Any Port in a Storm - Laos : Luang Prabang

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May 24, 2013, 6:17am

Any Port in a Storm :: Compass Points :: Asia :: Laos : Luang Prabang

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Topic: Laos : Luang Prabang (Read 1,496 times)

kerouac2
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Laos : Luang Prabang
« Thread Started on May 10, 2009, 9:03pm »

Luang Prabang is now considered to be the main tourist attraction of Laos. It has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1995, after being reopened to tourism in 1989.

It is perhaps the place in Southeast Asia to which I would most like to return, since I have only been there once and totally fell in love with the place.

It was a 10-hour bus trip in totally miserable conditions from Vientiane, but I felt quite lucky compared to the other tourists. I arrived one hour before departure at 07:00 and it was almost completely full then, but I was still able to squeeze into a seat. A group of about 8 Westerners arrived 30 minutes before departure, and they had to stand in the aisle for the entire duration of the journey.

Although the road was in good shape, it was sort of scary. There were reports of bandits stopping and robbing the buses north of Vang Vieng, and some tourists had even been killed a few months earlier. Also there were tigers and other animals. There was a pee stop in one jungle area, and all of the women were pressed up against the side of the bus to pee, while the men peed along the side of the road, looking nervously in all directions.

I was already an old pro on Asian buses by then and knew how to turn off all bodily functions until the lunch stop.

Anyway, I have not yet come across the photos of the bus journey, and the photos here begin only after arrival the next day. The evening of arrival, it turned out that the city was completely fully booked. I visited a number of hotels from the Lonely Planet guidebook, and they were all full. After a certain amount of time, I learned that the guesthouses "near the post office" were likely to have rooms.

And indeed I found a room for US$1.75 in a charming old villa. Unfortunately, that first night was not my best, due to the enormous rats. While I don't think that any of them visited my room, when I went to the toilet in the night, there were a number of them prowling around, and I was not fond of their attention. They only left the WC reluctantly through a large hole in the wall once they had determined that I meant business.

The next morning, one of the upstairs rooms became available, and for the same price, it was absolutely delightful. The rodents did not come upstairs. I would readily return there if I am able to go back to Luang Prabang some day.

Here is the street on which the guesthouse was located.

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This is the guesthouse across the street. I photographed it from the place where I was staying. My building was quite similar.

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This is the central market of Luang Prabang.

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Traffic in the center of the city was not really a problem. Here are some photographs of the main street of town.

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The shops were delightful. The most interesting items for sale were Laotian silk.

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There were some other things on view as well.

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Naturally, there was a temple and a small museum to visit. The museum looked sort of more like a warehouse of excess statues than a museum.

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Laotian statuary seemed to be quite preoccupied with monsters and demons, definitely more so than the surrounding countries.

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There were nevertheless a number of lovely things to see.

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A statue to a national hero was somewhat disturbing.

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There were a certain number of high end inns and restaurants for high end tourists. Here is one of the restaurants. I did not go there.

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Luang Prabang is situated at a branch of the Mekong and another river, the Nam Khan. And rising above the city is Mount Phousi, a sacred place. It is a very steep climb with stairs and ramps zigzagging back and forth. I did not see anybody who was not out of breath going up. After these steps, there were endless zigzags of steep ramps to get to the top.

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The view from the top is marvelous.

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You can see the main street of the city on the right on these next two photos and verify how heavy the traffic is.

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Back down at river level, the views are quite lush.

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Quite a few of the tourists were arriving on the Mekong from Northern Thailand. In spite of the deaths from hitting floating tree trunks or having to sleep along the riverbank with nasty animals, many young adventurers preferred this route. Reviewing what I have done in the past, it is not unlikely that I would have been foolish enough to take one of these boats myself.

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When my time in Luang Prabang was nearing its end, I reconsidered my travel options. If I took the bus again, it meant 10 hours of misery and another night in Vientiane, followed by another bus in Thailand back to Bangkok, which would eat up another day. How much was my time worth? I decided that if I could fly back to Bangkok for US$100 instead of taking the buses for US$15, I would fly. However, when the travel agency quoted a fare of US$125, I said yes immediately.

Lao Aviation was the national airline at that time, and I had already studied it. It was the most dangerous airline in the entire world with the highest percentage of crashes. It was so dangerous that it was not allowed to make international flights, even to the surrounding countries. I was therefore somewhat intrigued by how I would be flying to Bangkok on it. (Lao Aviation does not exist anymore, in case anybody is interested.)

On the designated day, I went to the nice little airport, built by the Japanese.

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The airport had something like 3 flights a day.

The plane was a Chinese made Y7 with about 30 seats.

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I was looking at the enormous cumulonimbus clouds hovering over the mountains and wondering if I might change my mind about this flight. Most of the crashes that I had read about took place in stormy conditions. When boarding time came, it was relatively sunny. We would be flying to Vientiane and changing to a Thai plane operated by PB Air for the last section of the flight.

I survived and was most impressed by the mountains of Laos, seen from above.

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« Last Edit: May 11, 2009, 8:25am by kerouac2 »