The Plan B Adventure

Wow….what a city. We love Luang Prabang. Smiling locals, great colonial architecture, beautiful Mekong sunsets, an unexpectedly quiet atmosphere, and, of course, better than expected food.

We are finally getting the hang of it….constantly-changing travel, that is!!! As we arrived in L.P., per our last email we wandered up to the town from the slow boat drop-off and knew we’d love this place. We found our guesthouse in record time and, even, already had a reservation. Now we aren’t bragging, it’s just that we are proud of our learning curve!!
We knew that after a two-day boat ride some spoils were in order. First on the agenda was making up for a boring Valentine’s Day. That meant splurging on our most expensive dinner yet, $70!!! Yikes. We split a great bottle of French wine and Jeff had to treat himself (He’s not gettin’ any skinnier, folks!!!) to a seven-course set menu at Villa Santi. We had a great time making up for Valo Day with the restaurant all to ourselves, a balcony table overlooking the main street, and a local Lao acoustical music group to play for us. Although we were accompanied by 30 of our closest “Gecko” friends overhead, the night was enjoyable and we have to recommend Villa Santi (thanks Russ!!) for any future visits to Luang Prabang. The next two days were filled with bike-riding on Beach Cruisers, exploring the city and local temples, as well as a full pamper, spa day for Becca and a day at the beach with the locals for Jeff. The city itself has quite a rich history and some amazing sites, including The Royal Palace, local night market, and a mountain-top temple with amazing Mekong-sunset views.

A few things we have to mention….One, how cute the monks are. In Lao, especially Luang Prabang, the number of monks is astounding and they all seem to travel together while sharing an umbrella-shade for the group. It’s quite funny. Two….we have noticed in Laos is the prevalence of primary schools. We have had a blast sitting by as the kids played “one-foot tag”, walked home hand-in-hand, or just hung around the schoolyard after class. After talking with a few locals the primary kids go to state-sponsored school while if you want to continue onto secondary that’s when the parents have to start paying. We were quite shocked that the nationalist Lao government supports no foreign language classes and English classes cost upwards of $20-40 a month per child. Can you imagine paying that when you only make $50-100 per month? And we thought our college tuition was a drag? UGHH!!! Luckily (as we ran into later), there are many of the middle and upper class kids learning English and, hopefully, this will eventually trickle down to the kids that can’t afford such education. We anticipate our own adventure and education will inspire us in the future to contribute something as small as language-learning materials for this country that strives to pull itself out of the “Least Developed Country” category by 2020.

Ok..back to our adventures. We decided on our last day in L.P. to venture away from the city to the waterfalls of Kuang Si. Great Choice!!! After a bumpy 45 minute mini-bus (Jeff got shotgun the whole way!!!!) we arrived at the falls and knew we were in for a good time. It is a bit touristy but well worth it!!! The hike to the falls is fairly short but, of course, Jeff needed a little extra calorie burn (to work off the seven courses) and put in another 30 minutes to the tippy-top. So peaceful and quiet watching the falls drop hundreds of feet below to where Becca was relaxing. After a sweaty hike, Jeff had to hop in and cool off under the falls although the Princess thought getting completely wet was too much so she just took a wade!! Well, it was still a great time and the journey in the minibus and seeing the outerlying areas of Luang Prabang was quite an experience in itself.

Our last night in Luang Prabang sealed the deal on a great experience. As we were securing our ticket to head to Phonsavan, the next day, we ran into Jeanette and Allyson (our friends from Chiang Dao)!!! They were just arriving from Northern Laos and we spent all night trading funny stories and enjoying a fabulously, unique Laotian BBQ dinner. Eat your heart out Russ!!! This was one for the ages.

Well…..off to Phonsavan, a small city on the Lao-Vietnamese border to take in a little sightseeing and small-town culture. We regret the blogs are getting shorter but the internet access is getting more expensive and a lot slower…HAHA!!

Alright….so we arrived after quite a first day’s journey in he midpoint city of Pakbeng, Laos. This is the city where we had arranged our lodging with the guy sitting at the desk and we were happy as others with us hadn’t done so. What an entrance!! This town is sustained completely from being the midpoint city on this tourist route. We arrived a good 300 feet below the city and put on our packs and trekked with the others straight up a sand-covered hill. Pakbeng consists of one road, much like Chiang Khong yet the road is 1/8th the size. After getting bombarded by touts (albeit in SE Asia they are very nice) and offers for opium and marijuana we made it to our guesthouse. Ahh….our previously-booked, Lonely Planet-recommended, simple, yet romantic Valentine’s Day getaway……(record scratching) err….wait! Expectations again misguided. The owners were extremely nice and insisted this was “the nicest room in town” (for $5), we appreciate landlords with a sense of humor. Hey….well at least they threw in a few amenties (bug net, and loofah)!!

What can we say at this point the laughing took over and we headed out for some Indian food….we know Indian food in Lao?? Well, it was fabulous. If you ever get the chance to stop over in Pakbeng for the night (let the laughing begin) please take our recommendation and visit Hilur (from Madras) at the best Indian restaurant in town, Salam. Becca headed to bed early (she’s the smart one) and Jeff sat around with Hilur and Andrew, an English travelling companion and closed down the evening with quite a few Beer Lao. UH-OH…..
Woke up in the mornin’ completely rested and extremely ready to experience the 2nd half of our adventure…..or at least Becca did. Jeff proceeded to incur his first Beer Lao hangover which caused him to incur his first head-injury after WHACKING his head on the 5 foot, cement doorframe. UGHHHH!!! Not the way you wanna be feeling when you get on a boat. Well at least today we were going to try the benches instead of the back. It was actually a welcomed change. The scenery was better, the smoking lesser, and we actually got our own seats opposed to being in the back when the locals brought on the dead animals they were going to cook for lunch. The ride felt just as long but good conversations, quite a bit of reading, and all-around better scenery made for what felt like a shorter trip. If only we had those seat cushions.

The entrance into the Luang Prabang area was fantastic. Temples built into riverside caves, breathtaking limestone mountain ranges, and finally, LAND! Yippee! We couldn’t be happier to have arrived in the old, provincial Lao capital at sunset.