Laos: Luang Prabang 1

Luang Prabang is the former capital of Laos and is now a UNESCO World Heritage city.
As Wikitravel puts it

"Set at the confluence of two rivers that almost surround the town, and beneath a temple-topped hill, Luang Prabang is a wonderful patchwork of traditional Lao wooden houses and hints of European architecture; reminders of when Laos was part of the French colony of Indochine. Golden-roofed wats, decorated with mosaics and murals of the life of Buddha, sit under the gaze of wrap-around teak balconies and 19th century shuttered windows. All of this is set against a backdrop of verdant greenery and rugged mountains."  We found it to be all that and more...for us a place to explore and recharge our batteries after all the tensions in Dhaka.  We spent a full week in Luang Prabang, and still had not finished all of our list of sights and to do's.

Seems perfectly sensible to dry your laundry on hangers to us

We visited the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre - which was a small but fascinating museum which displayed textiles and baskets from different tribal areas of Laos

On an unexpectedly cold and rainy day we made our way out to Ock Pop Tok which is among other things a kind of living textile museum.  I am still fascinated by the hand weaving process which although we have seen many times in different countries remains so interesting.

silk worms

cocoons

 

 Threads on bobbins turn into the most beautiful fabrics.

dyeing the yarns using natural colours

a batik which is later dyed indigo

We found Luang Prabang to be exceptionally clean and beautifully decorated.  Once we saw the fireworks we knew something was up!  The city was in the midst of a very important ceremony, and all the VIPS (President, Army chief etc) visited due to the relocation  of the sacred Prabang (http://www.vientianetimes.org.la/sub-new/Previous_294/index.htm)

men and women in traditional dress carrying rice bowls

The royal palace and museum were fully decorated and the site of much activity and photography

Haw Pha Bang (or Palace Chapel)

Luang Prabang's famous night market

We decided to take part in a cookery school for the day - which began with a trip to the market

sticky rice containers

dried fish

it was great to go along with a guide, as he was able to explain what some of the unidentifiable foodstuffs we could see were.

The cooking class itself took place half an hour from the city by tuktuk and was in a beautiful location.  Lon and I both enjoyed cooking using such different ingredients and utensils

spiced minced chicken stuffed into a lemongrass stalk

Our self prepared feast

Another day - another day trip...this time a trip down the Mekong river to see the Pak Ou Caves or Buddha Caves, complete with stop to visit traditional Laos whisky making village.  The river was swollen after a full day of rain

Lao lao (whisky) distillery

Pak Ou caves

thousands of buddhas

Back in town we were drawn into a wat by the sound of drums

Laos: Vang Veng

It turns out 'drop off in Vientiane' means exactly that, so not necessarily near anything useful. We didn't know where we were, we were outside of the map, it was a quiet Sunday and the cash machine there didn't accept our cards. So we headed in the most logical direction. Luckily we were correct and we found Vientiane to be not very big. We found the highstreet, got 1 million out of the cash machine and had a cup of coffee at the nice place in the 'highstreet'.

We were flabbergasted (nice to be able to use this word) that this could be a capital city.
The second day we hired bikes and saw the whole city.

The COPE centre explained the history of what they call the American war. In the sixties Laos was neutral. But because it was next to Vietnam the US was not sure, without declaring war they decided to bomb the whole country. Hunderds of thousands of bombs were thorwn on the country and they still injure many. Playing kids, farmers ...
The COPE centre help clear bombs, make artificial limbs and train people on how to use them.

Laos seem to have a Wat (temple) on every corner, they are all as beautiful as the next, this is just a random one.

So we took the minibus to Vang Vieng. A rather long uneventful trip and we didn't really get the impression that we got to 'see the country'.

Vieng Vang is popular with certain thrill seekers. The main activity seems to be hanging in the pub drinking Lao Lao spirit, Beer Lao or what they call Bucket; a little bucket with a mix of Lao Lao and softdrink, a dangerous mix. Several seem to have the added attraction of a television with continuous episodes of Friends. I think it is very hardcore indeed if you can survive more than one episode at a time. The second activity is tubing down the river. This time of year the river is not very wild, but still this did not attract us.

The warning sign not to go around town half naked was not needed this time of year as it was not warm enough, the weather was very pleasant though.

The first day we crossed the river on one of the small bridges to see the caves in the mountain.

Most bridges over the river look more like this.

We got a nice view of the town from up there.

The Buddha in the cave was a bit 'special' looking.

The town is very small and easy to move around in.

So we hired a moped and drove a bit on the other side of the river. That felt a lot more like the real Laos.

We liked the bins made out of old tires.

Markets are always fascinating, but I didn't ask: 'how much for the boy?'

Lang Vieng is beautifully set in the mountains, but it is difficult to capture the mountains on camera.

Sunsets were beautiful, which shows another activity you could do, balloons. However, this being rather pricy not many people do it.

The national sport seems to be sepak takraw a sort of volleyball played with your feet. The ball is made from rattan.
These boys were playing right outside our hotel.

Money

Wherever we go I (Lon) like to take a sample of the money home, preferably a coin and a note.


These are nice new notes from Bangladesh

But normally they look more like this

Just to compare

Some recent additions:

Bhutan Ngultrum (impossible to pronounce)

Nepal Rupees

Laos Kip; funny name in Dutch, unfortunately it doesn't say it in roman letters on the note.

Malaysia Ringgit: the smaller denominations are plastified and have a see-through 'watermark'; Cool

Some random coins

My bounty over the years. It looks much, but is not worth anything. Most coins have a value of less than one cent, some are literally worthless, like guilder cent or french centimes.

Thailand to Laos

Our end of year holiday began with a late night flight into Thailand - we arrived at 1.20 in the morning, and after clearing luggage and immigration it was the middle of the night - we were very happy to find our hotel transfer driver waiting with my name on a paper!

A good nights sleep in an airport hotel set us up, and we got a taxi to the skytrain to go all the way to the other side of Bangkok to the Hua Lamphong Train station.  We bought tickets and put our bags into left luggage and set off to explore Chinatown.

Hua Lamphong

Somehow we got a bit lost, and managed to find the more industrial side of town - fascinating!

We did find the river, and a temple eventually.

We wanted to visit the Grand Palace, but it was closed for tourists as part of the celebrations for the King's birthday, so instead we went to a big market - veg and flowers. So many orchids and marigolds!

 

 

 

Holland potatoes - from China

 

We stopped for a break and watched several groups of girls and boys practicing their moves - not quite cheer-leading, and not quite dancing.  Intriguing.

With some difficulty we got a taxi back to the train station - we'd walked much further than we'd realised, so the ridiculous amounts the tuk tuk drivers had been asking didn't seem quite as outrageous (but they were still more than the metered taxi we took).

So armed with snacks we got on the night train to Nong Khai

the chairs convert into bottom bunk

breakfast in bed

in the morning

It was a pretty reasonable night - nearly all our fellow 2nd Class A/C passengers were tourists like us, and the staff were very efficient at coming and making up our beds.

Sadly the train from Thailand doesn't go all the way to Vientiane - we arrived in Nong Khang and had to buy a train ticket to Thangaleng in Laos.  We also bought and overpriced shared taxi ticket, since Thangaleng is still 13km from Vientiane and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  This wasn't as complicated as it sounds, as there was a train full of fellow travellers doing the same thing.  We exited Thailand, and got on a small local train which would take us over the Friendship Bridge into Laos

Thangaleng - Vientiene

Friendship bridge

At Thangaleng we joined a queue to get our Visa - $35 per person, plus $1 each as it was Sunday! funny how the extra $2 weren't on the receipt. We had to wait while the visa were processed and were kindly given someone else's passports, so apparently we look very young, as the other travellers were in their 20s still. We got into a shared taxi bus which would take us into Vientiane.

(There are flights from Bangkok to Vientiane, and cheap ones - we just wanted the journey to be part of the adventure)