The gem of south east Asia, the most unspoilt town in Asia, retaining all its colonial charm, etc etc, could this place possibly live up to the promises? I have wanted to visit for a while, and everyone says go now before its too late.

The flight into Luang Prabang is certainly a dramatic introduction, edging ever closer to the spiky mountains, the Mekong comes into view, followed by a glimpse of the town and we are down; the airport is very close to downtown LP.

Luang Prabang flight in

Visa on arrival is available to most, and is a fairly painless process; just make sure you have low denomination dollar notes. $35 for the Visa (depends on your nationality), plus $1 service charge (no idea why), you will also need a passport photo to handover – or they will photocopy your passport, for another dollar. After that its the immigration desk for a bit more paper stamping and you are in. Final hurdle, if you had checked in luggage you will need to show the check in slip to prove its yours, not a bad idea really.
Taxi into town can be booked at the desk outside arrivals and the current rate is $6 to town center locations. They can also help with accommodation if you didn’t pre book something.

Luang Prabang - sunset on the Mekong

The main part of the town (the bits that most tourists will be interested in) are on a peninsular surrounded by water on three sides, and its pretty high up. The Mekong can rise up this far according to the high water markers. Its hard to imagine that volume of water, but this is one of the worlds great rivers, bringing water down from as far as the Tibetan plateaux.

Luang Prabang side street

Downtown Luang Prabang is certainly very cute, all low rise, a mixture of oriental and French colonial architecture with well paved and laid out streets. And, as far as I know, a first for south east Asia: pavements that behave as expected… No wobbling, no sudden and unannounced changes in level, no motorbike parking, no being blocked by signage or other paraphinalea, no missing man hole covers, I could go on… Just good solid, clean pavements, incredible; it its possible. The main roads are all connected by alleyways, again all very cute, and the whole place seems very cohesive and planned. Strangely its the lack of planning and the fact the country was virtually closed until recently that has preserved the place; there was no money to do anything and the big chains wouldn’t have risked the investment.

The Mekong River

Navigation: there are 3 principal roads, one on each river side and the main road running down the center. The main road is where most if the bars, restaurants, booking agencies etc are.

Sights

National Museum: on the main road this is the old palace now converted to the national museum. Most of the stuff on display harks back to royal days and is not really that interesting. To the right hand side in a seperate wing they have the Luang Prabang Buddha statue, from which the town takes its name. The main attraction (for me) was the building on the right as you enter the palace grounds; the palace of the golden Buddha, the statue is no longer there, but the building is spectacular, inside and out.

Luang Prabang - Palace of the Golden Buddah

Luang Prabang - Palace of the Golden Buddha

Luang Prabang - Palace of the Golden Buddah

Pak Ou Caves: about 25km north of LP and reached by boat up the Mekong. Takes about 2 hours to get there and an hour back. The caves contain some 4000 Buddha statues placed over the years, the upper cave is more atmospheric but unlit so bring a torch. I enjoyed the boat trip more than the destination, you could see various activities along the riverbanks.

Luang Prabang - the Mekong river

Most trips stop at a local town, where can see some weaving and moonshine production; moonshine with snakes and other reptiles soaking in it… For strength apparently.

Luang Pragang - Pak Ou Caves

Luang Prabang - one of the 4000 Buddha statues

Luang Pragang - moonshine production

Luang Prabang - what this statue needs is rice...

Waterfalls: the other ‘must do’, which I didn’t… But everyone recommend it.

The Night Market: is there a town in Asia that doesn’t have one? All the usual handicrafts, but a lot if it quite nice, and very little if the plastic crap/ pirate dvd stuff you usually find. Compared to many towns it also seemed well laid out and calm.

Day Market: lots of interesting veg and fruit; some of which you may even recognise…

Luang Prabang - street market

Restaurants & Bars

The main road, (the wonderfully named Sisavangvong Rd, after the last king) has a good selection of eating and drinking places, including a couple of wine bars. Mostly these places are perfectly fine and offer good value. Some better food can be found just away from the main roads, if you fancy splashing out a bit, the price goes up but compared to Europe its very good value, mostly…
There is some overpriced bollox too, I have paid those prices do you don’t have to…

I was only here for four days so can’t claim that this even scrapes the surface, but:

Blue Lagoon: At the side of the national museum/ old palace gets top marks, excellent selection of well cooked and presented Lao and western food. Perfect service and very good value. Actually; I have decided thus is one of the nicest places I have been for a long time… You may need to book.

Three Nagas: I always do it at least once a trip, wander in to a place that looks wrong but press on anyway… The food was OK, and the service excellent, which it should have been considering what I paid; about 3 days wages for a fish with as much meat as a fish finger, salad and a glass of wine. Nothing actually wrong, just a total over pricing of the offer and very poor value, even their wine was double what everyone else was charging for the very same bottle. For that kind of premium you need to be special, very special, and it just wasn’t…

Tamarind: Couldn’t get in but everyone recommends it and all the food I saw looked good. Their specialty is Lao, so maybe next time.

Tamnak Lao: Sakkaline Rd (extension of Sisavangvong).  Restaurant, cooking school, book exchange and supporter of kids with the profits, what’s not to like? Aa a restaurant hard for me to comment on the authenticity of the food, but they had some different stuff which was tasty and well presented.

The team here are doing great work to support disadvantaged kids in the Luang Prabang area; for details of the Lao kids support see here.

Massage

Lotus massage on Sisavangvong was great. Prices similar to Thailand, about £3-4 per hour for foot or head massage.

Accommodation

In the absence of the big global chains (so far) Guest Houses are the main accommodation provider, and these vary hugely in quality, from  boutique hotels to, well, lets call it the lower end. Unfortunately, my pre booked choice was towards the lower end. I don’t necessarily have a problem with this if I know what I’m getting into. I do have a problem with this when they advertise themselves as something else, and charge non appropriate prices. The biggest annoyance was the incompetence and lack of care, the maintenance was not good and the breakfast nothing less than as joke: 2 overcooked eggs, half a baguette toasted until burnt and a mug of cold coffee with congealed coffee mate floating on top just screams ‘we don’t care’.
They pushed the boat out on day two after a complaint, and I got a Lao breakfast; poached eggs on a pancake, on noodles. Accompanied by black rice, coconut and a banana.

Lao breakfast

The owner of this place could scarcely care less about the place or the staff, I had to process my own cc transaction when the lad in charge was getting clearly distressed with his inability to cope. Shall I name it? Well, just don’t book anything called villa x… on the riverside.

These places are recommended:

Packluck Group

Ramayana Boutique Hotel

Chitadara. Mekong River Side, Ounkham Rd, 18/2. Luang Prabang. Tel: +856 71 212886. Mail: Chitdara2@hotmail.com

Phounsab Guest House. Choumkhong Village, Sisavangvong Rd. Luang Prabang. Tel: +856 71 212975. Mail: phounsabguesthouse@yahoo.com

The People

There are a lot of monks in Luang Prabang, really a lot, and it looks very exotic if you are unaccustomed to seeing this kind of thing.
All is not what you might assume though, most of these monks are getting an education, so its a bit like being at school, this us not necessarily a life long vocation. If you go into the Wats, and they are not doing studies or other activities, they will happily chat, and most have good English; the guy I spoke to graduates next year and wants to go into finance…
LP is also famous for the monks alms collection, which is held at 6 am every morning, recently some monks have been made ill after being given dodgy food by tourists, who in turn had it sold to them by dodgy locals. Apparently this got so bad the monks threatened to abandon the practice, but were told the by government that they had to carry on on they would bring in ‘extras’… I didn’t attend, its not a tourist spectacle.
Most people are very friendly and like to say hello, and generally they seem quite happy, there is virtually no begging. I don’t know enough about Laos to understand why this is the case, there is certainly poverty here and a great number of orphaned children. It holds the unenviable record as being the most bombed place on earth; whilst the county is now cleared of mines the collateral damage must remain.

More details on bombing and UXO (Unexploded Ordenance) in Laos here.

There is none of the ‘night’ activity that Thailand is known for, in fact unmarried sex with locals is illegal. Nightlife closes early and bars shut around 11pm, there is technically a curfew. You don’t see many police about, but the bars and hotels seem to manage the situation.

Luang Prabang - bamboo bridge

Summary

So is it the gem everyone says it is? Yes, absolutely, but go soon. I don’t believe any government can hold back the tide of tourism for long, and why should they? The people need the cash so it will happen.

The charm if LP is its size and the fact it is unspoilt, both if these will change with expansion and there are plenty of people waiting to exploit this, there is no better marker of future plans than the work going on at the airport; so go now.

Luang Prabang - International Departures check in, all of it - for now...

Updated: January 2012