Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
May 29, 2014
In Luang Prabang I started to settle into Laos life. It’s a much slower pace than Thailand and the people are so very friendly. It’s the second biggest city/town in Laos and only has a population of around 50,000 so that gives you a good idea of how rural a country Laos actually is.
We woke the morning after we arrived and went in search of somewhere else to stay. Mark the lad from Canada had moved off that day to Vientiane and Holly and James also headed off to new places. The place we found the first night was deathly hot so we trampled around for a while before managing to haggle for a room with aircon for the same price as the room we had just stayed in, a good result. So what was there to do in Luang Prabang? We spent a day ambling around and getting our bearings a bit better. Helped along with a few drinks on the way which was canny. The next day I was ill with some random vomiting and generally felt washed out and weak. Definitely not the drink but must have been some sort of bug I had picked up somewhere. I stayed in bed all day and rested up. Thankfully the next day I was back to normal and raring to go again.
We had originally planned on heading to Vientiane the capital as we needed to get our visas for Vietnam sorted there but after a lot of thinking we decided to use an agency for an extra $5 to do the visa work for us. I didn’t really fancy another city and using them to get the visas for us meant it freed up another few extra days for us to do something else in Laos that we would most likely enjoy more. We sorted out a two day mountain bike trek to a small village and our visas would be back when we returned. It just made sense really for the sake of an extra $5. With our trek sorted for a couple of days time we had some more time to get out and explore what was around Luang Prabang.
We haggled a price with a tuk tuk driver to take us around the nearby temples and also to Kuang Si falls about 50km out of town. With that sorted for the next day we mooched around town and the local markets. We bumped into a couple of girls from the slow boat down the Mekong, Claire and Kayleigh. They are English and have been working in New Zealand for the past year. They saved enough up for a trip round Asia before heading back to Blighty and they were a nice couple. Out of the people on the boat they seemed the most relaxed and honest out of them all. A lot of people try to impress too much but these were just a nice genuine couple of girls so we got on well with them. We asked them along on our trip round the temples and falls and sure enough they turned up the following morning to join us. It halved the cost of the transport as well as giving us some good company for the day.
Our driver picked us up around 9am and he was such a nice bloke. He had brought his little six year old daughter along with him for the trip and she was so sweet. We headed off round the temples in the baking sun and I have to admit I am now almost templed out. The temples we saw were really nice to be fair but after a while there are only so many you can take before they get repetitive. It would be like someone from Asia coming to Europe and constantly going round churches in every town they visited. Although each one is different the novelty does wear off after a while. So several temples later we motored off towards the waterfall through the beautiful landscape of Laos. The infrastructure here is years behind that of their neighboring countries such as Thailand. The roads are rough with pot holes the size of craters and we bumped and bounced our way up into the hills and into the forest at Kuang Si. Once off the Tuk Tuk and in the forest it was not far to the falls.
On the way there you pass a bear sanctuary. It’s actually a rescue program as the bears have been confiscated from poachers by the Laos government. They have 23 in total and all are black Asiatic bears. They are beautiful and it is a shame that poachers still exist in the world. Greed knows no bounds I guess. The bears are usually smuggled out of Laos and live a life of torture in ‘Bile farms’, horrible.
Once at the waterfalls I was surprised to see how many local families were there. It was Sunday and it was obviously a very popular place for them to go to. The people there were so friendly. Families offering us food from the picnics they had brought with them, it’s really nice to see how kind others can be. At times the generosity I have experienced on this trip has been very humbling and something that doesn’t happen at home as much as it should.
At the bottom of the falls are several crystal clear blue icy pools that you can take a dip in. In the burning heat of Laos it was a welcome break. We trekked up past the pools until the main falls were in front of us and an impressive sight they were. Waterfalls are a little like temples as well. Once you have seen a lot of them the wonderous feeling wears off however these falls although not as large as the one we saw in Bali were equally beautiful in their own way. They cascaded down from high above through the forest. There is a trail that goes up one side of the falls, let’s you walk through the water at the top then takes you down the other side. The scramble up was steep and wet and slippery and fun. Many a time we both came a cropper and slipped and fell but it was great once at the top. The water up there seemed so calm compared to the powerful cascade it created on the way down and the forest was lush with trees thrusting out over the cliff edge.
The scramble back down was equally fun and yet again I ended up on my backside and covered in mud several times. A nice dip in the icy pools at the bottom was a great way to clean up and cool off after sweating our way around the trail. We chilled there for a while before heading back to our driver, back down the bumpy road and back into Luang Prabang. A few beers later and it was time for an early night. Mountain bike trek to the village should be fun tomorrow and I suspect it will be a tiring one pedaling up hills in this ridiculous heat.
