Are we in France or Laos?

If someone were to randomly drop you in Luang Prabang, Laos, you may have a moment of thinking you are in a town in France. From the cobble stone streets and the little shops, to the number of people speaking French and the delicious sidewalk cafes with fresh bread, you can really see the French influence in this northern Laos city.

We really only spent one day here due to the general lack of sunshine. I suppose we had been quite spoiled so far in Thailand with only one or two clouds max previously.

The main highlights include our authentic Laos food experience and our visit to That Chomsi on top of Phou Si hill in the middle of the city.

Our guide book mentioned a great little restaurant that had a lot of sampler platters of authentic Laos food called Tamarind Cafe. The restaurant had moved since the book was published so we couldn't find it at first, but we eventually stumbled across it. We ordered the set menu dinner because we couldn't decide on individual dishes, and let's just say we're glad we went ahead and had our authentic Laos meal so we could go back to eating Pad Thai and hamburgers without feeling guilty! I'm not saying it was all bad, it just wasn't really our favorite. We started with some bamboo shoot soup which Mattie liked and Julian didn't so much. We then had a sampler of jaew, which is a traditional dip you eat with sticky rice, water buffalo skin, seaweed that's dried some special Laos way, and some sausage of some sort. The next course had chicken stuffed lemon grass, which was pretty good, fish in a banana leaf and stir fried pumpkin! For dessert we had tea, Mattie had ginger lemongrass tea, yum, and purple sticky rice with their unique tamarind and coconut sauce. They say the sauce is famous, but I don't believe them :)





In the center of the city is a good sized hill topped by That Chomsi. Mattie stopped on the way for a 5000 Kip fruit shake(thats about 60 cents). It was delicious and it sustained her for the 355 step hike up to the top of the hill. Also on the hill is "Buddha's Footprint" aka giant hole in the ground...






The following morning we woke up at 8:10 am and went to the front desk of our guest house to ask what time the van left for Vang Vieng. She said 8:30 am... Ok! The Tuk Tuk was very prompt, as always except when you want it to be, and when we arrived at the bus station they put us in a van with 5 English kids, probably around 18 years old. They had been traveling in the van since Chiang Mai and 24 hours later they were smelling pretty ripe!

If there was a Paint app on the iPad I would draw this, but there isn't so maybe I can give a description. Grab a pen and paper and draw a dot and label it Luang Prabang. Now, starting from that dot, draw the most complicated, squiggly, curvy, twisty line you can. At the end put another dot and label it Vang Vieng. This is the road we took. Not only was the road impossible but we're pretty sure our driver was mentally unstable. His favorite past-times include playing chicken with oncoming traffic and hitting as many giant potholes possible. Nonetheless, we made it in one piece and we didn't even get a flat tire... Very surprising! Although a bit more stomach turning than the boat ride, the views were every bit as spectacular.





















- Mattie and Julian

Location:Luang Prabang, Laos