Luang Prabang

Sorry, no photos today.  In what you'll soon see is a running theme on the day, we forgot to pack the USB cable.  Our bad.

 

We got to town Friday before Shabbat and headed to our guest house.  We had decided to splurge a bit and get the nice place, even though it cost three times as much ($25 instead of $8).  We figured we were only in town for a couple of days, and we knew we'd be spending a lot of time lying around over Shabbat, so what the hell.  The problem is we didn't count on liking the place so much that we stayed for an extra few days.  Since we're both too lazy to pack up and switch guest houses just to save a bit of cash, we're still paying the exorbitant rate.  I wonder if we can get a discount because of the loud sex our upstairs neighbors had all afternoon on Saturday.

 

Luang Prabang is a great town, I can see why so many people find themselves here longer than they expected.  Their town marketing slogan is "Stay Another Day."  I don't think I've ever seen a more successful campaign, though people would probably be lingering with or without the posters all over the place.  The town is a UNESCO World Heritage site, which, in addition to making everything a wee bit more expensive, forces the character of the place to be preserved as much as possible.  Which is remarkable considering how much construction is going on all over town.  The tourist part of town is pretty much three long, parallel streets along a peninsula in between two rivers.  One street runs along the Mekong and is lined with cute little outdoor cafes and bars on the banks of the river.  The middle street is the main tourist center, with tour agencies, shops, guest houses, etc. everywhere.  Some of them are super fancy, and we've been amazed by how much older the crowd is here than anywhere else we've been.  There certainly are plenty of backpackers (though not in our posh little neighborhood) but there are also families, elderly couples (like our parents age), and the never before encountered elderly lone traveler.  The third street is mostly filled with private homes and the fancier guest houses (like ours) and hotels (significantly more expensive than ours).  Most of the buildings in town are survivors/remakes from the French colonial time, so everything is very pretty.  And we're told the wine and cheese bars are very good.

 

We got to town with just enough time to buy some essentials and get food ready before Shabbat started (we assume - there was no magnet with candle-lighting times on the fridge).  We had our take-out vegan buffet dinner (the only one in town, so they're quite familiar with us by now) accented with some challah and dirty Israeli kiddush wine we picked up in some random store in Chiang Mai.  (Chabbad).  We relaxed and were in bed by ten, which is all the more impressive due to the fact that I didn't get out of bed until 12:30.  That felt nice.  I think Adina got out of bed to get some fruit salad from breakfast or something, but I'm not sure.  We took a walk around town in the afternoon, but the oppressive heat brought us back to our AC pretty quickly.  The locals were saying that the heat was quite unusual, but people in Chiang Mai said the same thing about the two solid days of rain we had there.  Either we bring freak weather everywhere we go, or locals here really have no concept of what happens here on a regular basis.  I suppose a third option is they had no idea what I was saying when we were discussing it, or vice versa.  One of these days we'll vacation in an English speaking country.  Like Israel.  In the evening we made it to the market where we didn't spend any money (hooray!) and then stayed out until the wee hours of the night drinking in a bar.  Except bars here close around 11 by law.  And we had one beer and a lemon shake.  I told Adina she didn't need the shake, but she's been pretty wild and out of control lately.

 

Today we had a busy, exciting, and memorable day.  I certainly won't be able to forget about it at least until my wounds heal.  We woke up super early to watch the monks make their rounds collecting alms.  A lot of sticky rice in a bowl is pretty much what it comes down to.  ***Adina would like to add that it is also beautiful display of the generosity of the common man, and a testament to the reverence in which the Monks here are held.  Even if they are twelve year old boys.***  It's a whole line of orange gowns walking down the street receiving donations, sort of like a mobile version of the gates.  Perhaps tomorrow we'll wait in the line and donate something, also.  Since Adina convinced me it would probably be a bad idea to try and collect the rice.  Even though I reminded her my REI super absorbant towel was orange, she correctly pointed out that it wouldn't cover much of me and would probably be pretty conspicuous.  After a nap and a quick packing job (you'll see why that was a problem later on) we headed to town to rent a nice smooth riding automatic motor scooter like we did in Sukhothai.  Shame they don't rent those here.  Instead we got on a very overpriced (which we later learned from some backpackers that was due largely to increased insurance rates after a recent spate of tourist accidents) manual motorcycle.  We even had to keep our feet on the side!  Given, it was on the small side, but since my gear changing instructions were not in any language I could decipher, we had a bumpy start.  The ride was only an hour, and as we got close we got to some pretty steep hills.  In retrospect I'm pretty sure she did say something about hills before we got on the bike, but who bothers to pay attention to details like that?  On the bright side, I learned how to pop a wheelie going uphill on a bike (having a passenger with a heavy backpack helps).  Unfortunately, I have not yet discovered how to land a wheelie going uphill on a bike yet.  Some nicks and scrapes later, with the help of a passing Lao biker (they really are as nice as every one says) we were VERY slowly back on our way.  We did make it to the waterfall park we were headed to and had a great day there.  It's the first time we've seen blue water on this continent, a pleasant change from the mudbowl that is the Mekong we have grown accustomed to.  Though I'm pretty sure the blue is some kind of algae which probably shouldn't have been allowed into my cuts, but whatever.  That's what neosporin is for.  Which is why it would have been helpful to have packed the first aid kit today.  We've brought it absolutely everywhere else we've gone, I'm not sure why motorcycle to a waterfall park did strike us as another appropriate time to bring it.  Some nice Americans on their way out helped us a bit and shared their generic neosporin with us (Duane Reade brand baby!  They are both Math teachers in NY, live on the upper west side, having just finished teaching fellows, and even did their masters at CCNY.  Small world) so we were fine.  Actually, Adina was fine already, since she managed to land on me in the fall she had barely a scratch. 

 

The park was terrific.  We hiked up the mountain, feasted on peanut butter sandwiches, swam in the pools, jumped off the waterfalls (well, one of us) and headed back home.  Gingerly.  The problem with gingerly is you kind of run out of steam heading back uphill.  which is when one may find themselves teetering off the side of the road.  Technically we only fell once on the day, since I don't think you can call it a fall if you remain upright the whole time.  But we were certainly not on the road anymore.  Kind of in a ditch, actually.  Adina is going to say that this reaggravated her hip, but I know it's really because she hasn't been doing her stretches lately. (Dana, can you scold her about this?)  Again, though, a whole team of Lao drivers pulled off the road and helped us out of the ditch and back on our feet.  They also were kind enough to bang our basket back into shape.  Once we popped the mirror back into place, the rental place didn't even notice.  Back in town, despite AGAIN forgetting to pack something - this time our handy little calendar and notes, we managed to plan out the next two weeks of our trip (sadly, Pakse and the rest of Southern Laos had to be cut because neither of us wants to spend the extra 30 hours on a bus.  That's what airplanes are for.)  So if any one has good ideas for what to do with our extra couple of days in Cambodia (preferrably between Siem Reap and Phnom Phen), please let us know. 

 

Meanwhile, we'll be heading out of Luang Prabang on Tuesday (another slow day of this unbelievably peaceful town is too tempting to resist).  From there the plan is Van Vieng for tubing and/or caving, then Vientiane for Shabbat, then a Sunday flight into Cambodia.  We hope.  We'll let you know how all of that turns out.  Stay tuned!