Luang Prabang, Luang Prabang Province, LaosHi from Luang Prabang, a city full of temples, monks, handicraft shops, good food, and plenty of atmosphere.
Up before the dawn
We set a brutally early 4:45am alarm this morning, waking up in the pitch black to the sounds of frogs chirping. It was chilly and damp as we hastily pulled on layers and headed out for our tuk-tuk, which was supposed to come at 5:30am to take us into town. By 5:45, the driver hadn't arrived, and so the guesthouse owner drove us in the minivan instead.
Why the early start? There's this ceremony that takes place every morning at dawn here in Luang Prabang where a procession of monks from the local temples walk down the main road and Buddhist faithful give alms (usually small food offerings) to them as they go. It's a pretty unique thing to see, so we didn't want to miss the chance.
The procession was quiet and fairly low-key. Not wanting to offend anyone or get in the way, Ryan and I sat on the opposite side of the street, taking care to keep our heads lower than the monks and our feet tucked away, as it's quite rude to point your feet at people here. We saw a fair number of tourists behaving badly, jumping up to take close-up photos, getting in the faces of the monks and the people giving alms, and otherwise just being obnoxious. This is a religious ceremony where tourists are tolerated but not particularly invited, so I felt it was best to keep a low profile.
It's interesting to see how young many of the monks are; most appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties, with some in their early teens, even. It's quite common in Laos for boys to enter the monkhood in their teens, as it provides rural farmers with a way for their sons to get an education, food, and shelter. It's estimated that up to 1 out of 2 Laotian men were monks at some point of their lives. Most leave the monkhood as early adults to get a job and raise a family, but some remain in the order.
The alms-giving lasted about a half hour, at which point things started to wrap up. It was a lower-key ceremony than I'd imagined, with only a few dozen people around to watch. Part of that may be that tourism is only starting to return to Laos after the pandemic. Part of it could've just been other stuff going on that day. In any case, it was pretty cool to see.
Phousi Hill and a Money Tree ceremony
After the alms-giving, we popped into a nearby cafe for a coffee. They seemed to have a Canadian theme, with a Nova Scotia bagel and smoked salmon breakfast on the menu, as well as Nanaimo Bars for sale in the dessert case. Go figure.
We walked around a little, exploring Luang Prabang's main road, passing by the National Museum and a few temples. At one point, we heard music and commotion, and followed it to see dozens of people dressed up in their finery, holding Buddhist money trees and taking selfies. It appeared to be some sort of procession forming; we weren't sure quite what was going on, but whatever it was looked fun.
Since it was still early, we decided to take advantage of the cool temperature and scant crowds to hike up to the top of Phousi Hill, a temple area rising high above the centre of Luang Prabang. Think Mount Royal, but smaller, and with lots of Buddha statues. It was just over 300 steps to the top, which took us about ten minutes or so. Many people hike it at sunset but apparently it gets quite crowded at that hour. Early in the morning, the views from the top were still shrouded in fog and mist, but there were few people around and a lovely calm stillness to the atmosphere.
The staircase up isn't all that interesting, and the stupa at the top is small and a little underwhelming. But the path back down the back of the hill is far more interesting, winding through areas with tons of different Buddha statues (including one in a different pose for each day of the week), a cave with more Buddha statues inside, and another small cave with what is supposedly Buddha's footprint (though to my eye it was enormous and looked more like a dinosaur foot than a human one).
Back at ground level, we walked out of the park onto the street literally right in front of a parade. Actually, it was the procession we'd seen starting to form earlier, only this time, fully organized, with flag bearers leading the way. People were carrying money on offering trees, playing music, and generally looking cheerful. We asked a few people and gathered that it was probably a procession celebrating the raising of funds for restoration work at a local temple.
Banana Pancakes, anyone?
At that point, we'd done what felt like a full day's worth of sightseeing, all before 8am. We flagged a tuk-tuk and negotiated a price for him to take us back to our hotel so we could have breakfast. Yep, all that before we even ate the first meal of the day.
Breakfast was served once again on our private balcony by the friendly hotel staff. Ryan had another noodle soup, albeit not as good as the one in Pak Beng. I opted for that old backpacker cliche, banana pancakes. Yep, I'm okay with being a stereotype when it's such a tasty one.
A day of temples, handicrafts, food, and beer
We took a short rest after breakfast before heading back out to catch the 10am free shuttle back into town. They dropped us on the main road next to the post office. At that point, we had no particular plan other than to see Luang Prabang over the next six hours or so.
We set out from one end of the main road, walked all the way to the end, looped back around the riverbank, and headed all the way back. Downtown Luang Prabang isn't all that big, and yet, we walked a ton today, nearly 20km, checking out the sights.
In no particular order, we visited: Countless temples (seriously, I lost count), a bunch of handicraft shops and market stalls selling items made by local hill tribe artisans, some cafes, a riverside park, a restaurant for lunch, and more temples.
The riverside park is worth mentioning because of the bamboo bridge: It's one of two in Luang Prabang that cross the river, but only for a few months a year: A local family builds the bridge out of bamboo every dry season, and it washes away every rainy season. It's rickety and wobbly but surprisingly strong. It cost 18,000 kip (around $1 USD) to cross both ways, with the money going to support the family who builds and maintains the bridge.
Just past the riverside park, we found something exciting: Craft chocolate in Laos! A Chocolate Dream is, as far as I know, Laos's first and only bean-to-bar craft chocolate company. It's made by MIkael, a Belgian Israeli living in Vientiane who started the company to feature cacao from the region. His chocolate bars are sold in a handful of shops in Vientiane, as well as one cafe here in Luang Prabang. When I was planning this trip, I messaged him to ask where to try his bars, and he helpfully supplied me with this list. Most of the chocolate bars are made with Vietnamese cacao, but I tried the 72% dark chocolate that is the first ever to be made with local Laotian cacao grown in Vientiane Province. It was quite good, too.
We stopped for lunch at a small restaurant with a bamboo garden. I had some noodle soup that was delicious, and Ryan ordered fish curry. By that point, the midday sun was beating down, and we both needed some shade and some water to cool down.
After lunch, we meandered around again, seeing a few more temples, some more shops, and just checking out the vibe of the town. We stopped in at the bank to exchange some of our USD for Kip, a process that involved a lot more time and paperwork than it should have.
Mid-afternoon, we decided it was time for a beer. Actually, we ordered two: A Luang Prabang special edition BeerLao, and a BeerLao Dark. In absence of a craft beer scene here in Laos, we're determined to try all the different varieties of BeerLao that we can get our hands on. Both were pretty decent, actually.
The train ticket saga
The one piece of stress today was our worry about getting train tickets to Vientiane on Thursday. This needs a little explanation.
See, Laos's high speed railway is pretty new, built by the Chinese and running only since last year. In typical Laotian fashion, the sale of train tickets on the railway is handled in what must be the most confusing and inefficient way possible. You can't buy tickets online; they can only be purchased at the train stations (which are all located a fair distance outside of town) in person with a passport or other national ID, or at a couple of ticket offices -- one in Vientiane, one in Luang Prabang -- and only a few days before you travel. The ticket offices in town only accept local or Chinese QR code payment methods, not cash or international cards. Cash can be used at the train stations, but the hours are inconsistent and they are liable to sell out while you queue. Apparently, most tickets are snapped up by tour operators or even by railway employees looking to resell for a profit, meaning that they often sell out before they officially go on sale.
They do have plans to launch a mobile ticketing app, but that's not up and running just yet. And even when it does launch, it requires a Laotian phone number and payment method, and it won't issue e-tickets, only a code to pick up physical tickets at the train station.
All this makes it really challenging for tourists to buy railway tickets. When I was planning the trip, this was the one ticket I was unable to buy in advance. Laos is a country best travelled with a lot of time and patience and without a set schedule, but Ryan and I don't have that kind of time, so we needed a ticket for Thursday. It was proving to be a challenge.
Before coming to Laos, I'd reached out to one tour operator in Luang Prabang who'd been mentioned on TripAdvisor as sometimes being able to procure tickets for tourists. I'd been exchanging WhatsApp messages with him, and he assured me he'd be able to buy the tickets for us, but then was frustratingly refusing to answer any follow-up messages, so I didn't have high hopes. In parallel to this, the tour guide from our Nagi of Mekong cruise offered to have a friend of his help out by going to the train station to attempt to buy the tickets for us. So we had two possible leads.
I spent much of the day texting back and forth with both of them. Our guide's friend went to the ticket office and lined up, but soon messaged back with the frustrating news that the tickets for Thursday were all sold out. That left the tour operator as our only avenue, so we went in person to his office to chat with him. He was evasive again, saying he got our tickets but they would be delivered maybe "later" or "tomorrow". Until we had tickets in hand, we weren't feeling too comfortable. We said we would come back at 5pm to pick up the tickets and asked him to make sure they were delivered by then. He said he would. We weren't too sure.
Anyway, all this led to a fair amount of stress that overshadowed our otherwise lovely relaxing day exploring Luang Prabang. So, late afternoon when we badly needed a break from the heat, we found another biergarten restaurant off a small alley next to a backpacker's. It served mostly imported beers, largely Belgian, though they also had some Japanese beers and some Brewdog. We ordered a Belgian IPA to share. At that point, I got the text message I'd been waiting for since early morning: The tour operator had our tickets in hand! He sent a photo and everything! Whew. Feeling relaxed and happy for the first time all day, we finished our beer and headed up the road to pay for and collect the tickets. Woot woot, mischief managed!
There's always a night market, Laos edition
At this point it was just after 5pm, the sun was going down, and the night market was popping up at breakneck speed. Actually, it's pretty amazing to see the market stall vendors setting up; an entire market pops up in a matter of minutes, from nothing. We walked through the pedestrian-only stalls, checking out more handicrafts, slogan t-shirts, trinkets, and the typical tourist items. I bought a little embroidered case to use as a new camera pouch, since I'd had mine for a while now and figured it was time for a new one. It only cost a buck and a half, so why not, eh?
I wasn't super hungry for dinner, due to a combination of too much sun and having been awake for too many hours in a row. I bought a couple of snacks, including some of the coconut pancakes that are famous here in LP, and called it a day. Ryan got some pad thai in the market food court, and washed it down with yet another Beerlao.
Fed, templed out, ticketed, and tired, we caught the 6pm shuttle back to the hotel. Yeah, it was early to turn in for the night, but then, we'd been up since 4:45am and had been walking around for about 8 hours straight. Back at the hotel, we showered, changed, blogged a bit, and decided to make it an early night.
Luang Prabang is a small town that packs a big punch for its size. I'm quite liking the vibe here and I understand why it's so popular a spot to visit. More tomorrow!
MOM
2022-12-27
Wow……So that’s why I found you online last night, this morning.HA. Quite a full day. Sounds like the train tickets caused anxiety and stress. Glad it finally worked out. You are so brave and daring.
Joanne
2022-12-27
A packed and fruitful day. The train should be fun….