Flying in over the lush green mountaintops, I felt a deep sense of relief to be ‘home’… in familiar territory, so-to-speak. It’s only been about five or six days since I left the mountain of Koh Pha-Ngan, but it left me wanting more! Gotta have those mountain sunsets, storms and out-of-breath climbing experiences!
Although they both share the marvel of ancient temples, tuk-tuks and very formal visa-on-arrival processing in their airports, Luang Prabang is a completely different ‘ball game’ from Siem Reap/Cambodia. I was pleasantly surprised to arrive to a pleasant taxi ride over the river, and then along it’s bank, into the slow, interflowing traffic charade. It was a more peaceful sort of craziness… as the cars, trucks, motos and pedestrians somehow intermingled without ever braking!
The town of Luang Prabang is MAGNIFICENT! It is absolutely stunning… the streets are clean, and the side ones are serenely lined with local homes and guesthouses, as well as brick bordering & curbs. Little alley/walkways can be found here & there, and are extremely quiet. You adapt a sense of wandering in silence, as you don’t want to break the peace barrier of the moment.
Along the river, upon a golden sunset in the distant mountains, kids bathe & play, canoes and longtail boats quietly float about, and even the riverside cafes on the bluff above are quiet. Just one street parallel to the riverfront, uphill, is their main pedestrian-only market… it is gorgeous! I have NEVER seen an international market this clean and full of items that I would love to fill my home with. The vibrance of the differing shades of color found in the local clothing and crafts is just too intricate for words. Each market vendor (typically a women or young girl) has one hanging light bulb above their items, along with a calculator for negotiations… and they’ll do their best to sell you, but it’s not overbearing like some other places (most likely because they’re seated and can’t follow you as easily!)
Cafes & restaurants, along with little massage spas and internet venues fill the outer edges of the street… and this stems for many blocks (maybe 8 or so???)… seems like forever, yet it’s so pleasant to just walk about that one might enjoy 8 blocks more!
One interesting thing is that pizza places are big here… certainly not the case in Thailand and Cambodia… I may have to give it a try some evening. For tonight, it was a local dish – steamed fish in banana leaves with steamed rice… delicious! The fish simply melts in your mouth!
O, my elephant!
I went looking for adventure and certainly found it! Usually most well-traveled peeps know to research and ask around a bit before jumping into any tour/activity/experience in any new place they travel for the 1st time. I proceeded to surpass this common sense and attempt to get myself involved in activity for the following day within an hour of arriving in Luang Prabang. I wanted to mountain bike, visit villages, and have an experience riding an elephant (especially after spending time with them in the wild in Africa!) So I pretty much signed up through a local tour agency to do a combo of all 3, all day… and I was told to arrive at 8:00am the next morning. I was at least wise enough to prepare for the trail (as usual) and stocked up on water, snacks, long sleeves, and rain gear for my waist-pack. Upon arriving at the tour co. early in the morning, I managed to make a couple birthday phone calls to the USA for Chelle & Mel as I watched the guy greasing the run-down bike chain with a cruddy toothbrush… after I hung up he asked me to take a test spin… it was the best looking bike out of a rather awful selection, so I just agreed to it and figured all would be cool. That was until parts started falling off and coming loose along the way!!!!!!!! This tends to be a standard for me with international bike rentals! (as I’m sure it is for most people) Riding out of town w/ChanTy I tried to mimic the crazy way the traffic moves so I could squeeze through the flow without harm – it was quite a trip…we didn’t use brakes much! Riding out into the outlying mountain villages and into the quiet of the towering teak forest, I was in ‘heaven’. I was the only tourist to be seen on the road for miles in either direction – it was fantastic! The kids in the villages would shout “Faranga, Faranga!” as I rounded the corner, as a way of signaling to their friends/families that a foreigner was passing by… which they are curious to observe. I would wave and smile and say hello in their local language (phonetically – “sah-bah-dee”) and they would often times be very excited with this simple gesture. 19km’s later, and after a pretty good climb over a mountain pass, I arrived to a dirt road that led to the Namkan River. ChanTy and I road through the village, racing a bit, and finally arrived to a field of papayas with a resting hut. I climbed into the hut with one of the local woman, and as her daughter joined us from collecting papayas in the field, I began a trade of items – I shared peanuts, and they cut up fresh (non-ripe, crunchy) papaya. We did our best to communicate even though we couldn’t speak each other’s language, and I certainly enjoyed my mini-siesta afterwards. The adventure was just beginning… I would then climb down a dirt hill bank to a bamboo bridge (feeling thankful that I had a waterproof bag for my camera if I were to plunge off one side, as it’s not all too sturdy by any means,) and then climbed up the dirt hill on the other side into another village and took a walk around, visiting with the school kids, before meeting “O”… my 18 yr old, female elephant I was going to take a little journey with! During my conversations with ChanTy during our bike ride, I found out he had never actually ridden the elephant and I asked him to join me, since there was certainly room for two – and what a trip this was! We started by weaving our way through the village (watch out for roofs and trees!) and back down the steep dirt hill to cruise up river… somewhat in the middle of it, for a while! Local kids were cast-net fishing either from wooden canoes or from a shallow wade. Once we returned to land, our guide on the neck of “O” hopped off to follow behind – and she thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start cooling herself off, so all of a sudden ChanTy and I were having dirt thrown on us, and then she tore off a small branch full of leaves and started swatting the back of her neck – it was hilarious, as she was inadvertently whipping my legs too! I fed her a ball of sticky rice before our journey, and a bunch of bananas when we returned. The local kids were gathered around to watch.
The next leg of our mountain bike journey was through some pretty cool dirt roads and was a hysterical reminder of my bike ride with Elizabeth in Puerto Varas, Chile as ChanTy’s pedal kept falling off one side of the bike – I was able to share the story of how I single pedaled my way back into town after mine fell off a few years ago – both times were fun! ChanTy was getting a tad frustrated, but I found our extra village stops (in search of tools/assistance) to be the highlight of the journey. We road around the very tall mountain peak we came over the shoulder of and enjoyed sandwiches for lunch along the banks of the NamKan river (and we were starving when we finally arrived – it took quite a while to get there!)… A little swim (too shallow, as I quickly found out when my head met a rock just below the water's surface) and brief siesta and we rode up another mountain section to visit a Temple. This particular temple was very unique in that it had 4 stories and we could climb up to each. Four nuns that were pulling weeds from the grass surrounding the base of the temple were pleasantly surprised to invite ChanTy and I inside.
Our final leg of the journey was relatively downhill and back into the traffic dance… with sore rear ends and a lot of stories from our day, ChanTy and I chilled on the upper banks of the river enjoying a Beerlao. It was ideal.
Although they both share the marvel of ancient temples, tuk-tuks and very formal visa-on-arrival processing in their airports, Luang Prabang is a completely different ‘ball game’ from Siem Reap/Cambodia. I was pleasantly surprised to arrive to a pleasant taxi ride over the river, and then along it’s bank, into the slow, interflowing traffic charade. It was a more peaceful sort of craziness… as the cars, trucks, motos and pedestrians somehow intermingled without ever braking!
The town of Luang Prabang is MAGNIFICENT! It is absolutely stunning… the streets are clean, and the side ones are serenely lined with local homes and guesthouses, as well as brick bordering & curbs. Little alley/walkways can be found here & there, and are extremely quiet. You adapt a sense of wandering in silence, as you don’t want to break the peace barrier of the moment.
Along the river, upon a golden sunset in the distant mountains, kids bathe & play, canoes and longtail boats quietly float about, and even the riverside cafes on the bluff above are quiet. Just one street parallel to the riverfront, uphill, is their main pedestrian-only market… it is gorgeous! I have NEVER seen an international market this clean and full of items that I would love to fill my home with. The vibrance of the differing shades of color found in the local clothing and crafts is just too intricate for words. Each market vendor (typically a women or young girl) has one hanging light bulb above their items, along with a calculator for negotiations… and they’ll do their best to sell you, but it’s not overbearing like some other places (most likely because they’re seated and can’t follow you as easily!)
Cafes & restaurants, along with little massage spas and internet venues fill the outer edges of the street… and this stems for many blocks (maybe 8 or so???)… seems like forever, yet it’s so pleasant to just walk about that one might enjoy 8 blocks more!
One interesting thing is that pizza places are big here… certainly not the case in Thailand and Cambodia… I may have to give it a try some evening. For tonight, it was a local dish – steamed fish in banana leaves with steamed rice… delicious! The fish simply melts in your mouth!
O, my elephant!
I went looking for adventure and certainly found it! Usually most well-traveled peeps know to research and ask around a bit before jumping into any tour/activity/experience in any new place they travel for the 1st time. I proceeded to surpass this common sense and attempt to get myself involved in activity for the following day within an hour of arriving in Luang Prabang. I wanted to mountain bike, visit villages, and have an experience riding an elephant (especially after spending time with them in the wild in Africa!) So I pretty much signed up through a local tour agency to do a combo of all 3, all day… and I was told to arrive at 8:00am the next morning. I was at least wise enough to prepare for the trail (as usual) and stocked up on water, snacks, long sleeves, and rain gear for my waist-pack. Upon arriving at the tour co. early in the morning, I managed to make a couple birthday phone calls to the USA for Chelle & Mel as I watched the guy greasing the run-down bike chain with a cruddy toothbrush… after I hung up he asked me to take a test spin… it was the best looking bike out of a rather awful selection, so I just agreed to it and figured all would be cool. That was until parts started falling off and coming loose along the way!!!!!!!! This tends to be a standard for me with international bike rentals! (as I’m sure it is for most people) Riding out of town w/ChanTy I tried to mimic the crazy way the traffic moves so I could squeeze through the flow without harm – it was quite a trip…we didn’t use brakes much! Riding out into the outlying mountain villages and into the quiet of the towering teak forest, I was in ‘heaven’. I was the only tourist to be seen on the road for miles in either direction – it was fantastic! The kids in the villages would shout “Faranga, Faranga!” as I rounded the corner, as a way of signaling to their friends/families that a foreigner was passing by… which they are curious to observe. I would wave and smile and say hello in their local language (phonetically – “sah-bah-dee”) and they would often times be very excited with this simple gesture. 19km’s later, and after a pretty good climb over a mountain pass, I arrived to a dirt road that led to the Namkan River. ChanTy and I road through the village, racing a bit, and finally arrived to a field of papayas with a resting hut. I climbed into the hut with one of the local woman, and as her daughter joined us from collecting papayas in the field, I began a trade of items – I shared peanuts, and they cut up fresh (non-ripe, crunchy) papaya. We did our best to communicate even though we couldn’t speak each other’s language, and I certainly enjoyed my mini-siesta afterwards. The adventure was just beginning… I would then climb down a dirt hill bank to a bamboo bridge (feeling thankful that I had a waterproof bag for my camera if I were to plunge off one side, as it’s not all too sturdy by any means,) and then climbed up the dirt hill on the other side into another village and took a walk around, visiting with the school kids, before meeting “O”… my 18 yr old, female elephant I was going to take a little journey with! During my conversations with ChanTy during our bike ride, I found out he had never actually ridden the elephant and I asked him to join me, since there was certainly room for two – and what a trip this was! We started by weaving our way through the village (watch out for roofs and trees!) and back down the steep dirt hill to cruise up river… somewhat in the middle of it, for a while! Local kids were cast-net fishing either from wooden canoes or from a shallow wade. Once we returned to land, our guide on the neck of “O” hopped off to follow behind – and she thought this would be the perfect opportunity to start cooling herself off, so all of a sudden ChanTy and I were having dirt thrown on us, and then she tore off a small branch full of leaves and started swatting the back of her neck – it was hilarious, as she was inadvertently whipping my legs too! I fed her a ball of sticky rice before our journey, and a bunch of bananas when we returned. The local kids were gathered around to watch.
The next leg of our mountain bike journey was through some pretty cool dirt roads and was a hysterical reminder of my bike ride with Elizabeth in Puerto Varas, Chile as ChanTy’s pedal kept falling off one side of the bike – I was able to share the story of how I single pedaled my way back into town after mine fell off a few years ago – both times were fun! ChanTy was getting a tad frustrated, but I found our extra village stops (in search of tools/assistance) to be the highlight of the journey. We road around the very tall mountain peak we came over the shoulder of and enjoyed sandwiches for lunch along the banks of the NamKan river (and we were starving when we finally arrived – it took quite a while to get there!)… A little swim (too shallow, as I quickly found out when my head met a rock just below the water's surface) and brief siesta and we rode up another mountain section to visit a Temple. This particular temple was very unique in that it had 4 stories and we could climb up to each. Four nuns that were pulling weeds from the grass surrounding the base of the temple were pleasantly surprised to invite ChanTy and I inside.
Our final leg of the journey was relatively downhill and back into the traffic dance… with sore rear ends and a lot of stories from our day, ChanTy and I chilled on the upper banks of the river enjoying a Beerlao. It was ideal.
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