Farewell for Europe: Luang Prabang 26th-31st of January

Luang Prabang – a piece of Europe in the middle of Asia, absolutely adorable!

So last time I wrote I was taking the ride and river boat to Luang Prabang from Pai. Well this did happen, however the whole route was quite a much like a nightmare. First the mini-van took as from Pai all the way to the Thailand boarder which took around 7 hours. We arrived at 2 AM to the boarder and the travel agency had arranged us the accommodation for 5 hours of sleep. At 8 AM it was already time to cross the Thailand and Laos boarder (=Mekong River) and go for the immigration office in Laos to get the visa. The whole immigration and Visa system was horrible, not any kind of order, boarder controllers taking bribes as fast as they can with both hands and depending on the amount of bribe was how fast you got your visa, for us it took around 1,5 hours so quite okay. Officially for Finnish people the 30 day Laos visa is 35 US dollars. After the whole visa issue it was time to get to the “river cruise” along Mekong River for two days. First this option seemed like a charming way to see the countryside. The reality check came after first two hours; no food, only coke and beer on the boat, extremely undeveloped toilet system. The first day trip was 8 hours and then we had a night stop in the small village, Pak Bang. This was just horrible place; The locals were there only to rip off all the money from tourists, were really rude towards all of us, also we found some gun shells from the streets. Also other travelers told us to always have somebody to look over our stuff even in our personal rooms since there were so many stories abuout locals stealing backpacks while travelers were having dinner. So since we had 8 person in our party, we decided to go eat in two rounds so that there would be constantly someone to look our stuff. Next morning the river boat left again at 9 AM and after 7 h of flowing along the river we finally arrived to Luang Prabang. There would have been also a faster option instead of 2 days river boat, the speed boat, but there has been reported so many death every week that we all decided to play it safe and take the slow boat.

Anyway arrived to Luang Prabang safe and sound. After the bad experience in Pak Bang I didn’t have that huge expectations for Luang Prabang but I have to say I was totally wrong. Luang Prabang really beautiful town and since there has been living French colonials it felt like piece of Europe in the middle of Asia. The architecture is similar to southern France and the street boulevards were covered with European style cafées. Absolutely adorable! There were also street kiosks for baguettes and fruit smoothies everywhere and it seemed like everything here costs 10.000 Kip (=1€) from bottle of beer to fruit shake to chicken baguette. After a long period of rice and noodles it was like piece of heaven to eat finally some salads, grilled fish and steaks. My hostel was also conveniently located about 5 min walk from the night market and its food buffets (also 10.000 Kip).

I had the idea of staying here only 3 nights but since the town was so nice I prolonged my staying for 2 more nights. First two days went just café hopping and walking around the city. On the third day I took a Laos Cooking class which lasted the whole day. In the morning of the cooking class I went to the restaurant which was going to give the course and met the other participants there. I was quite lucky since in our course there were only 3 other people (I heard that normally there’s 8-10 person in a group). Then we got to choose 7 dishes from the list we wanted to prepare. I chose Lemongrass pork and spring rolls. Others chose chicken soup, some noodle dish, fried fish, vegetable chili and papaya salad. After we had chosen the dishes we went to the local food market where we gathered all the ingredients for the dishes together with our chef. Then we returned to the restaurant and started the cooking. We got our own receipt books which included all the dishes we prepared, some additional ones and a guide to Asian herbs and how to use those. The cooking part took around 5 hours with the chef preparing the foods with us. After the food was done it was time for the best part; eating what we had prepared. The food was absolutely delicious!

After eating our cookings it was end of the day and time to head back to hostel. At the hostel there was nice common area where we all met after each day to drink couple of beer together before heading to the dinner. Since I wasn’t in no need for dinner on that day I just stayed at the hostel for taking beers with other guests. All the evenings we went first to Utopia, basically the only night club in whole Luang Prabang and after it was closed (already at midnight) we headed for the bowling alley which was the official after party place here and bowled until 3 AM.

On my fourth day we (=me, Sarah and Jacob) decided to went to the famous waterfall park which is located around 30 km from LP centrum. We bargained with the tuk-tuk driver to take us there for 150. 000 Kip instead of normal 200.000 Kip and he played with us as long as we didn’t want the receipt. Well… Neither of us felt huge need for the receipt.

The waterfall park was absolutely amazing and it took the whole from us to wonder around the park with its dozens of small waterfall and wandering to the top of the main waterfall. After the couole of hours of walking and climbing we went swimming to the swimming area of the park and palyed with the jungle rope to swing ourselves into water, fun.