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December 20, 2005
Several days in Luang Prabang
After checking into our 80,000 kip/night room at the Mekong Guesthouse, literally the first place we found along Th Khem Khong near the ferry boat ‘pier’ to Van Xieng Maen, I crashed big time. The pain and suffering from the boat ride was too great, so I popped some aspirin, 20mg of Valium, closed the shutters, and climbed into bed. Levi went out to explore town some. Hours later, about six or seven in the evening, Levi came back and we headed out for dinner. I was starving having donated my breakfast to the ecological system of the Nam Ou river valley and gone with out any lunch. Levi, always the price-minded traveler, was looking for something like a 3,000 kip grilled-whatyahmacallit served up all over the night market. I was desperate for some good old fashion western food after having spent the past week eating basically the same small menu of foods. I won the day, sort of, and had myself a nice big vegetarian pizza at a touristy restaurant along Th Sisavangvong where the night market is located. Levi had a banana milk shake, which he can be very particular about. He had also eaten much more than I that day, so no guilt was coming from my end for being so selfish in our restaurant choice.
On the way to dinner we were scoping out a new guesthouse. The Mekong GH was OK, but they served no food, were located on a busy road (for Luang Prabang), and worse of all…our room was next door to a beauty salon with happy but very noisy women gossiping about whatever women gossip about in those kind of places. (Like maybe the two incredibly handsome western men who just checked-in to the guesthouse next door!) 
We found a place called the Mali Guesthouse just 200m away on a side street nearby that came highly recommended by this Frenchman sitting out front drinking a Lao coffee. He said it was the cheapest in town. We met with the proprietor and she said a room would be available for us the next evening.
The next morning we packed up and headed around the corner to check in. Our small room was pretty dodgy but worked for us. We had our own private bathroom (cold shower) and the manager let me use the shared hot water facilities for an extra 10,000 kip per shower. The room worked out to 120,000 (US$11-12) each for our entire six day stay—a fair deal for Luang Prabang which is under going a major economic boom. More on that later. The food was pretty good, cheap compared to local dinning prices but the menu was extremely limited. I only ate omelets, baguettes, vegetable sandwiches, and fruit salad with yogurt at every sitting. But, they did have coffee with real milk imported from Thailand, which is hard to find in Laos. They had a very cozy six or seven table brick floored porch with dining tables lined with orchids and immediately adjacent to the fishponds. Near the end of our stay some of the local Buddhist monks (bald kids dressed in orange cloth, in effect) showed up with two symbolically important statues and placed them in the fishponds. It was fun to watch and photograph.
After the past week of hard traveling, Levi and I were quite content to just chill out for several days of catch up on some reading, photo processing, emails, blogging for myself and diary entries for Levi. I was able to do about 2/3rds of my geek-work at the Khem Khong Ban How Restaurant along the Mekong. They were even nice enough to run out an extension cord so that I could keep powered up and work for hours at a time. The coffee, food and beer was a bit on the pricey side but that was OK as long as I had a fantastic view, frequent refills of coffee and later beer…and power for the laptop. From my river side cubical I could see boats passing, fishermen heading to/from their favorite spots and the greenery isolated Wat Xieng Maen. Once I finished my non-Internet work, I headed for the Phousy Guesthouse 2 where they cleared a desk to let me use my directly wired-up laptop for a couple hours a day during my stay in town. At 200 kip/minute I was pleased. Levi was keen on this 150 kip/minute place which I thought was slower and unworthy.
While at the Mali guesthouse Levi and I met Jimbo, an 30-year resident of Hawaii. Mostly he lived on Maui but now owns property on the south point of the Big Island with his brother. We semi-bonded on our shared ‘heritage’, but not really…our lives are just a bit too different despite being currently domiciled in Hawaii (as defined by the IRS.) Anyway, I’ve got a secretly recorded mp3 clip of him strumming his guitar in during my first breakfast at the Mali which you can check out in the audio gallery. Jimbo flew to Chiang Mai on the 20th, same as me, so we might meet up again soon.
The bulk of the remainder of our time was spent wondering around Luang Prabang both separately and together. On one of my lone walkabouts I discovered the Luang Prabang Scents exhibition near Wat Nog Sikhumneuang with over a dozen amazing watercolor paintings by Somboon Phoungkorkmai. Truly wonderful stuff. Only five works were for sale. Specifically, I was enthralled with a US$1350 painting of a silk weaving market in Laos. I met the gallery owner, a Frenchman named Engelmann, and we talked about my interest in the painting. The logistics are a bit difficult for me…and it was a bit on the pricier side…and the exhibition had just opened, so there was really no room for negotiation. But the painting was fantastic. I managed to leave Luang Prabang without the painting, and credit card debt I really can’t afford at this moment. No job, cash running low, debts rising and too many unexpected bills. Damn.
Luang Prabang, which in 1995 was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, is crawling with NGOs of which many are “this was our colony first” Francophile type organizations (including UNESCO.) I could not count how many brand new white Landcruisers, et al with big in-the-bush CB antennas we saw about town. Most of their efforts seemed to be about preserving the architecture, wats, etc. For instance, all the dirt streets are being painstakingly repaved with red bricks in a consistence but more than basic pattern. We saw some German government sponsored activities but they seemed more humanitarian in nature and notable even in remote locations like Sam Neua. Luang Prabang is going to be a very ‘cute’ city for package tourists in the next few years...if it is not already. Jimbo was even talking about some preliminary plans for a major international airport nearby. While I can’t deny the right of the Laotians to demand their slice of the global tourism industry, repair decades worth of neglect to monuments and general post-communist, economic success, there is a sense of innocence lost. Levi and I could feel the difference in people from up north in our previous stays to LP.
There are a lot of wats in Luang Prabang. Loads. I took many pictures and will post them soon but fear that some may have been mislabeled. If there are any experts out there please do let me know about any inaccurate descriptions. Some were amazing, some were sorta whatever, and some just plain ruinous. It took so many pictures that I couldn’t remember what wat was what.
On about the fourth day Levi and I rented bicycles at 10,000 kip a pop to check out a second art gallery I had heard about and check out the two bus stations in town so Levi could do some pricing reconnaissance. It was mostly disastrous. The X marked on the map by the employee from Luang Prabang Scents Gallery was completely inaccurate…we found a mostly deserted hilltop guesthouse with a scenic view of the below Shell petrol station. We peddled on with our rickety one speed bikes to the top of the hill which lead to a dead and several Laotians wondering what the silly farangs on bicycles were doing up there. 
Next we went off in search of the two bus stations where Levi wanted to scope out for prices and times to his next destination: either Vang Vieng or the Lao national capital of Vientiane. The first bus terminal, ‘the southern bus terminal’, was easy to find and very foreigner friendly. Soon we were on the search of the second, more reclusive Sanyabuli bus station. We got lost, wondered down dirt lanes, and wasted way too much time for my tastes. I was getting grumpy (as I’m known to do), hungry and ready to ditch the piece of shit rental pedal powered transport. Some decent photographs of the area did manage to make into my Sony’s memory stick. After what seemed ages, and many thoughts of silently abandoning Levi and heading back to town, we finally found the Sanyabuli Bus Station. Fantastic. Levi will save a good 15,000 kip on his journey south, and more importantly, we now we can have lunch.
We quickly popped over to the nearby Phousi Market which is pretty much a local affair. It was very interesting with all the rice, spices, flowers, animal parts and mass produced junk (Chinese?) for sale. We soon found a noodle soup joint that understood that I didn’t want any meat in my soup and I sucked up our local 5000 kip cuisine instantly. Great stuff. And, the food did much to improve my mood. But by then both Levi and I were sick of the crapola hired bicycles and headed back towards the rental agency to drop off the bikes and reclaim my passport which was held for deposit.
One night Jimbo and I headed off for the Lao Lao Garden Restaurant and Bar where they have a bonfire every evening which is great for both heat in the cold 20C weather and friendly what-is-your-story kind of socializing. We met this cheerful pair of Dutch women who I mistakenly confused for Swedish at first named Ilse and Maike. Ilse readily admitted to owning and wearing a pair of wooden shoes. Apparently the secret to wearing them in comfort is to don a pair of goat's hair wollen socks. Although she said nothing, I suspect she wears them only back on her traditional windmill powered tulip farm in her native Holland. As always with Dutch people, I asked if they drove to Laos (or wherever we I met them.) Those pesky Hollanders seem to drive everywhere…one sees the EU licenses plates with the blue star-encircled NL all over Europe. So for me it is a big joke. They didn’t really find this funny until after reciting a story about a road trip to Morocco. Ha!
One evening I went out to the night market and did some shopping. My most valuable purchases include a hand painted and carved Asian-style stone chess set (US$30), a pair of cozy looking slippers (30,000 kip) for home that will probably last no more than a few weeks, some post cards, and two bracelets from a young girl who made pleas about needing to fund her schooling. I didn’t really buy into that sob story, and despite my distaste for child labor like this, I gave in and even got two nice photographs. For the most part, the market was full of stands with similar if not identical items. For instance, most of the weavings and textiles were so perfect and more-than-occasionally identical that they probably were machine made in China or somewhere outside of Laos. My slippers fall into this category but the chess set does not.
Seven nights after our arrival, Levi and I parted ways. He was off for a 0730 bus to wherever. (I still don’t know, and he may not even have decided himself until getting to the bus station.) It was a great few weeks traveling together. He improved my German a bit and his English-language slang and idiom knowledge is much enhanced. I look forward to his return this spring/summer to the Stuttgart region so we can meet up again and share some more travel stories.
Posted by stu at December 20, 2005 09:12 AM
Comments
Hi Stu,
kept your promise, brilliant! No probs about my name btw. A thing that needs correcting though is the bit about the goat's hair in regards to wooden shoes. It's not goat's hair that makes wooden shoes comfy, it's a pair of goat woolen socks that make you want to wear wooden shoes 24/7! ;-)
Enough rubbish, hope all is well! Take care, grtz, Ilse & Maike
Posted by: Ilse & Maike at January 16, 2006 02:16 PM