Luang Prebang
Awoke (late) to the lovely Laos sunshine. In what was left of the morning, I visited some tourist agencies and heard pretty much the same thing about ten times over. The same price quoted for everything until you try and leave and then they suddenly ask you "What you want to pay?". I wish the converstations would just start like that, everything would be so much easier!
After little success, I walked around LP again, scooping up most of the temples I'd missed yesterday, and then sandwiches for lunch. I've already built up quite a rapport with one sandwich seller. Sounds pretty boring but I am eating Lao too - last night I feasted on the mounds of food available in the night market. Cold, but delicious. The handicraft part of the night market was also interesting, as it occupied the whole main road through Luang Prebang. I probably would have enjoyed it slightly more if the headroom had been more Western and less SE Asian, but the wares on sale were extremely colourful.
For dinner I went to a restaurant accross the river, which involved a two-minute crossing of the river in a very narrow boat! Watching closely I noticed that the crossing just consisted of paddling upstream and accross, then letting the boat drift down to the jetty. No need to paddle downstream at all, the rivers own stream is so fast. On the way back we were too late for the boat crossing so had to wander through the village to find a bridge. I like most bridges, but this particular specimen had the walkway on the outside of the structure, very wobbly planks on the floor, a low guardrail and a great view through the gaps in the plan to the huge fast-flowing body of water below. Not my favourite bridge. There were also planks going across the walkway every 2m or so. I'm sure these are structurally important, but they were also very good at tripping you up :S
Dinner itself consisted of a couple of platters (including buffulo skin chilli dip, eggplant dip, Mekong seaweed, lao sausage, chilli, chilli and chilli...) and a Lao fondue. The fondue was more of a DIY barbecue, with a broth around the rim for cooking noodles, cabbage, morning glory and poaching eggs, and a barbecue in the centre for the beef and fish. We initially though there were two types of fish, but one type turned out to be lard. Eurgh. All in all a great meal in a great riverside setting.
Awoke (late) to the lovely Laos sunshine. In what was left of the morning, I visited some tourist agencies and heard pretty much the same thing about ten times over. The same price quoted for everything until you try and leave and then they suddenly ask you "What you want to pay?". I wish the converstations would just start like that, everything would be so much easier!
After little success, I walked around LP again, scooping up most of the temples I'd missed yesterday, and then sandwiches for lunch. I've already built up quite a rapport with one sandwich seller. Sounds pretty boring but I am eating Lao too - last night I feasted on the mounds of food available in the night market. Cold, but delicious. The handicraft part of the night market was also interesting, as it occupied the whole main road through Luang Prebang. I probably would have enjoyed it slightly more if the headroom had been more Western and less SE Asian, but the wares on sale were extremely colourful.
For dinner I went to a restaurant accross the river, which involved a two-minute crossing of the river in a very narrow boat! Watching closely I noticed that the crossing just consisted of paddling upstream and accross, then letting the boat drift down to the jetty. No need to paddle downstream at all, the rivers own stream is so fast. On the way back we were too late for the boat crossing so had to wander through the village to find a bridge. I like most bridges, but this particular specimen had the walkway on the outside of the structure, very wobbly planks on the floor, a low guardrail and a great view through the gaps in the plan to the huge fast-flowing body of water below. Not my favourite bridge. There were also planks going across the walkway every 2m or so. I'm sure these are structurally important, but they were also very good at tripping you up :S
Dinner itself consisted of a couple of platters (including buffulo skin chilli dip, eggplant dip, Mekong seaweed, lao sausage, chilli, chilli and chilli...) and a Lao fondue. The fondue was more of a DIY barbecue, with a broth around the rim for cooking noodles, cabbage, morning glory and poaching eggs, and a barbecue in the centre for the beef and fish. We initially though there were two types of fish, but one type turned out to be lard. Eurgh. All in all a great meal in a great riverside setting.
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