Vientiane to Luang Prabang

Oct 23

We were up at 6:30 to grab a quick breakfast, no leisurely coffee run this morning, as we caught a plane early for Luang Prabang. It was a 50 minute flight and we were met by a shuttle service to our guesthouse. Luang Prabang is at the juncture of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, a small town that was the former royal capital of Lane Xang and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are temples, art deco shop houses and colonial facades. We checked into our charming guest house with its six rooms. Ours was huge, with a king size bed and large bathroom. We unpacked and took off to explore our neighborhood. We immediately got disoriented as one of the guesthouse employees gave us the wrong name of the street on which the guesthouse was located. and as a result we had trouble with our map. We bumbled around and asked someone at a tour agency to give us some directions. We quickly realized how small the town center really is and that there were four streets that took us where ever we needed to go.

Our guesthouse is two blocks from the Mekong and about three from the Nam Khan river. We visited a wat with a 5 tiered roof that symbolizes bird wings; then headed up the hill to visit the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center. They had a display of traditional textiles, mostly clothing from the four major ethnic groups in Laos and how the traditions are changing. For instance the women now buy black cloth instead of weaving it or they use plastic beads instead of glass and they use aluminum ornaments instead of silver. The clothing was ornate and exquisite cotton. The colors were bright reds, oranges, pinks and greens often on black backgrounds. Headdresses, turbans and hats decorated heavily with silver or aluminum baubles or stitchery. The gift shop had items made by people from the four groups and half the proceeds is returned to those to made the textiles that are being sold. When we couldn’t find anything we thought would work as a gift,  we made a cash donation to support the important work the center is doing to help people maintain their lifestyle.

We walked back down the hill and ate at a little Lao café where we sat outside. It isn’t quite as hot here as Vientiane. Then we visited the Royal Palace Museum. Unlike its former occupants the palace survived the 1975 revolution and was converted into a museum the following year. During the second Indochina War the Pathet Lao cut short the royal lineage, forcing   King Sisavang Vatthana to abdicate and sent him to a re-education camp in NE Laos where he, his wife and son died from starvation.

The French built the palace for the Lao King Sisavang Vong in

1904 in an attempt to bind him and his family more tightly into the colonial system of government. The palace is Khmer in style although designed by a French architect. The palace was left in tact just as it had been when occupied by the royal family. We toured the palace with the entrance hall which was used for royal religious ceremonies, the King’s reception room and the private apartments with the bedrooms of the king and queen and the children.  Outside the palace on the right of the entrance is a small room that houses the Pra Bang or Golden Buddha from which the city derived its name. The Pra Bang is 90% pure gold. We walked around back of the palace and saw the auto collection of the royal family. My fave was the Edsel! One of the workers there was selling some needlework, and of course we bought one. $2.00

We went back to our guesthouse, showered, napped and read. We walked to a Lao restaurant a couple of blocks from our hotel for dinner and sat outside and had a traditional Lao meal. Then we walked downtown to the night market. OMG it was swarmed. This is tourist town and they were out in droves as were the locals. Ninety percent of what we saw was traditional Lao textiles, absolutely beautiful but I need another textile like a hole in my head…not that would stop me from buying one I couldn’t live without.

Ron and I are reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt so we were eager to get back to our e-readers and our room. This is almost 800 pages that grips you from the first page and gets better and better.

Oct 24

 After a lovely breakfast where I told Ron I thought the owner, Vong, had traveled abroad  given the breakfast we had: baguettes that tasted like Paris, fresh pineapple, real fruit juice, a muffin that was flavorful and moist, eggs to order and surprise, GOOD coffee! It turns out he worked 18 years for a French company that owned a five star restaurant in Luang Prabang. He learned the trade well and we felt like we had a five star guesthouse. 

After breakfast Vong took us to the Kuang Si Falls about 30 km out

of town. What a treat! The countryside around LP is lush with mountains, forests and jungles. We passed many small villages and farms. The falls required a short hike to see them and they were gorgeous, cascading over a series of rocks and pooling into turquoise ponds, one after another downstream. Some people were swimming in the water but we opted out.

We also visited a bear rescue center and got to see a number of bears in large enclosed areas where they could roam, climb and sleep in a protected, covered enclosed area as well. I can’t name the various species we saw but can say they looked very different from our bears. One had a cowl of hair around its neck, one was thin but the information board said it didn’t matter how much it ate this was its normal size. Very unlike our fat round bears.

On the way back we stopped at a Hmong village. There was a sign posted

saying there was a project to help the Hmong to be self supporting. It manifested as a crude sidewalk that ran through the village in a semi circle, starting and ending by the roadside. Along the sidewalk were about 30 little stands, rough tables, staffed mostly by adorable children in traditional costumes. One must have been all of two years old but all seemed to know how to ask in English for the tourists to buy there wares. The poverty was evident. Some actually begged us to buy saying they had no money. Most stands had identical items: small bookmarks, coin purses, and some larger items such a bedcovers, pillow covers or wall hangings. It was heart breaking as it was impossible to buy from each person. We had a similar experience when we visited a village in Zambia, only it was grown men asking us to buy their carvings. We did buy an item and we did go through the entire village but we left feeling badly that we couldn’t do more. We had failed to bring any small denomination bills of kip or baht with us.

Before getting in our truck to go back to town, Vong was across the

road and encouraged us over to see a cotton demonstration. Here there was a live cotton plant, a small wooden device that had a hand crank to remove the seeds from the cotton. It reminded me of a ringer washer. Next the cotton was fluffed then spun and then woven.  A great couple showed us the process and of course we needed to buy something. The woman put a shawl around my neck and it was my colors so we bought it but required change. She brought a cotton shawl over that was manly and we bought it as well so no change was needed. We all went away happy.

We went back to the guesthouse and walked down the street and had another simple rice noodle Lao meal with chicken.

We proceeded to Wat Xieng Thong which is considered the finest example of a Lao monastery with graceful, low sweeping eaves, beautiful mosaics and intricate carvings. It was built in 1559 and is one of the few buildings to have survived the successive Chinese raids that marked the end of the 19 th century. The interiors were a brilliant red and gold. One of the chapels houses a rare 16^th century reclining Buddha in bronze. The exterior mosaics were added in 1957 to honor the 2500^th anniversary of the Buddha’s life, death and enlightenment. They are brightly colored glass in reds, blues and greens. 

The Chapel of the Funeral Chariot housed the grand 12 meter high gilded wooden hearse, with its seven headed serpent, which was built for King Sisavang Vong, father of the last sovereign and used to carry his urn to the stadium next to the temple where he was cremated in 1959. Originally the urns would have held the bodies of the deceased in the fetal position until cremation.

We walked around the point where the two rivers converged and continued walking along the Nam Khan in search of a recommended restaurant. We preferred to find it in the light of day. We found it after about 15 minutes and made a reservation. From here we went to an internet café to catch up on emails. Then we went to a shop that sold baked goods as we would be leaving at 0 stupid 30 in the morning before breakfast and weren’t sure if the small airport would have any food service. Back to our guesthouse to rest and refresh before dinner. It’s a good thing we found this place earlier in the day because I got turned around and we went in the wrong direction at a critical turn. After stopping and asking for directions we got there easily. I am grateful we made reservations as we saw numerous people turned away. We ordered their ‘five bites’ which was a sampler of Lao snacks and it was delicious. I had a great cool drink made from fresh ginger and lemon grass while Ron had a lime drink. We also ordered a barbequed cured pork wrapped in lemon grass which was fantastic. Both came with sticky rice. Neither of us could fit in a dessert. We dined al fresco, my favorite way to eat. It was the perfect meal to end our brief tour of Laos. Neither of us would change anything about our week of travel…well maybe a lower temperature would have been nice but heck it is all part of the adventure. We ended the night with a really bad massage. Unfortunately the place that had been recommended by Vong was fully booked so we just picked a place and the technicians were not trained and the woman who gave me my massage was either pinching me or it felt like she was throwing me around.  When I asked her to lighten up, go easy, be softer she would look at me then go right ahead as before. If I hadn’t had a wonderful $6 massage in Vientiane I wouldn’t complain. It is a tough life Ron and I are living and now you can see just how tough it really is! HA!

Oct 25

We got up at 5:00. I had been awake off and on since 2:30 when a crazy rooster started crowing. He would stop then start up again. By 5:00 the neighborhood of roosters were going at it. We packed, and got dressed and one of the staff made us some coffee. We always tip the people who clean the room but we gave him a tip as well as he certainly didn’t have to make us coffee that time of the morning. Vong dropped us off at the airport and we boarded our plane at 7:15. After everyone was settled we were instructed to get off the plane because they couldn’t land in Bangkok because of thunderstorms. Fortunately about 20 minutes later we re-boarded and took off with no problems arriving in BKK. In BKK, we were once again the first ones in line for passport control. There have been times where we spent 45 minutes going through passport control due to the number of people in line. We were thrilled. After collecting our luggage we went downstairs and bought bus tickets to Hua Hin. We had about an hour’s wait and then boarded a large comfy bus that was mostly full. It took four hours to get to Hua Hin due to really bad traffic in BKK. We had picked up some ‘to go’ Thai food at the airport and it was really bad: processed pork...ick. One step away from Spam. I ate a few bites and gave up.

When we arrived at the Hua Hin bus terminal someone had mistakenly taken our luggage and left theirs. We were in a panic and told the attendant who ran out front to the taxi stand. I ran around the station to see if the person was still there with no luck. The taxi stand person called one of the drivers who had left and sure enough caught him and he returned with our luggage. The customer who was a Canadian got out of the taxi and apologized. He said his luggage had 30 steaks in it. He was so glad to get his luggage as were we to get ours. I preferred my dirty clothes to his 30 steaks any day! We called Avis who sent someone to pick us up. After doing the paperwork we headed to Tesco Lotus to shop for groceries and grab a quick bite (a salad bar at Sizzler no less) before heading to Phetchaburi, about 45 minutes north.

When we arrived home around 8:00 we were thrilled to learn Pa Cha An had returned from the hospital in BKK that day. We were amazed as we thought she would be in the hospital for two months. She must be like Ron’s mom who always healed in record time. The amazing thing is Pa Cha An is 91 years old! Go girl. We briefly visited with her and the family (lots were here this weekend) after we had put away the groceries and unpacked. We discovered that today was Ai’s birthday so we came back to our house and wrapped up the silk shawl I had bought in Laos and took it back up to the house and sang Happy Birthday to her. I went to sleep around 9:30 and Ron joined me shortly thereafter.