People have been periodically asking me what my favorite place has been that we have traveled to so far and after over 150 days of traveling I think that I can truthfully say that it is this: Luang Prabang, Laos. I had never even heard of Luang Prabang until we got to Laos and read the enthusiasm with which our Lonely Planet guidebook describes Luang Prabang. The terms “timeless”, “lingers in the imagination long after you visit” and “Shangri La” are a few such choice descriptions. Although this guidebook has been a bit hit or miss with recommendations, as far as Luang Prabang is concerned, it was spot on.
Driving from the bus station to the center of town, we were immediately struck with the beauty of Luang Prabang. This small, pretty city sits right on the Mekong River and is nestled between green hills that surround it on all sides. Not only is the nature surrounding the city beautiful, but the architecture is as well. Luang Prabang was the capitol of Laos while it was controlled by the French, so there has been a lot of obvious French influence on the city, particularly in the architecture (apparently, according to everything you read about Luang Prabang, as I really don’t know what “French architecture” looks like).
What we particularly liked about Luang Prabang is that it was the first city we have visited on our trip where the main focus was not to sightsee, but to just walk around and enjoy being there. One of the first things we did was walk along the river. There are some nice sandy beach areas and a number of boats driving around. It was very calm and peaceful on the edge of the river and surprisingly uncrowded.
We also enjoyed discovering neat little coffee shops, restaurants, bars and shops. On our first day we discovered a nearby coffee shop with amazing muffins and the best pancakes we’ve had since we left America, as well as a very cool coffee shop/restaurant that seemed like something you’d find in the Pacific Northwest (wood paneling, tables with pillows for sitting on the floor, and lots of vegetarian options). This place also showed evening movies, though sadly we didn’t make it to any of the showings. Across the street from the coffee shop was an art shop owned by a man named Sith (pronounced “sit, like sit down”) who makes intricate stencils and sells them along with art from other local artists. We had a really nice time chatting with him. Apparently he learned how to make these stencils while he was a monk, which they then used to paint the faded walls in the temples. The paper stencils are made using a small metal chisel. Sith decided not to stay permanently as a monk and is now a successful artist and businessman as a result of his time there. We bought a stencil of a bodhi tree from him and also a print and bracelet–both made by friends of his.
The two big sightseeing things we did in Luang Prabang were visiting the Hmong Night Market and climbing to the top of Mount Phou Si at sunset. Although we saw a ridiculous number of markets in Thailand, we still enjoyed seeing the nice textiles, prints and other goods sold at the Hmong Night Market. Far and away, the best thing about the night market was the food! We had a hard time finding vegetarian options at markets in Thailand, to the extent that I had pretty much ruled out markets as a viable food option for us. What’s funny about discovering a plethora of vegetarian options at the Hmong Night Market is that this is the place where I almost caved and ate meat despite resisting so many other times previously. I had seen amazing looking spring rolls at a number of Thai markets that definitely had meat in them, so I never tried them. The first food I saw at the Hmong Night Market were similar looking spring rolls and I turned and said to Brian, “Screw it, I’ve been dying for one of these spring rolls, I don’t care if it has meat in it.” I marched up to the woman selling them and said I wanted to order some. She asked me which type I wanted, and when I asked what the options were, she said one had only vegetables and one had chicken. Wow, what luck! Just when I had resolved to eat it, meat be damned, I managed to find a vegetarian one! As we walked further down the row of food with my bag full of vegetarian spring rolls, we were astounded to see tons of buffets set up full of vegetarian food! Apparently you pay $1.50 for whatever you can fill your plate with and the poor meat eating suckers had to pay extra for meat options. Needless to say, we were in heaven.
Mount Phou Si (pronounced poo-see, I kid-you-not) is a hill in the middle of Luang Prabang with spectacular views of the city. This is promoted as the best place to watch the sunset, and I guess all the other tourists got the same message because it was packed! We stayed just long enough to snap a couple of pictures, and then spent a bit of time exploring the empty temple, Buddha statues and purportedly the footprint of Buddha also located on the hill.
One other touristy thing that we did here was see a traditional Lao dance performance. I had been really wanting to see some traditional dance in Southeast Asia and we had not been successful seeing anything in Thailand. Fortunately the Royal Ballet Theater in Luang Prabang has traditional Lao dancing almost every single evening.
The most unique and rewarding thing that we did in Luang Prabang was volunteer at Big Brother Mouse. We had read about Big Brother Mouse prior to coming to Luang Prabang, because they are involved with publishing books and making them available to children in rural villages in Laos. What we didn’t realize is that they also facilitate free English conversational sessions for anybody who wants to practice his or her English. We were excited to find a volunteer opportunity that we were well-qualified for and which sounded like a lot of fun. Big Brother Mouse asks native English speakers to volunteer for two-hour sessions that are held twice daily–once in the morning and once in the early evening. The morning sessions are fun, because lots of monks come to this session so we got the opportunity to speak with them and ask them about their experiences as monks. One of the monks I spoke with said that he had become a monk in order to continue his education. He is from a small village in the country and the only way he could get a secondary level education was to join a monastery. Apparently this is a common thing to do for boys that grow up in rural Laos–become a monk for a few years to further your studies and then leave to attend college. This particular monk was enjoying the lifestyle a lot, though, and undecided about whether he would permanently become a monk or leave to go to college as he had originally planned.
The afternoon session was interesting, because the first two guys in my discussion group had just started learning English and could barely speak a word! It was quite challenging to figure out how to make use of our time when I couldn’t really figure out much from them except their names and ages. Fortunately a third guy joined the group not too much later and he had been studying English for 4 months and could speak quite well. He helped as translator until we decided that the best use of time was to practice reading aloud from a children’s book that Big Brother Mouse publishes. It was strange to read a children’s book with 19 and 20 year olds!
All in all, we had a great experience here and it was interesting to see how people utilized the free service–some people were here who had only been learning English for a couple of weeks and others had been studying it for years and just liked the practice even though they were quite skilled. It seemed like everyone that attended was very appreciative of the service and enjoyed coming, which explains why people continue coming here for years!
While we were only planning to spend 3 days in Luang Prabang, we liked it so much that we ended up staying an extra day–a seemingly small decision at the time that would end up having serious consequences for us later. But that’s a story for another post.