The morning after our evening in Pakbeng was an early one, as we were back on the boat by 7am heading towards Luang Prabang, our next stop in Laos. There was some banter the night before during our game of Bull$hit that we would resume the game at 7am after we boarded the boat.. and we stayed true to our word. What a way to start the day.. beautiful scenery, a serene setting, a half bottle of Lion whiskey, and a whole lot of Bull$hit.
We were all fairly toasted by about 8am (sorted or pissed are also commonly used by the Aussies.. I prefer sorted because it seems ironic in reference to inebriation), but we were the life of the party and having a great time. It's a good thing we brought a bunch of snacks though, since we crushed a few packs of oreos, chips ahoy, and pringles by about 11 when the Lion whiskey finally ran out. At that point, the group decided to switch to Beerlao, a local favorite in Laos, as well as a favorite beer among our group on the trip. At that time, I decided to break away, take in some more beautiful views along the Mekong, and catch up on some blogging.. as keeping up has proved to be a bit difficult.
We arrived in Luang Prabang in the early afternoon and quickly headed out on the town for a bicycle tour. Being more of a runner, I hadn't ridden a bike in probably a decade or two, if I had to guess.. but I truly can't recall the last time I actually did.
They advised us to refrain from taking photos and video during the tour for safety reasons. However, given my high level of recent experience with cycling, especially whilst recording video/taking photos, I decided to face this challenge, head-on.. even after the shot of snake whiskey - but more on that in a moment.
Biking around a new town is really a great way to see it.. I took tons of great video and photos with my trusty rugged waterproof camera strapped to my wrist.. and I only came close to crashing about ten times. We stopped at a local temple which was quite nice, and passed through all of the main streets within the town itself. Luang Prabang is much larger than Pakbeng and its one street, but it's not quite an urban epicenter.. it's still a developing area, somewhere in the middle.. and it's where our local tour guide lives and works, so she was able to give us the inside scoop on certain things.
One of those things was to find a spot along the bike tour to stop for some snake whiskey. And no.. this is not a brand of whiskey.. this is local whiskey with an actual snake in it, and then that whiskey is transferred to a shot glass for you to drink. Just take a look at that photo - how legit does that guy look? .. exactly what I imagined a snake whiskey guy would look like. Getting past the mental block of drinking something that was just touching a snake was a little tough.. but once I got past that, it wasn't too bad. The shot was pretty harsh/strong. I'm not sure if that can be attributed to the alcohol content of the whiskey or whatever effects are produced by a live snake swimming in it.. but it wasn't half bad, and it warmed us up pretty nicely for our bike ride back to the hotel.
After getting back to the hotel, we had a few hours of free time before dinner, so we used them wisely. By this point on the trip, Frank has really started to show how good of a traveller he is in terms of finding good sights to see and places to eat during our free time. Sure, he mostly uses TripAdvisor.. but he still makes the effort and does the research, and the rest of us reap the benefits, which is great.
The idea this time was to hike up a bunch of steps on a mountain called Phousi Stupa to catch a beautiful sunset over Luang Prabang. There were definitely a lot of steps on the way, but it was completely worth it - the views of the city and the Mekong were magnificent from up there, and we arrived just minutes before the sunset.. right along with about a hundred other people - so apparently this is a popular thing to do. That said, it worked out very well, and we got some good exercise in the process.
To finish off the evening, we had dinner and drinks at a nice restaurant/bar called Utopia. The owner of the establishment purchased it less than a year ago and made huge renovations that turned it into a really cool setup.. and there's even a beach volleyball court tucked away in there, which is awesome. We had some traditional Laotian food including a dish called Laap, which is the most popular meal in their cuisine. It can be made with meat or fish and contains many herbs and spices including cilantro and mint, among others. We also tried something called river weed, which was very interesting.. and the best way I can describe it is seaweed jerky.. it's flaky and served in layers with sesame seeds on top. The story is that local farmers find all of this seaweed, hang it out to dry, dust it up with local herbs and spices, and sell it to restaurants like this one to be served with a number of dipping sauces. It was unique and tasty - I'm usually anti-seaweed (except on the inside of a sushi roll), but this wasn't fishy or anything, and it was nice and crunchy, laid out in sheets for dipping.
We also got to hang out with the owner, Rob, who hails from Canada and is trying to make his mark with the recent uptick in tourism to Laos over the last five years.. and it seems to be mostly working out - the place was absolutely packed by the end of the night, right until everyone got ushered out for curfew (in Luang Prabang it's 11:30 for some reason). Here, though.. there is more to do after curfew, just outside the province's borders.. but more on that in the next post.
The challenges he's running into are related to infrastructure and resources. In terms of infrastructure, it's still a province within a really poor Communist country.. the power goes out in the entire town at least a few times a night. The bigger issue though, is finding reliable help that can provide western-level service with some degree of consistency.
In most of southeast Asia, service at restaurants isn't very good.. they don't necessarily work for or expect gratuities, and attentiveness to customers is generally a low priorirty.. but Laos (and Cambodia, as we'd later learn) really lower the bar even more. It's difficult enough to find locals who can speak or learn to speak English. Those who can speak English tend to get higher level local jobs, as being a waiter for a very low wage is not too glorious when you can speak English well enough. Consequently, what you end up with is a high turnover rate consisting of incompetent help that can barely speak English.. and the high turnover rate ensures they don't have enough time to learn how to work in a restaurant or provide decent service.. so really a perfect storm. The saving grace in Laos is that the food tends to be really good.. so there is that.
On this night, we would get to bed at a reasonable hour, as we would have a 5:40am departure to feed the local Buddhist monks in the morning.
We were all fairly toasted by about 8am (sorted or pissed are also commonly used by the Aussies.. I prefer sorted because it seems ironic in reference to inebriation), but we were the life of the party and having a great time. It's a good thing we brought a bunch of snacks though, since we crushed a few packs of oreos, chips ahoy, and pringles by about 11 when the Lion whiskey finally ran out. At that point, the group decided to switch to Beerlao, a local favorite in Laos, as well as a favorite beer among our group on the trip. At that time, I decided to break away, take in some more beautiful views along the Mekong, and catch up on some blogging.. as keeping up has proved to be a bit difficult.
We arrived in Luang Prabang in the early afternoon and quickly headed out on the town for a bicycle tour. Being more of a runner, I hadn't ridden a bike in probably a decade or two, if I had to guess.. but I truly can't recall the last time I actually did.
They advised us to refrain from taking photos and video during the tour for safety reasons. However, given my high level of recent experience with cycling, especially whilst recording video/taking photos, I decided to face this challenge, head-on.. even after the shot of snake whiskey - but more on that in a moment.
Biking around a new town is really a great way to see it.. I took tons of great video and photos with my trusty rugged waterproof camera strapped to my wrist.. and I only came close to crashing about ten times. We stopped at a local temple which was quite nice, and passed through all of the main streets within the town itself. Luang Prabang is much larger than Pakbeng and its one street, but it's not quite an urban epicenter.. it's still a developing area, somewhere in the middle.. and it's where our local tour guide lives and works, so she was able to give us the inside scoop on certain things.
One of those things was to find a spot along the bike tour to stop for some snake whiskey. And no.. this is not a brand of whiskey.. this is local whiskey with an actual snake in it, and then that whiskey is transferred to a shot glass for you to drink. Just take a look at that photo - how legit does that guy look? .. exactly what I imagined a snake whiskey guy would look like. Getting past the mental block of drinking something that was just touching a snake was a little tough.. but once I got past that, it wasn't too bad. The shot was pretty harsh/strong. I'm not sure if that can be attributed to the alcohol content of the whiskey or whatever effects are produced by a live snake swimming in it.. but it wasn't half bad, and it warmed us up pretty nicely for our bike ride back to the hotel.
After getting back to the hotel, we had a few hours of free time before dinner, so we used them wisely. By this point on the trip, Frank has really started to show how good of a traveller he is in terms of finding good sights to see and places to eat during our free time. Sure, he mostly uses TripAdvisor.. but he still makes the effort and does the research, and the rest of us reap the benefits, which is great.
The idea this time was to hike up a bunch of steps on a mountain called Phousi Stupa to catch a beautiful sunset over Luang Prabang. There were definitely a lot of steps on the way, but it was completely worth it - the views of the city and the Mekong were magnificent from up there, and we arrived just minutes before the sunset.. right along with about a hundred other people - so apparently this is a popular thing to do. That said, it worked out very well, and we got some good exercise in the process.
To finish off the evening, we had dinner and drinks at a nice restaurant/bar called Utopia. The owner of the establishment purchased it less than a year ago and made huge renovations that turned it into a really cool setup.. and there's even a beach volleyball court tucked away in there, which is awesome. We had some traditional Laotian food including a dish called Laap, which is the most popular meal in their cuisine. It can be made with meat or fish and contains many herbs and spices including cilantro and mint, among others. We also tried something called river weed, which was very interesting.. and the best way I can describe it is seaweed jerky.. it's flaky and served in layers with sesame seeds on top. The story is that local farmers find all of this seaweed, hang it out to dry, dust it up with local herbs and spices, and sell it to restaurants like this one to be served with a number of dipping sauces. It was unique and tasty - I'm usually anti-seaweed (except on the inside of a sushi roll), but this wasn't fishy or anything, and it was nice and crunchy, laid out in sheets for dipping.
We also got to hang out with the owner, Rob, who hails from Canada and is trying to make his mark with the recent uptick in tourism to Laos over the last five years.. and it seems to be mostly working out - the place was absolutely packed by the end of the night, right until everyone got ushered out for curfew (in Luang Prabang it's 11:30 for some reason). Here, though.. there is more to do after curfew, just outside the province's borders.. but more on that in the next post.
The challenges he's running into are related to infrastructure and resources. In terms of infrastructure, it's still a province within a really poor Communist country.. the power goes out in the entire town at least a few times a night. The bigger issue though, is finding reliable help that can provide western-level service with some degree of consistency.
In most of southeast Asia, service at restaurants isn't very good.. they don't necessarily work for or expect gratuities, and attentiveness to customers is generally a low priorirty.. but Laos (and Cambodia, as we'd later learn) really lower the bar even more. It's difficult enough to find locals who can speak or learn to speak English. Those who can speak English tend to get higher level local jobs, as being a waiter for a very low wage is not too glorious when you can speak English well enough. Consequently, what you end up with is a high turnover rate consisting of incompetent help that can barely speak English.. and the high turnover rate ensures they don't have enough time to learn how to work in a restaurant or provide decent service.. so really a perfect storm. The saving grace in Laos is that the food tends to be really good.. so there is that.
On this night, we would get to bed at a reasonable hour, as we would have a 5:40am departure to feed the local Buddhist monks in the morning.
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