We had a free morning to settle into our hotel, the ‘Maison Dalabua’, in the historic area of Luang Prabang. ‘Dalabua’ means ‘Lotus Princess’. The hotel is surrounded by three UNESCO classified lily ponds set in an acre of tropical gardens. I didn’t know that ponds could be classified as UNESCO sites but they are very beautiful.
After a nice breakfast next to the ponds we spent a few hours cleaning up a huge mess with our photo images. We missed a time zone setting and some of the pics ended up off a day. What a pain! Once our photo chores were complete, we headed out to explore a bit of the town. We found an ATM and scored some ‘KIP’, the local currency. Quite a shocker to see currency in 100,000 denominations – there are some 21,000 KIP per dollar!
It was early in the day and there were a lot of interesting shops on the main road, especially the tapestry shop with local silk items. We decided to wait on any purchases as the night market opened soon and deals might be had. Things get hot early here so we headed back to the hotel as we had a culinary tour scheduled for the evening with Fahn.
Fahn picked us up at 5:00 for our ‘culinary tour’ of the city. We headed down to the waterfront to the Sunset Restaurant, where President Obama came in his first term to have a coconut, now named the ‘Obama Coconut’. Basically, the dish is a fresh coconut with a straw where you drink the milk and carve out the meat – it was fine. Our table was great, overlooking the river. Side note – they loved Obama!
We then headed down to the night market where the roads are blocked for foot traffic. It’s a large space covering many city blocks and is divided into areas that sell food and those that sell clothing, etc. Fahn knows this part of the market well and steered us to his favorite vendor selling all kinds of things. We had grilled sausages, fried eggrolls, grilled chicken satay and local beer. Good stuff! We wandered the market and headed over to Popolo a popular local restaurant. We were supposed to have their famous beef Carpaccio (raw beef) but declined and just had a drink there. We finished the tour with ice cream at 3 Nagos before taking our transport back to the hotel. After a quiet cocktail at the hotel bar, we headed to bed.
Mary