Luang Prabang

While the safety record of Laos Airlines may have improved drastically over the last ten years (per Lonely Planet - apparently they used to throw a six to start when it came to navigation, regularly plowing into mountain sides) the safety record of the airport cafeterias seems still to be firmly rooted in 1975 Asia. And so our first night in Luang Prabang was disturbed by my sore stomach accompanied by some less savoury symptoms.

The 'Airfix' MA60

The flight from Vientiane to Laos's old capital is only about 40-60 minutes and affords some fantastic views of the tremendous mountain and river scenery. Despite the relatively expensive tickets it was the preferred option over a 10-12 hour bus ride - doubtless to be shared by chickens, rice and other Lao commodities. Laos Airlines seems to be doing a good job, my only concern (luckily noticed upon descending the aeroplane steps) was that the plane in question was a Chinese manufactured MA60 - the juddering vibrations (on this new plane) heard on approach now made sense. Upon further research not only was the thing made in China, it was designed in Russia........in 1957!

The whole place is a UNESCO world heritage site

After a scary few moments when the luggage belt stopped minus our luggage (it was found - presumably they were checking for valuables and probably much to their disappointment) we jumped in a cab from the airport and journeyed to what turned out to be our disappointing hotel. Luang Prabang is massively popular with grey haired moneyed culture whores (is that a bit strong?) resulting in inflated prices and crappy standards. Our hotel was ok, but noisy, dusty and with a management that didn't really give a crap as they were full every night! Case in point was the asthmatic shower that pumped out less hot water than an arctic stream. On first complaint the management replaced the shower head? On second complaint they told us that these clearly ancient electric showers were only three months old and that we had the best one!

The town itself is very nice - the main (touristy area) is comprised of one long street running the length of the peninsula on which the town was built. The street is fully furnished with the full complement of tourist agents, restaurants, bars and gift shops. Our favourite spot was the local street creperie. Daily delicious crispy crepes smothered in honey kept Monali a very happy girl indeed!

At one end of the street there is a huge Hmong night market with all sorts of local handicrafts. They could very well be 'Thai' local handicrafts for all we knew, but to be fair they did have some really nice stuff. As normal it was quite disappointing to invoke the no space for shopping rule.

Sightseeing wise, we saw yet more temples, well the inside of one temple and the outside of many others. The Kings Temple is at one end of the peninsula and is (those with more sophistication than us should stop reading now) pretty much similar to every other temple we have seen. The highlight being the walls of some buildings being decorated by a pretty glass collage  in Japanese style.

Pretty walls

At the very end of the peninsula you can cross the river to head into silk farm....it looked rather like a tourist trap so we gave it a miss. We did however find a couple of tourists taking rather strange photographs - she was the model, dressed up as a local, imitating (poorly) local dance moves, the photographer was arty looking fellow (long hair) who seemed to take his style cues from Tarzan. Perhaps they were professionals, however their 'crew' comprised of two young local girls seemed to lack credibility.

Bizarre

The King's palace (he was kicked out by the commies back in '75, kicked out rather than murdered - Laos people are far too laid back for violence) was in the centre of town. The staff take a lunch break between 11:30 and 13:30 (very reasonable considering they are open at 8am and close at 4!!) and so arriving just after breakfast (11:15 ish) we decided to take in Phousi Hill (opposite the palace) and its many temples. After the exhausting initial climb we reached the highest temple, the views of the peninsula and it's river 'moat' were much more impressive than the temple itself. There is also a great view of planes approaching the airport and the new runway which will bring even bigger planes into Luang Prabang. On the way down the other side of the hill we took in the various Buddhas, shrines, 'Buddha's Foot' - his feet (at about 6ft long) are marginally bigger than mine and the monastery at the bottom of the hill.

More religious paraphernalia

We then headed to the palace - rather modest affair all told- again the highlight being the throne room with the same glass mosaic designs we saw at the King's temple. We also quite enjoyed reading the Laos royal family 'story' - rather like the story of Thailand its a bit out there - prince is exiled to the jungle, while the Mrs is out getting the dinner, gives his kids up to a man who can change his form between devil like person and nice person. Kid napper takes the kids back to the city, King finds his grand kids and decides prince wasn't all that bad, so tells him to come home. Then King dies and aforementioned prince becomes King. Doesn't sound that entertaining now, but it was better than looking at the displays containing the King's pair of shoes, or the King's pyjama trousers.

Petrol station in the garden

After the palace we took a look at the royal family's cars. Mainly gifts from the Americans - think 'thanks for letting us bomb the crap out of your country, here is a cadillac'! They (and the petrol pumps in the garden) didn't look as of they had been used for a few years.

Monali was not a happy kayaker!

Foolishly we booked some kayaking (white water, caves and whisky village route) with the White Elephant Tour Company. The tour guys were great and very professional, however our kayaking skills and stamina left much to be desired. It all went fairly smoothly to begin with as there was quite a bit of current to propel us along. As the river relaxed, we had to get to work, but our coordination is not all that. This resulted in the whack of colliding oars (accompanied by swearing) far more often than the gentle swish of rowing propulsion.

Pak Ou

We stopped for lunch at the Pak Ou caves, which are, well big caves. Caves with lots of Buddha's inside them. The highlight of the stop (other than resting our sore, wet arses) was the lunch - chicken, vegetables and rice. After lunch (by which time we'd joined the Mekong river) the rowing became really tiring - not only did we have to battle the wind which was much more noticeable on the huge expense of water, but we also had to move out the way of the motorway like traffic that zips up and down the river.

Whisky Village = Newcastle in the 90's stolen vehicle heaven

We finished the trip at 'Whisky Villgae'. This place is a tourist hell - but you have to hand it to the locals, they have worked out how to make money from a sustainable source and to be fair the place still has a villagy feel. In fact our arrival was greeted by ten small boys who bounded into the water intent on turning our kayak upside down so that they could enjoy 30 seconds of using it as a float. We found the oars to be good deterrents against the little monsters. My role as a disciplinarian was needed a few more times as they attempted to move off with bits of kayak while we were loading the truck.

Hygiene standards at the Whisky Village surprass
 those in the Highlands of Scotland

After five nights it was time to leave and it was about time we got our lazy backsides out of bed in time to watch the monks beg for alms. This is the primary reason that many of the tourists come here, but we are lazy and therefore even though the temple drums had woken us most mornings we had not been able to face a 6:30am start until the day we were leaving. The monk procession is a unique and fascinating sight, made a little cringe worthy by heaps of tourists who seem not able to keep to simple guide book advice and kneel when handing over rice. After many attempts at getting a good, arty picture (not easy with our little cheap camera) in less than optimal lighting conditions we went back to our room to finish packing.

We grabbed a final croissant at the local bakery and headed to the airport to catch our flight out of Luang Prabang and out of Laos. Our useless hotel had conveniently forgotten to book our taxi (after reminders the morning of and the night before), but were keen to point to the tuk-tuk driver who just happened to be across the road (very suspicious). We managed to flag down a taxi (its the same price as a tuk-tuk strangely) and made our way to the airport. After we managed to bypass the tour group queue we headed to international departures, passing a couple who were flying to Cambodia in order to catch a flight back into southern Laos the same day - they were unsucessfully trying to convince immigration to let them use the same visa??

Possibly the only time I'd choose French workmanship
 over that over another country

After checking our plane was of the French ATR variety rather than chinese, we relaxed in departures awaiting another new country!