Luang Prabang

Having just spent three days pretty much just traveling it was a nice change of pace to just chill out in Luang Prabang. The village was almost pocket sized, and you can walk from one end to the other in about 20 minutes. The french influence is alive and kicking - more in the form of baguettes than coffee unfortunately, but I'll take what I can get.

We spent a total of four nights here wandering the streets, eating sometimes good food, and reading on our front porch.



At the northern most end of the town is Wat Xieng Thong. This wat was built in 1560 and remained under royal patronage until 1975. One of the most interesting things here was the royal funeral chapel which houses a 36 feet high funeral chariot and various funeral urns for each member of the royal family.





Even just wandering the streets you see the most interesting things. These are rice cakes that have been handmade and are left on screens to dry in the sun. You'll see these all over town on a sunny day...which pretty much every day has been to date.



Meals were a treat as there were plenty of restaurants right on the water, all lit up at night with cute little white lights.



One night we spent a good part of the evening playing cards on our porch. My first time playing Texas Hold'em poker. As I like to play for money....and as we didn't have much at the time....we decided to play with Michael's trip medication. Doxycycline (for maleria) was worth 10,000 kip each (about 1 US dollar) and Cipro was worth 50,000 kip. The little stuffed santa "thing" in the corner is our version of the lawn gnome who is traveling with us cortesy of Michael's youngest niece - Alice age 6. My first poker experience was not particularly successful - good thing I have my own maleria medication.



We also visited Wat Chom Phet - an abandoned wat on the other side of the Mekong. For about 1 dollar you can get a guy to shuttle you across the river and wait for you while you explore. About 1 minute after arriving we met La, our 10 year old guide who didn't do much guiding other then to show us the steps to the wat. The view at the top was pretty cool. We spent about 30 minutes there hanging out with some more new friends who again, wanted to be our guides. But, as we were done with our trip, there was not much guiding to be done.





After four nights it was time to hit the road - this time south to Vang Vieng.