Monks on the Mekong

Luang Prabang is a heritage listed town on the banks of the mekong river in northern Laos. While once the thriving royal city of this country, the revolution and its subsequent removal of the monarchy left LP a sleepy little city albiet in a gorgeous setting. Since it's heritage listing however, tourist numbers have swelled and, other than monks in their orange robes walking down the street, its more likely to see a western face than Laos....

There's good reason for it though. With it's multitude of shimmering, ancient temples, riverside restaurants and opportunities for trekking and boating and general mayhem in the jungle this place is tonic for the soul...

Getting here, however, was a trip i would sooner forget. Northern Laos is incredibly mountainous and the roads here still leave a lot to be desired. It took us 9-10 hours (in despair i stopped counting...!) to get here from Vientaine...and afterwards we felt as if we'd been in a washing machine on the hot spin cycle (the air con that we'd paid extra to have had broken of course..) and our teeth were jarred from our heads being jerked...i'm sure i have a bruise on my shoulder from being thrown against the side of the bus...hmmm - as i keep telling myself....these are the experiences you get when traveling through South East Asia...enjoy them!! lol! It's not the destination, it's the journey and we did see some specacular sights when we weren't squeezing our eyes shut in preference to watching the bus narrowly miss the side of the cliff....

As we trundled along in 1st we were able to catch glimpses of village life around here...these mountain villages have no running water in their homes - and only the wealthier ones have any electricity. So at about 4-5pm it seems, all the families in the town go out to bath, the women wrapped in sarongs and the men in their undies...the babies naked...they wash themselves, their kids and their clothes in mountain spring water piped through to a central place, normally the side of the road it seems which is how i saw the ritual! We watched the older women threading leaves together to patch up the hut roof and kids chasing eachother along the dusty lanes...not necessarily an easy life I wouldn't imagine, but a peaceful one...

We ended up only spending a day in Vientiane before heading north to Luang Prabang...while there are quite a few sites to visit etc our day was spent mooching around the city looking for WIFI to do some banking. WIFI, it seems, is easier said than found in this country! but our day was rescued when we decided to get ourselves a stiff drink and some dinner down by the river and noticed a hullaballoo a bit further on....wandering down to investigate we found a fete in full swing...old french style, with toys and games from the 50s and little tables where you could sit and drink vin rouge. French tourists are in their thousands in Laos and, it seemed, they were all at the fete, celebrating and chatting...it was easy to imagine we were in some little French village along the Loire rather than a Laos city on the Mekong! It was all very oldy-worldy until we spotted a stage and heard some rock music...heading over we watched a modern dance troop and a Laos kid doing some of the best breakdancing i've ever seen...you see it all here in Asia...

Stay tuned. xx