Luang Prabang

Sooo now we just arrived at our third destination during our big South-east Asia trip. Incredible how time flies! For our roundtrip through Laos we also had 6 days and of course we were really looking forward for a guide this time. We booked our guide in advance from Germany! We started in a quite small city called Luang Prabang (60.000 inhabitants) which belongs to the Unesco -World heritage since 1995.  We spent 3 days in Luang Prabang.

We interrupt the little monk under the tree, but you can see Barney? 😉

Luang Prabang is a really nice small city so it´s not a big deal too walk from place to place. Most of the highlights are on the main street !!! Everything is very relaxed. The old town is surrounded by the Mekong River. It is quite easy going there and it is really comfortable to amble through the small streets (alleys).

This place seems like another world and it is also very interesting to see the monks in there orange robes, flitting across the streets. You can even see a lot of monks, learning for school under the trees with their teachers.

There a lot of nice restaurants, cafes and cool pubs that decorate the old town of the former french colony in a very nice way – AWESOME !!!!

When it is getting dark in Luang Prabang the whole city is changing into a big night market and it is really fun to walk through the small streets!!

The local morning-market and the  Royal Palace

The next morning we started very early to visit the morning-market. We had to walk through very small and narrow streets to get there. Mainly women  are sitting on the market, trying to sell their goods. They really have a huge range of fruits and vegetables, meat and fish and also a lot of clothes most of them for children. Most of the locals do their purchases early in the morning. It was fun to see, how proud they offered their goods and they were very happy when you tried some of their delicacies. Of course we did taste some fruits and spices, but we skipped the grilled rat.

A special delicacy of the locals …. yummy

For a small snack we can highly recommend a mealworm or a couple of insects and it is really good for your health it contains a lot of protein!! 😀

After the market we visited the former royal house from Laos. The structure of the museum is quite interesting and it is absolutely not boring. You can see a historical collection of clothes plus a lot of donations from other countries. The palace seems not so pompous as you maybe imagine. Rather a little bit moderate and sporadic equipped, but for only 2 Us-Dollar it is absolutely worth it.

The Royal Palace Entrance

It is strictly forbidden to take pictures from the entrance of the Royal Palace. Bags or cameras are also not allowed, you have to put them in lockers. In front of the palace you can see a beautiful temple and behind the palace you can admire a lot of nice cars. To get a good overview over the city we went directly from the palace to the Chomsi Temple. From the top we had a perfect panoramic view. The approximately 300 steps are more than worth it. We did it very early after sunrise and that was a good decision.

Buddha sculpture are decorating the way down.

You have an amazing view on the Mekong river

After all these walking we allowed us a cup of coffee in the Scandinavian Bakery, which is only 2 min walking distance away. In the main street you can find a lot of very nice cafes and restaurants and the atmosphere is really great. We spent two evenings in a couple of really nice bars on the main street.

Tat Kuang Xi Waterfall

On the second day we started quite early with our guide to drive to the Tat Kuang Xi waterfalls, approximately 25 km from Luang Prabang. For us the best part of the journey through Laos. It is really an amazing place. Likely we arrived there early, so the place wasn’t  too busy. After we payed the entrance only 2, 50 US -Dollars, we spent a couple hours at the beautiful waterfall in the middle of the jungle. A dreamlike coulisse. The multilevel waterfall with turquoise colored and very cold water was more then overwhelming for us. An incredible attraction we haven’t seen before. Really pure nature !!!

   Bear Rescue Centre 

The Bear Rescue Center ,,Free the Bears,, is located in front of the entrance before you go to the waterfalls. It is a really nice project here to protect the bears from the poachers! The rescue project was founded by Australians to protect the bears. If you want, you can donate some money for the organisation or you can buy a really nice t-shirt in the shop.

He is sooooo relaxed…..

On our last day in Luang Prabang we did a really nice boat trip along the beautiful Mekong River. Our guide reserved a private boat for us and it was fucking romantic! Our first stop was at the whiskey village. Of course there were distilling plenty of alcohol and  you can try everything and feel the unique taste. We tried a couple of really nice whiskeys! We were pretty surprised regarding the rice schnapps (liquor) the taste was so mild. We noticed that they had a couple of weird liquors like snake schnapps, scorpion schnapps and also a schnapps from elephant penis. The people for sure like things a little bit special. Sounds like a awesome meal!? Grilled rat and a big glass of homemade  elephant penis schnapps, I am sure nobody needs more for perfect eve !!!!!!!

Private Boat 🙂

Homemade “Schnapps”

The sweet little kids with their baby dogs <3

Vang Vieng

Vang Vieng  is a very strange place! It was very famous and popular for partys, drugs and tubing especially for backpackers. It was normal that tourists were drunk or on drugs, floating down the river Nam Xong on old truck rubber tires and stopped at the special river bars to get tanked up!!!!!! Now the government closed most of the river bars and it is forbidden to float down the river when you are hammered or on drugs, because in the last years several people drowned in the river.

We spend only one day in the small town and actually we only want to see the Blue Lagoon and go swimming there. But as we reached the Blue Lagoon were very disappointed, only the water was quite nice, for us it seemed all a little bit strange. The place is very small and not very clean so we were not this  thrilled.

The blue lagoon of Vang Vieng

After a short time we left the place to see the small backpacker party area to get a little impression of it. For the bars and restaurants it is a hard business since the government changed the law in terms of drinking alcohol and drugs. We were not so thrilled to visit Vang Vieng and spend the rest of the day in our really nice located hotel (directly at the river) to leave the next morning to Vientiane the capital of Laos.

Our nice Hotel in Vang Vieng

Vientiane the capital of Laos

Vientiane, our last stop on our journey through Lao. The capital of Laos seems very relaxed. Only 350.000  people live their and of course you can still feel the former french influence, especially when you see the really nice colonial buildings. The city seems very untouched although several travelers visited this city, but of course no mass tourism. It is also a good thing that the entrance for the temples and museums, restaurants and hotels are really reasonable. The city has a lot of nice little restaurants and cafes, and they are preparing the food fresh for you. Up till now no big chains like Mc Donalds, what makes the place unique!!! Especially in  the evening it is really nice to walk along the Mekong river to enjoy the sunset.

In Vientiane are a couple of sights, that are quite interesting and likely not so crowded. Like Patuxay bow  (Monument) it is similar like the Paris bow, because the city was under the french influence till 1949. The Monument is very central located and for only 5000 kip p/p (approx. 1/2 us-dollar) you can climb up and enjoy the beautiful view over Vientiane. We think that Vientiane is a quite nice city with no mass tourism, if you travel through Laos, you should spend 1-2 days here!!!!!!!!!!!! 

The best team

Infobox

Hotels:

Luang Prabang: Le Palais Juliana
Vang Vieng:        Riverside Boutique Hotel 
Vientiente:          S-Park Design Hotel 

Visa:

35 US Dollar, directly at the airport.
Don´t forget your pass photos!

Currency:

Lao KIP
The current course you can look up at Oanda

Languages:

Laotian
English
French

Local time:

You can read the local times here

High Season:

The best time for Lao here

Health:

The vaccination passport should be checked by a doctor and refresher courses such as tetanus, yellow fever and hepatitis A,B,C may be performed.
You can read more about this here

Safety

You can find all entry requirements at the listed embassies

Embassy:

For US Embassy: link
ForUK Embassy: link
For AUS Embassy: link

 Information about the tour guide

Name:

Mana Phuangbouni

Language:

English,
French,
Laotian

Contact:

laostourguide@yahoo.com

About Mana

Mana is really a very sympathetic tourguide. The first sentence was: “Do you like beer?”
He really loved to go out with friends for a couple of beers and he was really a quite funny guy and a real whiskeylover.
Luang Prabang is more than a small city with a lot of nice pubs and restaurants, but not a party place.
Lan showed us the best local places and we had a lot of fun. So we can highly recommend  him for your trip!

Thank you sooo much Lan for the awesome tour through Lao!

Saskia & Bastian