The Road Warriors: Luang Prabang

Fresh of the boat, Andy and I made our way around town trying to find a cheap guesthouse. After a few minutes, it became apparent that the town was quite gentrified. The tip-off: old white women. Yep, you never ever see old white women in Southeast Asia unless the town has made it's way into the package tourism brochures. And for a town to get that kind of distinction, it has to have all kinds of fancy first-world amenities. Luang Prabang had it all. Patio restaurants with wine glasses turned upside down on the table, flower boxes adorning the window sills of guesthouses, uniform wooden signs with serif fonts above the doorway of each business. And old white women.

Unfortunately for us, this meant that almost everything was out of our price range. We hopped into a few guesthouses and they quoted us around $20 - $25 US a night. Far too much. A younger man noticed us and pointed us around the corner to a street lined with cheaper places to crash. The place we got was $4.50 a night, haggled down that extra 50 cents by yours truly. The rooms were stunning. Double beds, towels, bathroom, hot shower. The $25 places must have been palaces.

Andy and I set out to find dinner. A slew of posh restaurants beckoned, literally, with promises of good food and BeerLao. One place offered do-it-yourself Lao BBQ. The people in the picture looked like they were having a good time, so it won us over. I was eager to see how it stacked up against the world-famous Korean BBQ. A cauldron of burning charcoal was set in the middle of our table and a beveled metal bowl-ish thing was placed on top. Next came the ingredients. Veggies, broth and noodles, all mixed together and heated up. Meat was cooked on the raised portion in the center of the bowl, then mixed with the surrounding ingredients and scooped into our own personal bowls to be garnished with any of the many garnishings we saw fit. Sounds like work, but I hadn't cooked anything myself in months so I enjoyed it. It was quite delicious as well. First meal to get a full paragraph in my blog.

After the meal, we sought out our fellow slow-boaters. It wasn't very hard. It turns out the town has an 11:30 curfew and all of the foreigners who want to stay out later get funneled into this nightclub a short tuk-tuk ride away. Almost everyone from the slow boat was there. A terrible sound system blared American, Korean and Thai pop while young Laos walked around with the same look of discomfort one has at their first boy-girl birthday party. The beer was ind of expensive. I hung back and made small talk.

The house lights came on at 1am and we piled about 16 foreigners into a songthaew back up the peninsula. It was a very rowdy ride. A very rowdy first night in Luang Prabang.

The next morning, it was time for my new town walkaround. Luang Prabang was an easy one to get oriented in. The mighty Mekong borders it on the north while the smaller Nam Khon creeps along the south eventually merging with the Mekong, squeezing the bulk of the town into a narrow peninsula. I looked about. Colonial French architecture was the town's big thing, and coupled with the gentrification and the package tourists, you'd think the place was still colonized. I walked along the Mekong; every inch of it used by restaurants to give their diners a view with their meal. Every once and while a quaint antique store or craft shop poked out from between the other buildings. Art was for sale on the street. I looped around the tip of the peninsula and set up the central boulevard.

Alex pulled up beside me on a motorbike. He hadn't gone to bed since the night before and spent the day participating in a crop-blessing ceremony with a random Lao family; an experience he described as "full-on". Further up the boulevard, I bumped into Andy and Ebi, a girl he had met on the boat. They had rented bicycles and been touring the town as well. We all climbed Phu Si, a hill in the center of town, and watched the sunset over the Mekong.

That night I watched a hill-tribe fashion show at an expensive tourist restaurant. Waste of money. To make up for it, I went to bed early.

I woke at 10 to Andy rapping at my door. Like, knocking. Him and Ebi were off to Tat Kuang Si, a waterfall about 32km out of town. At that point, I had been having a pretty "meh" time in Luang Prabang. It was nice and all, but nothing really blew my skirt up. The waterfall was something else though. It fell in tiers, collecting in blue lagoons each step of the way down. Trees grew all around and sheltered the pools from the harsh sun. Further up, a huge drop into a massive blue basin. We trod carefully around and through the scenery. A lot of people from the slow-boat were there too. Closer to the bottom we found a swimming hole. Further down, another with a rope swing. We all dove in without hesitation. It was gorgeous. As Andy put it, "it looks like the kind of thing places like Disneyland try and recreate". The rope swing hung from a slippery tree branch that precariously hung over the water. Dangerous, yes, but the Lao guys took it to the next level, shimmying a good 10m up to the top of the branch then plunging off. Disneyland would not have allowed that.

The waterfall was an all-day affair. Swimming, climbing steps and swinging on ropes spanked the energy right out of me. In the evening, Andy, Ebi, a slow boater named Brad and I all had drinks on a rickety wooden bridge that crossed the Nam Khon. To hell with the 11:30 curfew. The town was silent and that's how we wanted it. It was to be my last night in Luang Prabang. Next stop was Vang Vieng, a rollicking frat party, so I savored every moment of relaxation I could squeeze from that night. Then I bid my friends a final farewell and went to sleep.

The morning came up quick, and I knew I had to make it to the bus station soon. A lot of buses head for Vang Vieng, but there was a lull between 11am and 2pm that I did not want to hit. However, there was a temple in town that I wanted to see. I got denied access to it previously because I was not wearing pants. Like, I was wearing shorts, not, yeah. But a lot of these places require you to wear pants as a sign of respect. Anyways, the temple was BORING with a capital 'ZZZZZZZZZ' and even worse, no tuk-tuk driver would quote me a reasonable price so I walked there AND it took so long that I got to the bus station right at the beginning of the lull. Blah! Oh temples! So ubiquitous in Southeast Asia and always so recommended! I keep telling myself that the next one will be my last.

So there I sat, slightly enraged, in the empty bus station. Luang Prabang was good. Not tremendous. Maybe if I did one of the expensive activities offered at the posh guesthouses, I might've had a ripping time, but money was starting to get a little tight. Plus, there was a wealth of things to be done further down the line. The Lao lady on the TV above me was forecasting the weather. It looked like clear skies ahead.