Thursday, March 29, 2007

Luang Prabong

The city of Luang Prabong had a great atmosphere and pace, with wide streets with lots of restaurants, cafes and shops and most things within walking distance, surprisingly even a bowling alley(!); it was not at all what I expected to find in the middle of Laos.

Chris and I made several friends on the second day's slow boat (who we would end up traveling with for about 10 days) and on our first day in Luang Prabong we all caught a tuk-tuk out to town to explore a series of nearby waterfalls; the color of the water reminded me a lot of the waters at the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia. We did some hiking around and rewarded our efforts with a dip in the brisk water and some fun on a rope-swing.

On the way back to town our tuk-tuk blew its front and back driver-side tires and our driver narrowly avoided rolling us over. Luckily because there were so many of us we were traveling in two tuk-tuks each with a spare...unluckily one of the spares was flat, so we ended up waiting an hour or so for a similar make tuk-tuk to come past with a spare they were willing to part with.

We spent half of day two walking the wide streets, enjoying the atmosphere and seeing some of the city's temples, at this point I was getting pretty templed out and so only went to the few that were free. And then it was time to press on to Vang Vieng.

Photos: Luang Prabong

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