After arriving in Luang Prabang, the 6 of us (slowboat crew! see last blog entry) stayed at a hostel together, and as Henry had booked for the hostel started referring to all of us by the name Henry, and thus the Henry’s were born. Chris and Ülie who I’d met separately in Chiang Rai had also met each other travelling on the slow boat and were soon assimilated into the Henry fold. It was awesome to get a good group of people together and the next couple of blog posts shall also feature what we got up to!
Anyhow, Luang Prabang itself is a pleasant city, the 2 highlights for any backpacker being the awesome vegetarian buffet in the night market (super cheap and pile your plate up!) and the really laid back Utopia bar where you can lounge around and drink a few Beer Lao’s in the evening.
There’s also a couple of cool Wat’s to check out if your not templed out. I thought Wat Xieng Thong Sim was particularly nice as it has some great intricate art work around the temple area. Otherwise you can check out the cafe’s and restaurant’s and just generally wander around. The night market seems to be pretty popular and I think it’s one of the better markets I’ve seen in SE Asia so far. There’s also a bamboo bridge that was being built whilst I was there which you can pay to cross and have a walk around on the other side. It’s only there for a few months a year. I heard it was actually destroyed in the rains that came a few days later (to feature in next blog post…) so I guess they would had have to start rebuilding it since then.
The highlight of the Luang Prabang area is for me definitely the Kuang Si Falls.
We got a whole bunch of us together to go, a few by motorbike and rest of us by tuk-tuk after my negotiating skills payed off. ‘7 of us. 30,000 each ok’. 50,000. ‘Nope’. 40,000. ‘Nope’. 35,000. ‘Nope’. OK 30,000. ‘Yup let’s go’. Though I’ve since met someone who got 25,000 each for 8 people so obviously I need to work on my bartering tactics.
Anyhow the falls are freaking amazing so here’s some photo’s. Make sure you stop to see the Black Bear sanctuary and oh and when going to the top of the falls where it says ‘Do not enter’ you must go through, it’s spectacular.
