Luang Prabang

Days 80-82

Luang Prabang’s relaxed atmosphere and comfortable temperature have been the perfect place to recharge our batteries and gather ourselves for the tough journey ahead. There are a lot of tourists here and lots of activities but we have elected to do nothing only wander the French colonial streets and visit a few Buddhist temples. The notorious road ahead will take us further north and into the mountain before crossing the border into Vietnam.

Arriving at a bus station in a town you have never been before leaves you vulnerable to the consistently unscrupulous tuktuk drivers. We paid 20 000kip (£1.6/$2.50) each for a journey of about 3km/2miles, and there was five of us in the tuktuk, which means he made £8/$12.50 from the trip. It is half a day’s pay for the driver but it is a pattern that has been repeated again and again at bus and train stations throughout South East Asia. Another feature of the SE Asian tuktuk drivers is that they stick together when it comes to tourists so there is no point trying to auction a few drivers against each other, they just won’t have it, and will quickly move on to the next gullible foreigner. India on the other hand was a different ball game, an infinite number of tuktuk drivers would scrabble on top of each other to undercut the guy in front to get your fare and you soon had a fair price.

Luanag Prabang is a small town famous for its monasteries, temples and French colonial architecture on the banks of the muddy Mekong. It is firmly on the tourist SE Asia tourist trail and there are hundreds of tourists wandering its streets and of course all the usual trinket and tour sellers that come with them. It is not hard to get away from this though if you cut off the main street, where you will be transported to a different era where the streets are formed by houses with wooden shuttered windows and tiled roofs giving you the feeling you are in a provincial French town, until out of nowhere you stumble across one of the Buddhist monasteries and temples within which dwell the town’s famous monks. 

There are dozens of monasteries around town with hundreds of monks, who every morning march out of their monasteries in single file to collect their daily alms from the locals at dawn. Since the monks live a life of prayer free from material possessions they rely on donations from the locals to eat. This food is collected each morning in the centuries old tradition of alms giving and is one of the reasons why so many people flock to Luang Prabang. So along with all the other tourists we got up at 6am on Monday (12^th Nov) morning to see the spectacle. It’s a humbling thing to see these monks, some of who are no more than 10 years old, wandering the streets and collecting their rice for the day to enable them to continue their life of prayer. The addition of tourists to the ceremony is a little more frustrating, some of whom are a little over zealous in the keenness to get their National Geographic shots using flash and get right in the monks faces. The serene monks though, endure it all and their orange lines soon march back to their monasteries.

Luanag Pabang was the capital of the former Kingdom of Laos and the seat of Royal Residence of the Royal Family of Laos. However their support of the French and Americans in Vietnam meant that the 600 year old monarchy’s days were numbered. And in the Lao communist revolution of 1975, Prathet Lao deposed the monarchy and sent them to a “re-education” camp. The current heir to the defunct throne lives in France and is still agitating for an end to Communist rule and democracy in Laos along with this his reinstatement. But with communist China and Vietnam right next door, the chance of any change to the political system in Laos are minimal. We visited the monarchy’s former Palace after attending the alms giving ceremony and to be honest it wasn’t really that great. The most interesting thing that we found was a gift from the American government, a piece of moon rock.

The French reign in IndoChina was fairly brief (67 years) in comparison to the British in India (330 years) but their influence has ran deep. Nowhere is this more evident by the food, everywhere you look there are baguettes and wine, look into a more upmarket restaurant and it will be dominated by French dishes. A row of baguette stalls close to our hotel has been our savior serving up bagette subs filled with salads, meats and to my wife’s delight: Nutella and even avocado. With not having the usual worry of dabbling with local cuisine for a cheap bite these stalls have made our stay here very relaxed, welcome and cheap. Although if anyone wants to make their stay here cheaper still I would advise them not to pay into any of the fancier temples, there are dozens of temples around town that you can enter for free.

The journey that I alluded to earlier is to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam and begins tomorrow (Wed 14^th) at 8am. I am not keen on the trip itself as I have heard lots of horror stories of muddy mountain roads and rickety old buses guaranteed to break down. However the views are supposed to be spectacular and Dien Bien Phu is a place I have always wanted to visit purely to satisfy my inner historical nerd. All of you history buffs will be aware that it was the site of the famous battle between the Colonial French and the Vietnamese Nationalist movement, the Viet Minh in 1954. After both going to extraordinary lengths to defeat each other it ended in a crushing defeat of the French and marked an end to the age of colonialism and the French Empire.

The journey is long and we will have a black out on communications until we reach Vietnam, which will take us 2 or (hopefully not!) 3 days. So I will pick up all my loyal readers then in the final country of our trip; Vietnam.

Since this is a relatively short post I thought I would take the opportunity to tell you that I actually won’t be releasing anymore India Diaries post. It’s not that I haven’t written them, it’s just that they are a bit to opinionated to be publishing on the internet. Most of what I written in my location posts has been reasonably diplomatic, however those of you that know me will know that I can be quite opinionated and when reviewing certain things in India all of these opinions came out. So I decided to apply the Irish saying “whatever you say, say nothing” and decided not to bother publishing them.

Don’t be disappointed though. We will be doing a review at the end of the trip and to spice it up a bit it will be in the form of awards to the best (and worst) aspects of our trip.