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We’ve arrived in Luang Prabang in the north of Laos and wow, what a difference to Vietnam!!

Orange robed monks wandering the streets, quietly spoken, gentle people, pavements are for pedestrians not bikes, no horns blasting, traffic gives way to pedestrians and other road users and generally it’s another world,. It’s a town that is extraordinarily pretty, with traditional wooden shophouses alongside French colonial buildings on the banks of the Mekong and numerous wats with masses of vibrant colourful flowers. We think it’s a place that the whole world would like even though it is a tad touristy.  On the good side, it’s definitely not a party town, things start to close around 10 P.M. and we even got locked out of our guesthouse at 10.30 P.M……dirty little stop outs!

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We’ve found a guesthouse that’s very traditional and very peaceful, much in keeping with the city.  Neil was concerned by Cheryl’s over excitement at getting soft white sheets and fluffy white bath towels…..maybe we have been staying in too many low budget places!! By the way, as we type this on our balcony we can hear the drums and cymbals from the neighbouring Wat….cool huh!!  They say that tourists come to L P for a few days and end up staying a few weeks. We’ve been here 2 days and can see why.

Yesterday afternoon we bumped into Brig and Lyn, Canadians about our age, who we met at Zackry’s on Langkawi Island just before Christmas. Yes, it really is a small world! Since we parted company they have been to Cambodia and Vietnam in the reverse direction to us.

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We have also met with Sarah & Jill are here from Hanoi and had dinner with them and as they are here for a few days we’ll keep bumping into them again.

We’ve made our first local friend, a novice Monk called Oun Kham. (see pic) He’s 19, been a novice for 4 years and his English is excellent. He wants to move into tourism, like a lot of young monks, but he’s smart enough to know that the market is saturated with English speaking guides. As an ex French colony there’s also a lot of French tourists and French speaking tourist guides to go with them.

So he’s decided to learn Spanish which he sees as a niche area. Very smart! One small problem, he has no senior monks to learn from as none of them speak Spanish. No problem, he’s decided to teach himself! That is with the aid of the one text book from the local library and a guy from Dublin who happened to overhear our conversation and sat down with Oun to pass on his knowledge of Spanish.

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Becoming a monk is a great way to get an education. For people like Oun who come from a small village, becoming a novice gives him the opportunity to get an education that he couldn’t get in school and that he could never afford at University.

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We’ve done a few touristy things, visiting Wats etc but generally done nothing as this is a very chilled city which, for an ex-capital, feels more like a village. Cheryl has had the only real bit of excitement, our first real dodgy “something”, that stayed inside her stomach for about 3 hours before deciding to violently eject itself into the “big white telephone” throughout the night. Gladly, all is now well and she’s back firing on all four cylinders at breakfast, lunch and dinner.

BeerLao is famous throughout S E Asia although you can’t get it outside Laos (we don’t think). It is “the brand” in Laos, bigger than anything else, and something that The Laos people are immensely proud of. They also have “lao lao” a rice based spirit. Neil was offered a sip from a shopkeeper and even he thought it was likely to make his hair fall out …tee hee! However, at 6000 kip (£0.50) a half litre he’s more than likely to get a liking for it before we leave. It’s generally home made and is supplied in empty water bottles…an excellent example of recycling!

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