Luang Prabang

Our last day at Sae Lao fell on Buddha day, so the volunteers had the day off and we all spent the night in Vang Vieng. It was a great send off and I'm so glad we all hung out together as a group. We also met up with three incoming volunteers; I'm sure we gave them quite the introduction to the Sae Lao experience. That night, I was very grateful for a hot shower after a week of cold bucket showers. At Sae Lao, Amber and I opted to stay in private bungalows instead of the group dorm. We had the advantage of personal space and private bathrooms, but a shortage of hot water and an extremely unfortunate excess of enormous spiders. Sengkeo says they are delicious, but I'm unable to confirm.

The following morning, Amber, Romain, and I stumbled from our guesthouse and found some breakfast while the other volunteers went to tour an organic farm. I was far more concerned about having some eggs in my belly than seeing the chickens they came from. What can I say, it was a slow morning. After slurping down a delicious Lao iced coffee, Amber and I packed our bags, said goodbye to our wonderful friends, and piled into a crowded minibus for the 6.5-hour journey north to Luang Prabang.

We spent four nights in Luang Prabang, but I could have stayed for years. I don't think I'm a city mouse anymore. I loved the quietude of this place, its calmness, the slow pace. I can't vouch for it during tourist season, but our time there was wonderful. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site and I'm still not sure exactly why, other than the fact that this town is positively lovely. Don't skip it if you're traveling in Laos.

We arrived quite late on our first night and stayed at the Saynamkham River View Hotel, which was very lovely but a bit of a splurge at $30/night ($15 each). (Our total budget is $30/day, with $10 for accommodations. But I've been hovering closer to $40/day. Whoops.) In the morning, after eating the quaint but not especially filling breakfast provided by our hotel (crepe with jam, baguette, fruit, coffee - give me an egg!), we ventured out to find a cheaper place to stay. We were seeking a room with a balcony overlooking the Mekong, ideally with A/C, WiFi, and breakfast included. For $20 or less per night. Not too much to ask, right? We took a look at a room in the Alounsavath Guesthouse and were taken aback by how lovely it was. A huge space with comfortable beds, wooden walls, ceilings, and floors, bathroom with a shower curtain (harder to find than you might think). Alas, it was costly at $30/night. So we continued on along the peninsula formed by the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers.

Heading up the peninsula, we noticed that the prices were increasing as we moved north, so we did a 180 and once again found ourselves in front of Alounsavath. We booked a room, settled in, and vowed to stay only one night. We ended up staying at this hotel for three nights, though I managed to negotiate our room down to $22/night without breakfast. Done and done. The staff didn't speak much English for the most part, but this is very common in Laos and they were always willing to help when they could.

There was a nice night market in Luang Prabang, running every evening from about 4pm to 9:30pm. Far more pleasant than the huge, overcrowded markets in Chiang Mai. I bought a cute purple dress and some red wide-leg pants with a beaded waistband for myself (a total of 116,000 kip, about $15) and a few souvenirs for people back home, though mostly I'm waiting to buy things until the end of the trip so I don't have to lug stuff around. I have a feeling that the souvenirs in Cambodia will be very similar to those in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam: lots of elephant motifs, silk scarves, paper lanterns, batik-dyed handbags, embroidered pillow cases, etc.

It didn't take us long to locate the Tamarind Tree, a decent place to eat with the cheapest beer we could find: 8,000 kip ($1) for a large Beer Lao, which is really almost two beers (22 oz.). They also had good Lao black coffee for 3,000 kip. The food was just fine and more importantly, very cheap. Didn't hurt that this restaurant was positioned on the bank of the Mekong. Despite the generally rainy and cloudy weather, Amber and I were able to watch the sunset from this spot on our last night in Luang Prabang.

I had my first professional massage ever: 40,000 kip for one hour ($5), 70,000 with tip ($9). However, it was not especially pleasant and I felt worse after the massage than I did before. My friend Pia described the Lao massage she endured as an unprofessional Thai massage, so I think I'll have to give it another shot in Thailand or Vietnam.

We were thrilled when three of our friends from Sae Lao joined us in Luang Prabang - Jenny, Suraj, and Pia. I woke up early one morning to go for a run around town (my first run in more than two weeks!), then the five of us took a tuk tuk to Kuang Si waterfall. We each paid 40,000 kip for the round trip journey - less than an hour each way - and 20,000 kip for entrance to the falls (about $8 total). It was raining quite hard when we arrived - no surprise there. We ended up trekking up a steep path to the top of the falls; it was quite arduous and I questioned whether my morning run was really necessary. At the top, we swam in a cold, clear pool of water. I was hoping to work on my tan, but no such luck. The journey down was far trickier than the climb up, and I spent a lot of time sliding down on my tush. That's what butts are for. Muddy, but unscathed, we made it to the bottom, hopped in the back of our tuk tuk, and headed back to town for lunch and showers.

Everyone we'd met who'd visited Luang Prabang told us we had to have drinks at Utopia, a much loved watering hole. Jenny, Pia, Amber, and I arrived quite early, before 8pm, and secured excellent seats on floor cushions in the center of the bar, beneath a large TV showing some obscure independent film. It was undoubtedly a nice, comfortable spot, but being "the" place to go in town the prices were jacked up accordingly. Beers were 15,000 kip ($2 - outrageous!) and I had two tasty but expensive cocktails with chili, lime, and tequila (30,000 kip each/$4). They were really quite good, but for the price I think they should have been a tad, well, boozier.

At 11:30, the bar staff actually came around and pulled the floor cushions from under us - closing time. At this point, everyone typically heads to the local bowling alley, which somehow manages to stay open beyond the national midnight curfew. We were more inclined to go to bed.

The next day, Suraj wasn't feeling well (I really hope you're better!!), so we had a girls day out - and it was absolutely lovely. We started out with breakfast at the Tamarind Tree, as usual - onion and tomato omelets, black Lao coffee, fresh fruit shakes - then rented bicycles. I insisted on paying 10,000 kip extra for the luxury of a helmet. Yes, I'm that person. The last time I rode a bike was almost three years ago; I flipped over the handlebars, hit my head on the asphalt, and tore my bicep tendon. I was glad I was wearing a helmet then and wasn't going to go without one this time, even though I looked like a huge nerd. Honey badger don't care. Though the honey badger would laugh at me for being such a sissy.

We biked a few kilometers outside of town to the Ock Pop Tok weaving center. We had a free tour of the site, where local women are employed weaving traditional fabrics. They are paid upon completion of each piece, the amount dependent on the complexity of the finished product. The silk worms are raised in nearby villages, where the cocoons are processed (boiled, then sorted by quality - outer cocoon = lower quality, inner cocoon = higher quality, resulting in finer silk - and spun into long strands) into skeins of raw, yellowish silk. The raw silk is sold to Ock Pop Tok where it is dyed and woven on large looms. We watched some of the women work, making complicated patterns look effortless although it may take weeks or months to complete a single piece. Visitors may participate in workshops in weaving, basket making, and batik dying. Short on time, we stuck to the free tour, which of course ended in the gift shop.

Although the items in the shop were quite expensive, they are unquestionably authentic - not made in China, unlike many of the items typically found in the tourist markets. There were beautiful silk scarves, colorful embroidered skirts, unique purses (I longed for one that would have cost twice my daily budget), stunningly complicated quilts, and jewelry made of fabric beads. I resisted the temptation, although Amber, Jenny, and Pia bought some lovely things. Pia bought two scarves and was actually able to take photos with the women who wove them. One good splurge deserves another, so we sat down at the cafe, eager to try the silkworm poo tea - it's exactly what you think it is. Tragically, they had run out, so we settled for beal fruit tea (delicious!) and shared some interesting and beautifully presented food: chicken fried in lemongrass leaves, salad with goat cheese and pumpkin seeds, and fried river weed accompanied by a spicy buffalo skin sauce. The service was also excellent.

We hopped back on our bikes after I donned my lime green helmet and cycled over to the UXO (unexploded ordnances) Museum. Did you know that Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world? And do you know who dropped those bombs? I'll give you one guess. Yup, good old Amurrica! I'm no history buff, but I like to think of myself as a generally well educated person - and I had absolutely no knowledge of this. It blows my mind that the Lao people have been so friendly to me, and to American visitors to their country in general. Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped two million tons of ordnance on Laos - this is more ordnance (bombs) than was dropped during the entirety of the second World War. Today, about 300 Lao people are killed or injured every year by UXO. And that, my friends, is why Laos is the least developed country in southeast Asia. They can't build infrastructure - or even expand their farmland - because 15 of the 17 provinces are still heavily contaminated by UXO. And, what I noticed as soon as I walked into the building, is that the museum is funded by AusAID, not USAID. That's all I'm going to say on this subject, because I need to spend some more time thinking about it.

The plan was to complete the girls day out with sunset yoga at Utopia. Pia and Jenny made it; Amber and I did not. We opted to turn in our bikes, wander through some shops, and have a beer, or three, at the Tamarind Tree, where we watched the only sunset we saw in Luang Prabang.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast with our much beloved new friends, the two of us boarded a flight to Pakse, the capital of Champasak province in southern Laos and the country's second most populous city. Pia is off to China, then back to Switzerland where she'll start school for hotel management. Jenny is on her way back to Taiwan, then headed to Prague for a semester where she'll study jewelry design. Suraj will soon be on his way to Singapore for a year exchange to study economic history. Good luck to you all! We miss you already!

If you've made it to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. Truly. I know my entries are too long, but I've fallen a bit behind on blogging and I don't want to forget the tiny details, the things that make traveling so special. Also, as I've read and learned from other travel blogs, I want to write in a way that will be useful to other travelers, should they stumble across my blog. I'm working on that too. Any tips, suggestions, or critiques are much appreciated.

Epic last breakfast in Vang Vieng

Stole a flower, wearing my new dress

View of the Mekong from our balcony at Alounsavath Guesthouse