Since we planned the Laos portion of our trip while we were in Vietnam, we had spent a lot of time thinking about what to do. We have decided only to visit Luang Prabang and Vientiane – skipping the oft-visited Vang Vieng, as well as some of the more remote areas – in order to avoid a “pack it all in” mentality. Most of our time will be here in Luang Prabang (LP), land of 1,000 wats, checking out the local scene, the wats, and the nearby rivers. For our first day, we took it pretty easy. After breakfast at the 3 Nagas (best breakfast of the trip so far), we walked over to the Royal Palace Museum and the wat that is on the grounds. This was a really beautiful wat. Unfortunately, rain and great marble steps are a bad combination with flip flops, so Matt managed to fall twice in 10 seconds while we were on the way down. Somehow, the camera emerged mostly unscathed, as did Matt minus a sore wrist. The museum itself was also quite striking, full of great relics from the nearby wats (to prevent looting), but we weren’t allowed to take any pictures, so use your imagination to picture some really great Buddhist art and artifacts. The highlight is the Prabang Buddha. During Laos new year in LP, the Buddha is paraded around the city and everyone throws water on everyone else (to cleanse you of your sins). It sounds like quite the party, so if you’re in Laos in mid-April, you should get over to LP!
Next we climbed Mt Phousi (only 330 something steps to the top) to get some great views of the peninsula. Then we remembered that we had forgotten to take our malaria meds in the morning, and Matt wanted to ice his wrist, so we went back to the hotel for a midday break. Post-break, we walked down to the Mekong and hired a boat to take us to the Pak Ou caves, two hours upriver from Luang Prabang. Inside the caves are hundreds of Buddha sculptures. The caves themselves aren’t all that exciting, but the boat ride on the Mekong was nice – lots of good scenery.We planned to grab a drink along the river at a café highlighted in the Luxe guide… but alas, the café was now only a store. So instead, we went to a wine bar we had seen earlier on the main drag to have a couple glasses of wine and some calamari as a snack. There are actually a couple of wine bars in LP… very curious, indeed. The wine is a mix of Chilean, Australia and French for the most part. We just had some of the cheap Chilean stuff (that’s what was available by the glass) – nothing special, but definitely drinkable. After a while, we went over to L’Elephant for dinner – a fairly classic French interpretation, but definitely tasty… and quite popular, apparently. Dinner was good until the folks at the table next to us started smoking like chimneys. That was our cue to head back to the 3 Nagas and hit the sack.
2 comments:
Interesting...Cambridge has a restaurant called the White Elephant, however its French Tai versus French Vietnamese. I feel that I have come across other Elephant named restaurants that have some type of French influence. I always thought that the French were considered Frogs -- not elephant.
Wait a second you are in Laos. French Loas fusion I meant.
Post a Comment