Luang Prabang: Laos is rad
Pai -> Chiang Mai -> Chiang Rai -> Houayxai -> Pakbeng -> Louang Prabang.
This was my route over the past week or so. And now I’m in Laos — pronounced Lao, yo. Silent “s”.
Laos is rad. It’s clearly much poorer than Thailand, but it seems more laidback and friendly. There are still a bunch of travellers all following along the tourist trail, so it doesn’t really feel like I’m off in the hinterland or anything. At all. And Louang Prabang is both a very touristed town and an authentic town, as it is being preserved by the UN as a World Heritage site. Which makes it both comfortable and interesting.
For instance, you see groups of monks walking down the street together — there are over 30 temples and more than 300 monks, in this town of about 4 km square. Groups of monks in internet cafes. You see fishermen on the Mekong. Hilltribe villagers selling their wares. And you see 5-star hotels. And the JoMa Bakery, which has lattes and bagels (and is awesome). And the Apsara, widely considered one of the finest restaurants in Laos, where I ate Mekong riverfish and drank Chilean wine — and the meal cost me a “staggering” $20, or, a great deal for a meal of comparable yumminess and swankiness back home.
I really like Louang Prabang. The slowboat ride down the Mekong to get here was really grand — a two-day, overnight journey. The seats weren’t exactly comfortable, and you are glad to arrive, at last — but it’s a nice, serene way to travel. And you meet other backpackers doing the same. And the scenery is scenic, with water buffalo and birds and boats all along the way.
I’ve been here four days, which is enough to see the temples you should see, and to take a day-trip to the gigantic, fantastic waterfall at Kuang Si, and to hang out in the cafes and go to Le Cinema, a DVD-rental place, where you select a movie from a wide selection (like at a video store), only they hook you up with a comfy, multi-pillowed room to watch the film in. You can order beers and food and enjoy your film in style. It’s great. (We watched The Sting. A classic.)
The “we” here being a group of friends I’ve fallen in with. They are four girls, which is quite funny at times, but it’s cool (and it’s all plantonic, gossip-hounds) — we’re just all ‘ackpacking along in the same way… and there are a bunch of others who’re also on the same route, who wander in and out of these different activities, too. We’ve had groups of eight or ten around a cafe table, for instance. There’s Jenna the Brit, who’s my roommate, on her way to Australia to be an event planner, and then the three Irish girls (Corona, Andrea, Carol), who’re all on their way to Australia to be doctors. Also met a couple cool British fellas, a Kiwi (who is always carrying a beer) and a ridiculously cute couple who just got together, with the guy being American and the girl being Bermudian. Cool peeps, all around.
So yeah. But let me rewind to the giant waterfall real quick: it’s 30km outside town, an hour by tuk-tuk. And halfway there, it starts pouring down rain. And here we are, hoping for a hot, sunny day to have a nice swim — and this is not one of those passing showers. Nope. It rains the whole way there, and when we get to the entrance, what are we, suckers who are going to turn back now? Shit no! A twenty-minute hike up the hill later, we are soaked. But what are we, suckers who aren’t going to swim, having come this far already? Fuck no! Hence, swimming in the rain, just swimming in the rain, what a glorious feeling… Uhh, yeah. It was really nice, in fact. The ride back to town, though, yeah… that was cold and wet. (TANBE!)
Also went out to a club that tripped me out. (And I don’t even like clubs!) But a group of us was all hanging around a cafe after-dinner and someone was saying we should go to the one big nightclub in town — called, I thought, Darfur. That’s what they kept saying anyway. “Yeah, let’s go to Darfur. It’s superfun. Etc. Etc.” But I was like, “Who wants to go to Darfur? That does not sound superfun.”
“No no no, that’s the name of this club, man. Darfur.”
“Ohhhhh… riiiight. Well, in that case — what kind of fucking name for a club is that? Who wants to go to a club called Darfur, anyway?”
But we went. And it’s not called Darfur — it’s called Dao Fuah. ‘Cause, you know, cross-lingua pronunciation can get a little screwy sometimes. And it was superfun! Way more fun than any of those hoe-filled clubs in Thailand. And almost everyone in the place was Lao, and drunk, and HAVING A BLAST. Just so happy.
And get this: the club closed down, the lights came on, people filed out — and our group sort of dawdled, and we sat in our booth for a short while. After a couple minutes, the people who’d stayed late were given free soup! Let me repeat: a big, rowdy dance club emptied of its customers (quite quickly, mind you), and those of us still there were given free soup. Free. Soup.
Laos is rad.
Tags: Laos, Luang Prabang, Mekong, slowboat
ismateo
I am actually watching The Sting while reading this entry. Unfortunately however, I am not eating free soup.