Living Peacefully - Luang Prabang

It all begins with a night bus from Vientiane...something that seemed like a good idea at the time, although in all honesty I am not sure the day one would differ all that much. Apart from the fact you could take in the scenery, and perhaps potentially being left on the side of the road, alone, would not be as scary a prospect. Thankfully this did not happen to me, but read on to see how it was avoided...hee hee.

so of course, pickup at 18:00 means 19:30, no worries, and then i arrive to the mammoth bus and i'm hunting for a viable seat only to realise they are assigned seats. there was this couple to be separated by an aisle (oh my god, 9 hours with a 50cm aisle between us how will we survive) and Andrea being patron saint it seems agrees to trade. And am due some good karma i reckon..

so first i was sat next to a local girl and her lad comes up and starts saing 'this is my little darling' and i'm thinking here we go again...so i was like ok dude wheres your seat..and this being SE Asia i was starting to think I'd only be changing again for a sizeable sum of kip...but he actually isn't on the bus at all, so no trade necessary. He just, you know, needed to make sure she was taken care of...odd, surely, as she WAS (or at least appeared to be) an adult, and local..thereby I am not entirely sure what myself the foreigner who's Lao language consisted of 'hello' and 'thank you' was meant to do...suppose make sure she wasn't left at the side of the road toilet stop maybe?

then it turns out she is in the wrong seat anyway so all that for nothing really. Though I had wished she stayed since I then got stuck next to a woman with a small child. One who was kicking constantly, intermittent with screaming. or self being used as nappy changing table, and oh, have i mentioned the puke? kid puked. all over the aisle thankfully not on self. required recall of junior high gymnastics team skills to remove self from seat and not get flip flop covered in it. all to the setting of bad lao karaoke blasted on the TV, and when the finally shut that off the girl behind me was blaring the same stuff from her mobile whilst kicking my seat. i got it from mboth ends!! ahh!!!

one of the best bits was going to the toilet..i tried to do this during our pitstop..in the bus of course was a bush in the dark. not that i've never done that, but considering the bus left with no warning and no one's missing me if i dont get back on..can't risk it. so i used the bus one. but bus left, tossing self to and fro with toilet water, and then i had to get over the people who were sat on stools and boxes in the aisles, which required swinging from the overhead storage bins like tarzan, or cirque du soleil acrobat to get back into my seat. also avoiding the puke.

that couple slept rather soundly in MY seat. I repeated to myself, it could be worse; I could be going all the way to Vietnam, or be in one of those aisle seats, and remembered how lucky I was the next journey would be done by plane.

However, if Luang Prabang was the reward, it was well worth it. I was wondering how it would be, and worried that since everyone had hyped it up so much the power of expectation might cause disappointment, but not so. After finding a suitable guesthouse, in which I had a nice terrace, garden and a view of a few points of the city, I recovered and set off to explore. The concentration of temples is astounding, and the atmosphere is just taking life slowly. I wandered up the hill to the gold stupa I'd seen from my guesthouse room and had a fantastic view of the entire city from up there. And there were surprisingly few tourists. Wandered back down through another temple, where the buddha statues were labelled by days of the week (ie, Saturday's buddha), and there was a buddha footprint. I decided on dinner down by the river at one of the cheaper foodstall/restaurant hybrid things - not quite so casual as the riverside in Vientiane, but great food and service nonetheless!

The following day I took the advice of a few other travelers and decided to hit up the waterfalls, combining with a boat trip down the river to the buddha cave and a village that produces 'Lao Lao' (Lao whiskey). For anyone else wanting to do this or any other trip, I'd recommend allowing the time to shop around; the prices I was quoted varied wildly from 150,000 to 100,000 kip for pretty much the same thing. They of course will want you to book straight away as well...of course, you could also get a tuk tuk to drive you to the waterfalls, or take a motorbike out. However those options work better when you are in a group; for myself, it was cheaper to join the group in the minivan. The waterfall is quite nice, and very refreshing in the heat! You can also see Asiatic black bears that have been rescued from poachers.

The next day was not going to be a full one as I had my flight to Hanoi, but I think I did alright in terms of fitting stuff in! Starting the day off with yoga and then a great little breakfast in Joma (yes, there is a branch in LP so I hadn't had to give up my Joma habit when I left Vientiane!) and then went down to make a deal with the Mekong riverboat drivers to take me to 'the other side'. Again, this is always a problem for solo travelers - the high price paid for complete independence...though I did get him down to 20,000 kips from 50,000 which was alright considering he took me there, dropped me off away from the regular tourist boat stop and waited as long as I wanted which could have been all day had I not had my flight. Well, that was part of my bargaining power I guess, saying he would be back in time to pick up another fare for the day...hee hee.

The other side was less developed, with a paved road for only part of the way (albeit lest we forget the satellite TV!), and very very peaceful. There is a simple temple one can wander up to (of course they will want a nominal amount of money for this from the foreigners) but it was well worth it and the only other people I saw up there were a couple of chatty Australians and the children who are following you trying to get money for flowers. They ask for other things too, such as pens and tissues and can be rather persistent so if you head to the other side be prepared...however it is worth it.

My last activity was of course one of my favourite..haggling with the tuk tuks for transport to the airport. Again I was prepared to part with larger sums than most owing to the solo traveler thing, and when the Aussies from the other side told me it would be 50,000 kip I was prepared for this gouge..so was pleasantly surprised when I began shopping around the tuk tuks and their initial prices were half that. It did make me laugh a bit, how I was just enquiring and their immediate response was 'you go NOW!'. I just thought, I only wish I were able to travel with a small handbag as my only luggage! Anyway, I ended up being stalked by a moto taxi driver (as in he kept following me down the street asking 'have boyfriend? have boyfriend? want Lao boyfriend?'. He asked 40,000 at first, but we agreed on 25,000 for a later guesthouse pickup with luggage and the whole sidecar thing just cracked me up so I thought I can put up with one last lecherous local before hopping the flight to Hanoi.

Oh, and don't arrive at the Luang Prabang airport too early. It's really a very very small airport.