Luang Prabang agreed with us the minute we stepped of the boat; a lovely European-esque riverside town with a hot south-east Asian climate. We were flagged down by a boy on his bike asking us to check out his hotel, as you know we usually avoid touts like the plague, but this kid was cute and we needed somewhere to stay. We were expecting to deal with his parents on arriving at the guesthouse, but the boy showed us around and when we tried bargaining for the room cuteness was no pushover, he knew it’s value in that town. When it looked like we weren’t going to take it he was out the door and back on his bike to catch a few more strays from the boat! We were eventually won over by the free tea, coffee and bananas on offer and took it at $7 a night- a tiny box room with shared bathroom, but the alternatives are seriously high end.
Luang Prabang we discovered has a wealth of beautiful boutique hotels. The buildings and décor are amazing; such a beautiful town. For future enquiry we checked out a few of the nice hotels and they range from around $60 to $200 a night and are fabulous.
Although, fab hotels aside, there really isn’t much to do in the town apart from frequent the wealth of delicious restaurants and café’s to watch the world go by. “A break from the travelling” was a phrase we overheard from more then one table. But it definitely isn’t just a backpacker retreat (hence the fancy hotels), as Laos was formally under French control there were a lot of French tour groups wandering around the temples, museums and night market. At the food market we discovered an ‘all you can pile on your place’ vegetarian buffet for a whopping 5,000 kip (70c). I definitely got my money's worth! But our favourite food was the baguette sandwiches, a legacy from the French that the Laos have taken to heart, usually eaten at breakfast, we followed suit and had a hardy start to each day. It felt like being back in college after a night out ordering a fresh roll filled with salad, egg, tofu, tomatoes chilli sauce, chicken for Mal…yummy. My expanding stomach dost protest. Again, like Chiang Mai, the tourist part of town is almost solely for the tourists and a walk across the river showed us the stark contrast between the rich and the poor, a contrast clearly visible in the many local towns we passed on our 6.5 hour bus journey to Vang Vieng six days later. (Six days? We really have no idea where the time went or what we did!).
No comments:
Post a Comment