Luang Prabang

I realized that the rough minibus ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang was well worth it immediately once I arrived in this charming little town. Since we arrived in the evening, after a cold and curvy mountainous 6-hour drive, we were able to walk through the beautiful night market on our way to find accommodation - I knew right away that I was hooked. Street upon street of lovely people selling amazingly colorful goods coupled with an alley filled with tables heaped with plates of delicious noodles and vegetables and meats for cheap prices, and I knew that this place was dangerous - in a good way, of course! I knew that I would be able to stay there a long time, and eventually I came to realize that I could probably live there as well. Luang Prabang is the former capital city, and has Unesco World Heritage status. The city center is on a peninsula, where the Mekong River meets the Nam Khan River, and is filled with shops, guest houses, boutique hotels, and spas. There are Wats (Temples) everywhere, including one at the top of a hill in the center of the city. For me, the main draw was the night market, and the many cute and cozy restaurants and cafes that continuously called my name to come in and enjoy. Unfortunately, because I am traveling for so long and always have that budget in the back of my mind, I wasn't able to partake of the food and drink nearly enough for my liking, but a girl can dream, can't she?

One disappointing factor was that the weather while we were there was less than ideal. It was much colder than normal, and one day it rained all day. Of course, this was the day that I had scheduled a trip to the waterfall outside of town, Kuang Si. I went, along with a minibus of others, and ended up being really glad that I did. It was beautiful - seemingly endless smaller and bigger falls dropping into milky green pools of water that, on any other day, you could swim in. I climbed to the top, over slippery fallen leaves, tree roots, and precarious muddy steps, and only fell once! Afterwards, we followed the loop around to the bear rescue center, but only saw a few bears as they aren't big fans of the rain either.
After putting up with sub-par, but very cheap, accommodations in Vang Vieng, Isabel and I treated ourselves to a nice room with a balcony and TV - still, it was only about $6 each! One day we rented bikes so we could go a bit further out of the city, which basically made us realize that the city center was the place to be. One morning, we got up very early so that we could see the monks collecting alms. This was on one hand a very neat tradition to witness, and on the other hand, it made me embarrassed to be a tourist, as so many of them were right up in the monks faces taking pictures of them like they were animals in a zoo.

On the coldest, rainiest night, we watched the movie Eat, Pray, Love in the loft of a small tea and book shop. It was really nice to just relax and watch a movie and drink hot tea while listening to the rain outside. I also found that I liked the movie much more the second time around, possibly because it more closely resembles my own life currently. Another night, we went to a free fashion show, which was really great - beautiful local girls, and a few guys, wore the traditional clothing of several different Lao tribes. Every night, we walked through the market, wishing we could buy some of everything! The aforementioned food at the market was pretty awesome - there are many tables piled high with similar food. Basically, you pick one table, and they hand you an oval plate, which you then proceed to attempt to fit as much on as possible, for 10,000 kip, or $1.25!

This was the vegetarian option, which consisted of different types of noodle dishes, veggies, and a few other things, like a deep-fried ball of dough (we never were totally sure what it was) that was really tasty! The meat cost extra, so I usually stuck to the vegetarian, which made me pretty happy - Isabel was much more brave and tried several types of mysterious sausages. Of course, when you added on a BeerLao, the price doubled, but it's hard to enjoy all that food without something to help wash it down! Once you have sufficiently heaped your plate, so that not even one more cherry tomato can fit on it, you give it to them and they heat it up in a skillet for you and add as much spicy chile sauce as you can stand. Have I mentioned that I loved this food?! We also went on a search to find mango sticky rice, which we had heard was available there and really wanted to try. When we finally found it one afternoon, we weren't sure what to expect. Luckily, we ordered one dish to share. The rice was purple, and it was extra sweet, so although it was good, we couldn't even finish it between us.

Overall, Luang Prabang was probably my favorite city in Laos, and very similar to Hoi An in Vietnam. Both of them served as a temptation to my expensive taste in food and shopping, and I would happily return to both on a shorter holiday, where I had more money to spend!