge, with steep steps leading down to it at intervals all round the town. There is one road that leads down to the ferry that constantly transports people, goods and vehicles across to the other side. 

 

In the daytime small fishing boats dart back and forth, holding just one or maybe a few people and fishing trap baskets. Flat bottomed pleasure boats take tourists up to distant villages or over to the temples on the other side. In the early morning the large slow boats arrive from Chiang Mai – 3 days on the deck if it's a normal boat (with very dodgy plumbing we were told) or boats with luxury cabins if you are very rich.

This is just the most gorgeous place with very beautiful and very tiny Lao people, who are most welcoming and helpful. The river is a scene to sit and look at endlessly as it is so imposing and beautiful, a constantly changing hive of activity.

Our day starts with breakfast provided by our guest house, the Sala Prabang. Their restaurant is on the river side and we sit feeling almost slightly chilly in the early morning watching the river life and enjoying the creep of the sun warming our backs as we eat. We help ourselves to fruit – papaya, watermelon, apple, pineapple, banana. Then there is always a hot Laotian choice of either rice or noodles with chicken, tofu or vegetables. There is an egg station and they will cook them how you like or make an omelette with peppers, onions, tomato and chilli if you like it hot. There is very good bread here, which is the French colonial influence and, although the tea and coffee at breakfast is pretty bland, you can go to any number of chic cafés and drink the most delicious locally grown coffee and tea, along with delectable pastries, croissant and breads of the highest order.

Blue Lagoon "You're paying"

Authentic French food is available in any number of restaurants and one evening we went to one called The Blue Lagoon and ate steak and drank a bottle of excellent French wine. It was delicious, but after eating mostly vegetarian, or just a occasionally a little bit of chicken, for months, it weighed heavy on us and we had to retire to bed exhausted and feeling far too full!

Luang Prabang Rush Hour

Now, let's talk about shopping. If we had been born to buy then this is definitely a place where an awful lot of money could be spent on the exquisite silk produced here. Plus, all the up market clothes shops, the handbags, the craft work in baskets, woven cloth, silver jewellery. Then there is a walking night market every day that stretches on forever and sells lots of lovely bags, sarongs, woven cotton cloth, wooden carvings, herbs, snakes in bottles of medicine, coffee, and all the usual tourist stuff and even that is really well made. You eventually have to go and have a drink somewhere because your head is spinning with the amount of it. All the stalls are run by the women here, who are very independent and full of get up and go and like to get a good deal out of you.

Elizabeth, Ikon Bar

The best cocktails in town – in our opinion – were served at the Ikon Bar, just off the main street, heading towards the Nam Khan river on the other side of the town. The owner is a charismatic and enchanting Hungarian named Elizabeth. She is also an artist and the bar is decorated with all sorts of interesting pieces of art and literature. The classics are all available but you had to try some of her inventions and those of her clientèle. There's a shot called Raspberry Surprise: 2 parts Vodka, 1 part Raspberry Liqueur and 1 shot of Tabasco. Sounds weird but you knock it back and it is absolutely delicious. Two should really be the limit but one night someone was ringing the bell to buy them for everyone and they were too good to turn down. 

 

"You ask Joyce & Vicky"

Ah, yes, the reason they were ringing that bell was John had picked up the excellent guitar that Elizabeth keeps in the bar for anyone to play and it all got loud and 'singy' very quickly. Then he played Ian Dury's 'Billericcay Dickie' for a bloke from there and that was it – Raspberry Surprises for the whole bar. Unfortunately, this all happened before we got to dinner, so it was a bit of a stagger to the restaurant – but it was very good fun indeed! We seemed to drift into that bar just after sunset quite often in our 8 days in Luang Prabang.

French colonial architecture abounds here and it is very attractive and has been, and continues to be, lovingly restored. The hand of UNESCO and the French government can be see everywhere and It is a pleasure to just walk around and enjoy it.

Having described all of the above, there is something that makes this town stand apart from any other place we have visited and that is the spiritual nature of the people and the many monasteries and wats that are here. This is not a historic cathedral town with a museum and dusty old vergers showing you round. It is a living and breathing Buddhist life.

Tree of Life

At dawn you will see streams of monks and novices ,clad in orange or brown, in long lines, appearing on the streets carrying their begging bowls. They walk a set circuit gathering alms as they go. The women of the town sit on the pavement and the men stand waiting with their offerings to put into the bowls. This is done in silence and reverently. As tourists we are asked not to be obtrusive or get close and take photographs, so we didn't go to the biggest monastery and stand and gawp. We found a seat in the shadows near a small monastery and watched discreetly as the monks filed by collecting from a small group of women seated outside their houses. They gave food, toiletries and money as far as we could see. It was fascinating and we felt privileged to see this ritual.

Drum n Cymbal

Throughout the day there are ceremonies going on at all the wats and you can see and hear the prayers and chanting everywhere in town. They all have a huge drum hanging in a small shelter in the corner of the monastery garden. It looks like a large Jembai but is suspended longways and a young monk beats out a rhythm with a huge mallet for about half an hour in the morning and evening and the sounds fill the town, along with the clashing of cymbals. It was full moon whilst we were there and then were are even more ceremonies all the night as well as the day.

All the monasteries are beautiful, but one is especially so and has a huge tree of life decorating the rear wall and a large sweep of steps lead down from it to the river with anatomically correct male stone tigers sitting at the gate posts. We can't begin to understand the rich history of ritual and prayer, the continuous flow of daily life and how it is imbued with spirituality for the people here and how it sits with a communist government. However, it all seems to work.

Laos has more unexploded ordinance, lying across huge swathes of the north and along the border with Vietnam, in this small country than anywhere else in the world. America carpeted it with mines in the 1960s and 1970s and it is very dangerous to go off the roads or well known paths. Many people lose life and limb regularly here through stepping on them in rural areas. There is an ancient place called 'The Plain Of Jars', full of huge mysterious stone jars that would be interesting to visit but most of it is off limits because of the mines, so we gave it a miss.

We did go out into the country for a trip to a beautiful waterfall. We got in a 'jumbo', a sort of tiny truck with a strip of bench seats facing each other behind the cab. We shared with another English couple, a young lone, very red-faced and dazed looking Russian man, called Uri, who was enjoying himself but struggling with his English, and a Dutch couple.

"I went to the fridge . . ."

There was a large enclosure with sun bears, black with a white V on their chest. They are endangered and this sanctuary is important. They were the happiest looking bunch and were clearly relaxed and in good health. The older ones mostly lazed around in their hammocks or on platforms. The younger bears played rough and tumble, as if it had been put on for our amusement. It was the closest we could get to seeing them in their natural environment in this jungle setting.

We visited the old royal palace. It is turn of the century French style and holds some furniture and clothing from the 1930s and some nice wallpaper and some rather grand gold thrones and ceremonial swords. Much more interesting was a small and beautifully curated ethnic museum. It had authentic costumes and descriptions of the many and varied tribal people of Laos. It was wonderful. There was also a great café where we had a delicious Laotian meal after all our hard work looking at the exhibits!

Stupefied at Utopia

One afternoon we went and got stupefied, lazing at the Utopia bar. It's very cool and trendy with a volley-ball court in the centre, surrounded by cushioned sitting and lying down areas to gaze out on the river, with cold drinks, watching it all slide by.

"Jimi who?"

We ate dinner there and headed back to our side of town and ran into some young Laotians on the river side playing guitars and singing and they invited us to join them. John played them some songs and he asked them if they liked Jimi Hendrix and they had never heard of him – John utterly amazed! We sat drinking beer and had great fun with them. Suddenly it was midnight and that is curfew time here – you have to be off the street by then, so it was time for bed.

Emmy

Happened into a Fair Trade shop, selling lovely fabrics and art, where we met the Australian owner called Emmy. She's a real get up and go person and we got chatting. Emmy has a small cruiser called the Banana Boat, because it's painted yellow and is the only one like it on the river. We said we'd like a trip on it that afternoon but she said she couldn't do it as she was taking her Lao girlfriends out for a treat on a sunset cruise. 

 

The Banana Boat

Celia piped up and said John could play guitar and sing for them. She readily agreed and said she would get a guitar, so we found ourselves with Emmy, her girlfriends and children, a load of delicious food, wine and beer at 4 pm on this most scenic of rivers. The boat is 20 foot long and 5 foot wide. We sang all the way there and back and made firm friends with the pilot, Son Boon – it was fantastic.

"Day Oh"

Emmy enjoyed it so much she invited John and I to do it all again for another group of her friends a couple of days later. We left earlier and went further and there were a bunch of ex-pats as well this time, so lots of singing. 

As we made our way back up river to town, we had the gift of an impossibly huge fiery red moon rising above the hill and temple that dominate the town. John thought it was a fiirework that had got stuck in the sky - quite incredible and we were told that this was not a common occurrence. We made it back to shore just before dark and that's when you have to be off the river as no one has any lights and it's a fast flowing river with different currents and whirlpools, plus the rocks because it's the dry season.

We took a trip on the Banana Boat a third time – just the two of us. We set off early morning across to the far bank and climbed up to see two very ancient temples and rambled around and enjoyed the view from the other side, of Luang Prabang with the morning sun glinting off the gold roofs of the wats and the huge rain trees shading the banks. 

 We were the only people there apart from a Canadian couple from Vancouver Island and we chatted quietly relaxing in the sun. We got back in the boat at a different point further along the bank and as it is the dry season, had to walk across a very rickety bamboo bridge to get out to where it was moored – Celia nearly had kittens.

We moved on up to a village that specialises in silk weaving and were overwhelmed with the choice of fabric, colour, weave and pattern. They were small designer owned and run places with looms in the yard and display galleries. It was hard to choose what to buy but we managed – mostly dictated by our small budget! They also weave cotton and produce beautiful hand-made paper. Then it was back on board for a gentle cruise back. A perfect morning.

For about 3 days running, everywhere we went, we kept seeing this young French guy, and Celia accused him of stalking us and we got talking. He was from Avignon and was on a long trip like us. His name was Ruben – more of him in a later blog.

Nam Khan River

Got up very early one morning and climbed the hill in the centre of town to the small wat at the top, where there is also a very old anti-aircraft gun. Lots of people climbing up to make offerings, as it is a very holy place, and to enjoy the magnificent view of the town and surrounding area.

We had met a Chilean couple, Nisa and Maurice on the plane and arranged to meet them for drinks at the Ikon bar one evening and that also turned into a music session with a charming man called Curtis from New Orleans and Constantine, an American Greek amongst a whole bunch of people.

We went to see the Royal Ballet in the Peoples Hall, a stark and functional 1960s building in the ground of the royal palace. It was the only time you felt as if you were in a communist state because of the bureaucratic ticketing and the institutional and run down feeling of the place and it lived up to the alternative title of Peoples Democratic Republic of Lao as Please Don't Rush. They danced a series of scenes from the Ramayana in the classical style with slow gestures of the hand and head and a dipping motion of the body, accompanied by a live orchestra – quite lovely.

So, Luang Prabang was a delight from start to finish, a visual, sensory, spiritual, culinary, artistic and enchanting time. Just walking around for hours was fascinating.

Even when we left we took a little bit with us, as Elizabeth from the Ikon Bar was on the same flight as us going to Siem Reap in Cambodia to see the temples of Angkor Wat, but that story will be in the next blog.