Luang Prabang is the most tourist friendly city in Laos. Much of the architectural style reflects the country's French colonial history. The city is home to many Buddhist temples, a night market, and other tourist attractions. In the surrounding area, many natural attractions like elephant farms (now called sanctuaries) and waterfalls are easily accessible.
I found Luang Prabang to be very pretty and inhabited by friendly locals. It was a nice enough place, but seemed filled with western tourists. It felt safe and a little bit boring. Prices were higher than in Thailand. A few days in LP was all I needed before wanting to move on to the next place.
Getting to Luang Prabang was its own long adventure. I opted for taking the slow boat to get there. I had been tempted to take a fast boat, but after seeing them zoom by on the river, I was glad I had opted for the slow boat. Later I would speak with a former fast boat captain and he told me that those boats crash all the time. The sandbars in the Mekong river are constantly moving and are hazardous to fast boats. The boats also looked super uncomfortable and very wet.
From Pai I took a bus to the border with Laos. I had signed up for a whole transport package.
Our bus arrived at the border and we stayed in a hotel on the Thai side. In the morning, we all crossed the border and spent a couple of hours waiting for everyone to get through. After we all regrouped, we took a short bus ride to a boat launch area and started the long boat ride to Luang Prabang.
The boats are very long and can accommodate a lot of passengers.
The trip was beautiful and fairly comfortable. But it was very long. We traveled down the river all day.
After a full day on the river, we stopped and everyone got out of the boat. We would be spending the night in a small town, then resuming our trip in the morning.
This town would be the first place in Laos where I spent the night. The architectural style and coloring is fairly common for the whole country. My room was nice enough, and I found a place for dinner and a few beers.
In the morning we boarded a different boat and it was much less comfortable than the boat from the previous day.
The seats are these removable car seats and they put too many of them into the boat. In the back, where I was sitting, the seats were all pressed together and had only a few inches between them.
To make things worse, my stomach started churning from food or beer and I had to use the toilet in a hurry. The toilet was a normal toilet bolted to the boat, but a hole was cut into the floor and went directly into the river.
In the back of the boat a lady had set up a table and was selling snacks and packaged noodles. A tourist had eaten some noodles, but there was no trash can for the plastic bowl that they came in. She brought her trash back to the lady and gave her the trash. As soon as the tourist turned to walk back to her seat, the vendor threw the plastic bowl overboard into the river.
Litter was something that would bother me about Laos. I guess I got used to it because Vietnam also had a lot of litter in some areas, but I didn't really notice it there.
After our second full day on the river, we arrived at Luang Prabang. We parked our boat a good 10 minutes away from Luang Prabang and had to figure out transportation into the city.
I didn't have a room booked, so I wandered around for a while with my backpack. I found a restaurant with wifi and ordered something to drink. Then I searched online for a room and booked it.
I found a place that I really liked and dropped off my bag. Unfortunately, the room was only available for one night and I would have to find another place.
I wandered around the city and spotted this guy washing his monkeys. My first day in Luang Prabang was pretty relaxing. I just looked for food and also looked for a new place to stay.
I found another place and it wasn't very good at all. But it had a roof and I could lock up my bag. Plus it was cheap.
While wandering around, I met a boat captain who offered to be my guide. We worked out a price and I agreed. I had a whole boat to myself and he took me to different places on the river. It was fun to see all of the different places and get to know my guide a little bit.
He took me to a few tourist sites that were OK, but not super interesting to me.
More interesting to me was when we went to the other side of the river and had beer and food at a place where the locals lived. Seeing the normal places for the locals appealed to me more than seeing places that were dressed up for the tourists.
The next day my guide picked me up and took me across the river. We went on a bicycle ride. We stopped at his house and I met his family. We had some snacks and got some water for the ride. I really enjoyed seeing the little village that he lived in.
We rode to a few sites on that side of the river. Actually I rode a bicycle, but my guide rode his scooter. In Luang Prabang, tourists had a really difficult time renting scooters. I guess there had been a lot of foreigner accidents so no one was renting scooters to foreigners when I was there.
We stopped at a pretty little temple.
My guide told me than many of the kids go to the monasteries to get educated. For poor people, it's often the only option for education. Buddhism is huge in Laos and I would see lots of monks while I was there.
Later in the day, my guide brought me back to the city. I definitely recommend hiring a boat guide if you can find one that seems trustworthy. It might take some convincing to get them to show you normal local things, and not just the tourist attractions.
Back at the city I really had the itch to get a scooter and explore on my own. Since that wasn't an easy option in Luang Prabang, I decided it was time to move on. I bought a bus ticket and headed to the next city. Online, as I researched Laos, I started seeing more and more posts about the Thakhek loop. It sounded perfect for me. It was pretty far away, so I made a few stops before getting to it, but I now had a destination in mind.
I hope you enjoyed my introduction to Laos and will continue with me as I explore this strange and interesting country.
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Beautiful temple photos.
I find that overly touristy type places tend to be boring as well. They often feel cheap, which is kind of strange and contradictory since everything is typically way over priced lol. Local spots are often way more enjoyable to experience.
Yeah. I'm not the type where everything has to be authentic, but there's something about many tourist spots that just feels staged and fake. I'd rather watch locals hanging out in front of the 7-11.
Yes, some places are worse than others for that. I haven't felt that in Europe so much but its like that, at least to me, at a lot of places in the Caribbean. They look and feel like an extension of America and everything seems way more expensive then it should be.
Love this part of South East Asia, although I travelled on the Thai side. Still very similar and all of the boats looks exactly the same. I imagine the temples must have so many stories to tell. Great photos too
Thank you! I thought the Lao and Thai people would be similar because they are so close. But it was a whole different vibe in Laos. In Laos I got the feeling that most people believed "If I ignore him, he will go away". It was nice to be left alone usually, but sometimes at restaurants I felt like I was missing an important cultural custom. I would always have to get up and find the food server and ask for things like my check. Some stores and places would literally just pretend like I wasn't there if I asked them something. Very different from Thailand.
Wow that's sounds very wierd. Wouldn't expect it to be like that at all but have never been that side for any length of time. Cultural difference can be very strange can't they!
The boat looks the same in Vietnam🇻🇳 I would like to travel to Campu via boat one day, should be cool!
Yes, that long boat style is really cool. If you do take a boat trip, you probably don't want to take one for this much time. It was 2 days on the boat which I think is too much.
Haha yes too much to reach to Camp 😅 I think I will get boatsick
Great post! I really enjoyed Luang Prabang. I was travelling at a slow pace with bus which was actually a good way. those boats doesn't look to comfortable....
If I did it again, I would probably take the bus. The idea of the boat seemed cool and there were some nice views. But it's just so slow and the boats can be uncomfortable depending on how they arrange the seats.
Yeah, I can imagine. The bus was a good alternative as they were confortable.
Love the pictures! It’s indeed one of my favorite things to see what the locals area looks like, not the area they design for the tourists. That part is a lot more interesting I think!
Gross how the toilet emptied into the river, makes my stomach turn thinking about it lol and people just throw trash into the river.
Yeah. Even on land the toilet situations in Laos were a lot to get used to. In Thailand they usually have the butt sprayers to clean up afterwards. In Laos I ran into a lot of squat toilets and a big jug of water and a dipping ladle. I guess you just pour water on your ass to clean up? I always felt like I was inches away from disaster in those bathrooms.
I have a LooLoo Community if you ever want to do a post about toilets 😄
https://peakd.com/c/hive-165962/created
Holy shit (get it 😄) that's awesome! It seems like half of my facebook posts from this trip was about the toilets.
well, now you know where to dump it next time!!!!
Hahah that's a good pun too!
I actually like the bidet concept! It’s pretty efficient and doesn’t use toilet paper lol. A little weird to get used to but it’s clean! I’m not sure about the whole ladle business though hahaha