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Day 09 - Friday, Oct 31, 2003
Vang Vieng - Luang Prabang
| Dodo was up by 6:20 and peered at the karsts from the terrace, but the morning light was very hazy so no new perspective was gained. Town very quiet and cool at that hour. She did a little yoga and went back to sleep until 7:30. |
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| 10 AM bus to Luang Prabang. An actual bus this time, not a van. The bus stopped for lunch around 1:30, and we had nice veggies and rice at a Hmong village. A soldier or cop on our bus, with a rifle slung on his back, got off just outside L.P. by a sign with hammer and sickle insignia. |
More Bus to Luang Prabang Pictures
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| Arrived ~3:45, jumbo tuk-tuk to Heritage guesthouse ($10/night). Lovely building, cavernous dark halls with cool stone floors. The hosts are always watching TV in the front room, and we almost never see any other guests. |
| Our hotel is on a quiet side street (except for vigorous drum and chants from the wat next door) but we're just off the main falang strip of pizza joints and tour agencies. Past those (and they're still all rather quaint and sweet; the pizza places also do Lao dishes and you can get Pernod for 19,000 kip or so, vestiges of the French era), the cloth market begins right in front of the royal palace walls and goes on into a pedestrian mall part of the street before the main circle and Phu Si hill. |
| We checked at the travel agency around the corner from our hotel about flights back to Vientiane on Monday and were told there was only one seat available! Our first setback. |
| Went across the street to a French creperie for "Halloween cocktails" (rum + fruit juices, $2, and Beerlao for Dan) (before 5 PM, so no free springrolls) and contemplated the horrors of an all-day or all-night bus journey. Plus possibly rejiggering the Cambodia itinerary, a very complex prospect ... far too much speculation and hypothetical rearrangement over little fruity rum drinks. |
| Then we all walked down the street, through the tourist market. Dan bought a Beerlao t-shirt, and in a moment of weakness, Dodo commissioned two skirts from a sweet girl outside the palace. $13 down and $13 later. She took Dodo's measurements, bagged up the two lengths of cloth, and said same time tomorrow. As soon as we walked on, Dodo had buyer's remorse, imagining she liked every other piece of fabric better... Claire bought a purse and Dodo bought a passport/camera bag (both of which had broken zippers within a week). |
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| We drank Beerlao (at a place with no booze) and Claire led us on the "crap tour" of Luang Prabang - actually she did a brilliant job with scarcely a wrong turn. We walked down dark side streets, paused to watch a fabulous volleyball game with guys kicking the wicker ball over the volleyball net - and she got us right to the dinner place, La Villa Sinxay, where we got a set veg menu for 30,000 kip (drinks extra) and a funny, middle-aged French guy (with his kindergarten-age Lao granddaughter shrieking merrily and running in and out from the kitchen) introduced various traditional Lao dances. There were 3 older male Lao musicians, seated on the floor, with a bowed instrument, a xylophoneish thing, and a drum, and ~6 young Lao women who dressed quickly in many different ethnic costumes and demonstrated simple dances (lots of fancy hand gestures and very little footwork). And an old woman sang a song, and two 5 or 6-year-old girls put on a dance, all very sweet. |
| The dinner seemed to include "kaeng no may," a fresh bamboo shoot soup with greens in a green-tea-like mild broth. |
More Dinner at La Villa Sinxay Pictures
| We walked back, and while Claire, Dan and Dodo had a nightcap around the corner, Ruth walked back to the hotel in the dark, tripped on the ragged street-edge in front of the hotel, and sprained her ankle badly - it swelled up huge. |