Breakfast at the Maison is pretty good. Mary went with her traditional fruit and yogurt. I went native with a noodle soup, the famous ‘Luang Prabang Feu’.
We had a busy day scheduled in Luang Prabang.
To start off, we were on a ‘Luang Prabang Discover Tour’. Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site for it’s blending of traditional Lao Architecture, European colonial buildings (French) and some 30 Buddhist temples.
Our first stop was at the Royal Palace, once the home of Laos’ king. Now a museum, the grounds are guarded by the ‘tourist police’, some very official looking gals with impressive uniforms. They have very strict rules about acceptable clothing, we passed the test! It’s a fine museum with artifacts from many generations of rulers, unfortunately no pictures are allowed inside the museum.
Next stop was the temple at which Fhan served as monk for many years. It is still a working temple in excellent condition with monks on ground. Nearby is the famous That Pathum, known as the ‘watermelon stupa’ for its rotund shape. The nickname is well deserved! We ran into a group of Fahn’s buds – it seems that Fhan knows everyone in town.
Fahn’s brother owns a nice restaurant called ‘Bio Bamboo’ not far from the city. He had arranged a set lunch menu of Northern Lao dishes for us there. Wow. Fantastic stuff. We had some fun paying for the meal as Bio doesn’t take CC, we were short of Lao KIP and some of our USD were not acceptable due to small nicks and marks. Kind of strange as both of us had inspected every bill in advance. Oh well, we figured it out.
We visited a silk and paper village on the way back to the city. Our stop was at a family operation which does end-to-end manufacturing from silkworm larva to finished goods. It was interesting to see the different stages of processing; we had no idea how silk was made. The paper making process is totally manual, from harvesting the bark, making the pulp and creating the paper, very fascinating.
Once back in the city, we stopped by our friend’s wine store to stock up and headed down to the market. We hit up bar ‘Tangor’, a streetside bar offering drinks and snacks played James Brown and Bob Marley tunes. Where are we?? Coolest thing about spending money in Luang Prabang is that they’ll take any kind of currency (as long as it’s in pristine condition). Our bill came with a listing of moneys owed in KIP (Laotian), Euro, Baht (Thai), and USD.
Dick