Day 10 – Living Lao
I’ll start this one off by a question, one that I pondered a
few times during the day. Namely, is this the most remote place I had been to.
The one that immediately came to mind I mentioned yesterday in El Calafate, which
georgraphically was quite similar, with most of the restaurants and hotels
being on one or two roads. That place too is also stylistically at least in the
middle of nowhere. It required a 10-hour flight to Santiago, a further three
hour flight to Punta Arenas, and then a six hour drive from Punta Arenas. There
are easier ways to get there, but even then, you truly are in the middle of
nowhere.
This might beat that. Now, of course there are villages deep
within the Amazonian jungles that no visitor has ever set foot in. Let’s remove
all of those. If we talk about places one may reasonable travel, I don’t know
if anything feels as remote, as isolated – in a good way I should note – as Luang
Prabang.
Of course, just like with El Calafate, the irony is a lot of
the tourism requires you leave the city and go even more remote, down one-lane
Laotian roads. But before I did that and ventured out of the compound, first I
walked all over the current compound. My AirBNB was situated on one end of ‘The
Peninsula’, Luang Prabang’s main area. From there, it was a 10-minute walk along
the Mekong to Saffron, one of the many, many coffeeshops and breakfast spots on
the drag. Other than it being relatively fancy, there’s nothing truly unique
about Saffron, but ti was a nice start none-the-less. The more fascinating
feeling was being back aside the Mekong, a good near thousand of miles away from
where I was first along-side it in the Mekong Delta. Much like Nile anchored my
Egypt part of the vacation I took last year, the Mekong is doing so this year.
After breakfast was a walk to the National Museum, a strange
open compound with the palace of the old king, a temple, and a theater. You are
required to leave all belongings in a locker (including phones) before entering
the palace part, which is sad as it took away a few photo opportunities. The
grounds though were quite pleasant, as was the palace which is set-up as it was
when the old King and Queen lived there. The strangest aspect was a room with a
bunch of diplomatic gifst they received, including two different gifts from
President Nixon giving them a Laotian flag that had been taken to the moon
along with moon rocks.
Afterwards I walked down the main drag, which looks a bit
different during the day. What you quickly notice is the ridiculous abundance
of wats. Like a crazy amount. And they are all quite well maintained, with
active monks trolling the grounds. I have no idea what they are named, and the
most reputed of which I didn’t go to as it is right next door to my AirBNB and
I will probably be able to easily go later. There’s one area on the main road
that has two of them back to back. Those were probably the best of the lot I
had seen. They all had signs saying you had to wear long pants, but no one
really enforced what would have been quite an annoying rule given the heat that
was a lot more present during the day.
After a bit of strolling around, I decided to treat mylseff
to a nice massage. I first wandered sloppily into a couple of stores, none all
to enticing in the dead heat of the night – figure I would try again at the
Night Market either tonight or tomorrow night. The massage was exceelent,
especially since they blasted the air conditioner in the room. They gave a nice
complimentary team after. Laos is unnervingly cheap at times, here with the standard
rate for a full body massage at 90,000 kip, or about 11 dollars.
After the massage I wandered around trying to find the best
spot for lunch. Luang Prabang has a tremendous amount of restaurants for a town
so small, all with fairly good reviews. I wouldn’t say too surprisingly most of
the top rated restaurants on a tripadvisor aren’t great first as they usually are
Western cuisine focused. However there is a tremendous amount of local food available.
My two choices for lunch were between the Ben Rive Terrace restaurant, one on
the road that borders the Mekong River – and has seating basically on a terrace
overlooking it, and Tamarind, one that had a bit more authentic Lao food but no
view.
I went with Tamarind, and I don’t regret it at all, other
than being seated outside and it being really hot despite the hard work of an
overhead fan – admittedly, this would have been a problem had a chosen the other
place. The food was indeed locally authentic – the restaurant had a series of large
shareable Laotian sampler options that were all sadly catered for 4-6 people. Instead,
two dishes were ordered, both a buffalo-meat Laak (their version of Laab, the
famous Thai minc ed dish), and then a sampler of Loatian sausages. Both were
quite good, especially the sausage dish. For the laak, we had the option to
choose it as mild / medium / very spicy / lao spicy. I chickened out and went
very spicy, which was probably the correct choice not wanting to risk any
stomatch issues. However, I do wonder how spicy Laotian Spicy would be, and
similarly why there is zero middle ground between medium and very spicy.
After lunch I finally ventured outside of Luang Prabang, going
to the Pak Ou caves. Out of all the standard touristy fare encircling Luang
Prabang, this is one of the common ones while also being one of the lesser
regarded of them. I can see why, though I think it was still worth a visit, especially
if you are staying 3+ days here.
There are a few different options on how to get there, from
tuk-tuk (not a classic tuk-tuk, but instead a pick-up wagon), to organized
tour, to boat down the Mekong. The advantage of the tuk tuk is it is the
quickest and cheapest and can just be a mode of transport (an organized tour will
likely throw a few culture trips on the side) and a boat while pretty takes
about twice as long there as it has to go upstream.
The tuk tuk was a pleasant enough ride especially after you
leave the bustle of the city, and before I knew it we were there. On the way
there were a few nice photo opportunities of the Mekong River and the lush hills
on the northern side, and then at one point we passed a wandering elephant and
elephant owner. Yeah, it is that type of remote.
We finally reached the Pak Ou village wehre you have to buy
a ticket, walk down an unmarked road the water to take a boat to reach the
caves on the other side. It is a lot of work, and since I came in the afternoon
there was only a couple other tourists along with me (a lot of people come in the
morning because it is usually a first stop on a lot of tour itineraries) so I
was unsure, but after a while I just went with it figuring all roads lead to
the caves.
The caves themselves are famous because inside them are
hundreds of buddha statues ranging from small to fairly large. The oldest of
them were found here and reportedly built centuries ago. The newest of them
have been added by worshipers over the years. There are two caves, the lower
one (more buddhas, but a smaller cave area), and the upper one (fewer buddhas,
but more hauntingly cool). The upper cave required a fairly steep 10-min walk
up stairs, but also allowed for numerous stops along the way to take pictures. Overall,
the setting is beautiful, if the buddhas themselves a bit disappointing. I knew
going in that that was the general consensus of the place, but it was still worth
visiting and a decent way to start off my Luang Prabang tourism.
After a quic tuk-tuk ride back into town, I visited Utopia
Bar to grab a view of the sunset. Utopia opens up to the banks of the smaller river
that envelops Luang Prabang, and is probably the most popular night spot in the
city (so I’ve read). It was fairly packed across its sprawling multi-level indoor/outdoor
layout, filled with all tourists, and mostly westerners, though again very few
if any American accents. The view was great, the drinks were cold (so, basically,
great). Their menu seemed quite good, though this was purely a drink stop. With
tons of beanbag chairs around, it reminded me a lot of similar establshments I
had been to in Goa. Overall, Utopia was a great way to spend the late
afternoon, and I probably will return tomorrow night to see what it is like at
night.
After a brief R&R at the AirBNB, including a great
coffee on the porch overlooking the streets of Luang Prabang, I headed out by tuk-tuk
to Manda de Lao. It is probably the most upscale Laotian restaurant in Luang
Prabang (there’s more fancy/expensive restaurants serving Western food), so fancy
enough it actually has a couple very popular tasting menus. I went with the
longer of the two (about $40 USD), and it was awesome.
It wasn’t served like a conventional tasting menu, with each
course of four appetizers and five mains coming out altogether in little bites.
The appetizers were a lightly grilled and marinated chicken leg, a pork laak
ball, a fish lime salad and a fish spring roll. All were quite good – my favorite
maybe surprisingly was the grilled chicken leg.
The mains were a lot to take in, though eah was quite good.
There was a grilled BBQ pork ribs, a set of sliced beef with tamarind sauce, a
baked fish in banana leaf, a salad of lime and chili vegetables, and an eggplant-based
chicken stew. These were all probably slightly larger than a normal tasting
menu portion, but together still worked nicely. More than a tasting menu, it
was probably a one-person-sized sampler, but it was excellent.
The dessert might have been the best dish out of all of them,
a local banana based dumpling, which was outstanding. Overall, the whole meal
was served with all tables encircling a giant lily pond that was lightly lit up
and looked beautiful. I can’t imagine what it would look like during the day.
Manda de Lao lived up to all expectations.
After dinner, I walked a few blocks to 525 Cocktail &
Tapas, an indoor-outdoor cocktail bar deep in Luang Prabang, a few blocks away
for the main drag. The place was well adorned, and served quite good cocktails
with a Loatian twist. The place was about 1/3rd full. I asked
the bartender and he said I am in the
tail end of the slow period, or in a better way the beginning of the heavy
period. He said places like this – or even Manda de Lao – would be packed in a
few weeks. If that is the case, I’m happy I came now, getting to experience
Luang Prabang like I’m one of a few dozens who know a secret.
