Lovin the Lao life

Note: An upfront warning... this is an absurdly long post. I wrote most of it while on the slow boat (I had a lot of time on my hands) and then later added in stuff about Luang Prabang. I apologize for the lack of brevity.

 

Still in Laos... and loving our time here. Earlier, in Thailand and Myanmar, we spent a lot of time touring around big cities, seeing  all of the “must-see” temples, visiting monasteries, etc. All of that was really cool, but Laos has been a totally different week with a much more relaxed vibe - which has proven to be a really nice complement to everything we’ve done before this. I may even go so far as to say it has been my favorite place so far? In fact I think I can definitely say that Luang Prabang is my favorite Asian city we have visited. (But more on that below.)

On Wednesday morning we boarded our slow boat and waved goodbye to Houy Xia. We were originally faced with two  options for the slow boat: 1) The typical “backpackers” boat which involves cramming ~100 people on a boat meant for ~70 (the unlucky last 30 folks to arrive have to sit on the floor for the whole ride), no food on board, very little communication as to when you leave or arrive, no stops along the way, oh and the engine broke down the day that we went and they all had to float the last hour to town.... or 2) the “upgraded” option which was a similar type of boat, but limited the number of passengers to only 40 so there was plenty of space and seats, free coffee, tea, fruit, and lunch, and stops at 2 local villages. After our stint in the woods we all felt like we could afford ourselves a wee bit of “luxury” and opted for the 2nd option. Safe to say we all felt like it was a pretty good decision. 




Not a great photo, but we were trying to show the inside of the slow boat

So, we boarded our vessel and settled in for the ~16 hour boat ride (split up into 2 8-hour days.) While at first we just expected this portion of the trip to be a means of travel, and I think we all agreed that it actually ended up being a really awesome way to spend the day. The boat was all open-air with little tables and chairs scattered throughout, so we spent the two days relaxing, enjoying the breeze and scenery, catching up on some reading, and checking out the local wildlife and little villages that dot the shores of the river. Overall it was peaceful, relaxing, and beautiful. Not a bad couple of days.

 

Becca, Jen and I - stopping at a village along the Mekong

View of the Mekong from the village of Pakbeng - our stop for the night

The French influence in Laos

Wednesday night the boat stopped in PakBeng, a village town that pretty much exists just as a means of providing one nights hotel and dinner to all the slow boat passengers on their way to/from Luang Prabang. Reviews online made it sound like barely even a village, with pretty poor infrastructure and very limited options, so we weren’t expecting much. We were pleasantly surprised though, by how cute the town actually was. There was just one main street, filled with restaurants and guesthouses and.... bakeries!! Wham. It’s like all of a sudden the French influence we had heard so much about in Laos appeared... in the form of croissants, French bread, banana chocolate chip muffins, etc. I know this sounds like pretty basic stuff, but when you have been eating rice and stir-fried veggies for pretty much every meal, a pastry cart becomes a pretty exciting discovery.

 




"Main street" (e.g. the only street) in Pakbeng

The 6 of us had dinner at a Lao restaurant we had heard about from an online blog. The sign outside read “my wife make good food” so that seemed compelling enough for me. (I also made Matt take a picture with the sign and point to that line.... hehe.) Coincidentally, the friends we had made from the Gibbons experience showed up shortly after, so it ended up being 12 of us in total - the 6 of us, plus a Scottish couple, a British couple and an Irish couple.

 

A quick note about the Europeans we have met.... they have all been super nice and really fun to hang out with. In general, we all have a lot in common - same general age, similar occupations, etc. The only difference is they are all traveling for between 6 months and a year! They have been saving up for the last year or two, mapped out a rough itinerary and budget, quit their jobs, moved out of their apartments and have just been traveling ever since. It is really impressive to me that they are able to live out of a backpack for that long, with no real patterns or commitments tying them down. (I don’t think I would ever be able to do that. I like structure and patterns and having a plan too much, as my dad would say.) Pretty much wherever we go over here, in fact, it seems that our 6-weeks of traveling is a far shorter stint than that of anyone else we have met.... and here we are thinking it seems like a such a luxurious amount of time! In fact we ran into one guy in Myanmar who told us he originally set out to do 9 months of traveling, but then realized quickly it was “not nearly enough time”. He changed his itinerary to include 16 months of travel and was still groaning that “if only he had another month, he would be able to make it to East Timor and then he would have really seen everywhere.” Literally everywhere. Is it really necessary to see everywhere, including East Timor, while in your 20s?? I think you could have seen Matt rolling his eyes from 20 feet away. Hahaha different worlds I guess. (To his credit, he did also say that he slept on a park bench the night before, so chances are he has spent the same amount of money in 6 months of travel as we will spend in 6 weeks...)

  



One of the many little cuddlebutts at the villages we visited. I was
this close to snatching this guy and
bringing him on the boat with us.

Okay, back to the slow boat, since I'm clearly rambling now. Last thing to share about this part - the little villages that dot all the hillsides here are jam packed with two phenomenal things: 1) tiny puppies everywhere (seriously, the dogs here must be pregnant 100% of their lives) and 2) tiny black piglets oinking and running everywhere. The villagers may be poor, but I’m pretty sure they must be a really happy bunch. How could you not be happy if you were constantly surrounded by puppies and piglets?  

 

Thursday afternoon our boat finally arrived in Luang Prabang, which is where we spent the next 48 hours. This town is AWESOME. It looks like a mix of Charleston SC, a town in the south of France, and a small Southeast Asian town all mixed into one. It sits on the banks of two rivers, is small and very walkable, and is covered in trees, cafes with big outdoor patios, really pretty architecture, good restaurants, tons of guesthouses, etc. I have loved being in a city where you can just go out for a run (without fear of getting run over or inhaling too much smog) and then spend the day meandering the streets, stopping for coffee and people watching. If you are ever planning a trip to this part of the world, I very much recommend it.



our cozy guesthouse, with amazing homemade yogurt and
French baguettes for breakfast




fun finds wandering the streets of Luang Prabang




Tamarind cooking school in Luang Prabang 

Lao food is strange. Here is what we made: fish wrapped in
banana leaf, minced chicken stuffed in lemon grass and fried,
chili paste to eat with sticky rice, and coconut sticky rice with fruit.
Interesting to learn, but probably not something we will replicate at home.