It may have been a near-death experience to reach Luang Prabang but I think it was worth it. This cute little town has a lot of French charm and the most incredible waterfalls.
27 October
Prepare yourselves for a huge moan for today’s blog, I apologise in advance.
As we checked out of our hotel and boarded a bus to the bus station we had no idea what a horrific journey was to come!! As we all got out of the bus we were picked to get on the mini buses, for some reason me and Shaun were picked last and had to get on the rubbish looking bus - one in the back and one in the front. We obviously didn’t want to sit apart for, what should have been, 6 hours so we both squeezed into the front! After about 10 minutes Shaun had had enough of being crammed next to the driver so got in the back. This was even worse!!! As soon as Shaun sat down he knew this was going to be an uncomfortable ride. His seat had barely any padding so he was sat directly on the bars of the seat so he put his note pad on it to make it bearable!! The back was the same so he had the metal bar in his back. It was also a folding seat so when we ‘braked’ the seat folded forward and when we turned left it folded and he landed on the guy next to him (who by the way would not stop talking the whole time to his mate). When I say ‘braking’ this is because we had no breaks! The driver kept pumping the breaks because he had a huge air lock and going around cliff edge mountains is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO SCARY when you know you don’t have any breaks. At one point there were 2 buses coming around a corner next to each other, the driver even looked scared because there was no way we were stopping! Luckily one of the buses got back in the right lane, a near miss! With this in mind, I swear the driver was a little blind because being in the front I saw all of the cars and huge potholes well before he did. He would manoeuvre at the last minute; I was so on edge the entire time!
After about three hours, we stopped to help out another mini van because he was stopped on the side of the road. After that one had gone, we had problems!! The driver pulled up the front passenger seats and took off the water tank cap. Water exploded everywhere in a massive bloom of steam. My seat was SOAKING WET, which made me SOAKING WET with scabby brown water all over my white top!! By this point I was close to tears!! Plus he nicked our only bottle of water to put back in the tank which left us with no water for the next three hours and no water makes me a very unhappy person!! We then stopped for a second lunch. The VIP bus then arrived (which we should have got!!) which Simon and Sophie were on. We said bye to them in the morning because they were leaving an hour later then us and it was supposed to take an hour or so longer so and it was cheaper so we weren’t expecting to see them! This REALLY annoyed us as you can expect!!!
About 100km from Luang Prabang we had to stop, a jeep had fallen off the cliff and they were trying to pull it back up. (Fills you with confidence right!). It was apparently 3 Chinese people who were ‘no problem, no problem’ as the driver put it before he drove off 100 meters down the road without all the passengers!!!
Me and Shaun then swapped seats to share each other’s pain!! And after a horrific, life threatening 9 hours on that stupid little mini van (which cost us 110,000 kip each, they should have paid us to endure that!!) we arrived at Luang Prabang bus station! NOTE: NEVER TAKE THE MINI VAN!!
We all got a tuk tuk to the main area next to the Mekong River to find accommodation. It was 6.30pm by this point, the night market was in full swing and it was pitch black so finding somewhere to stay was quite challenging. The first place we tried charged US$75!!! We ended up settling for a horrible room, with no window and stank of dust for 60,000 kip (£4.80)!!
After a well deserved shower we heading out for some food river front, and looked around the market which is amazing! It’s full of textiles, jewellery, all sorts of potions with snakes and gross stuff in them! Everything looks amazing and I wanted to buy it all, I ended up getting a dress and a necklace (which I bartered both from 80,000 kip to 55,0000 kip, which I do feel mean about though!).
28 October
A really horrible nights’ sleep saw us up early and looking for somewhere else to stay, we settled on a place called Silivay/Silichith Guesthouse with a balcony and river view for 70,000 kip (£5.60)!
We headed out for a walk in the blistering heat around Luang Prabang town. It is so French it’s unreal!! Everywhere sells fresh baguettes, croissants and crepes! There are also LOADS of French people here. We saw a few temples (which are now all the same, once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all!!) and went in search of a massage (it’s supposed to be the best place in Southeast Asia). We got a traditional oil massage for 50,000 kip for an hour (£4.00). We were hoping it wasn’t going to be as torturous as the first massage, and luckily, it wasn’t!
For tea we found a man with a trolley of food in the middle of the market where you can get a plate of food for 10,000 kip (80p!!!). The food was amazing as well so we were very pleased! We took a walk to the area where all the bars are and I had a few, very expensive, cocktails in Utopia!! So we may have saved money on food but the cocktails set us back again! The bars are very bizarre, they are decorated with empty bombs! I have no idea why they would want them here as a reminder of what happened to them not so long ago!! By law, all bars have to close at 11.30pm so we were kicked out sharp!!
29 October
We had breakfast at a very French little cafe in town and then got a tuk tuk to Tat Kuang Si waterfall (the big one) about 32km from town. We had gotten the tuk tuk for 40,000 kip each but after 4 more people loaded in they had bartered it down to 30,000 kip each for us, yay!! To enter the waterfall foreigners have to pay an entrance fee of 20,000 kip each (even at all the temples it’s one price for locals and a different one for foreigners). At the entrance there is an enclosure of Asiatic bears which they apparently rescued from poachers and do not want to release them for fear of the same thing, very cruel really. Unbeknown to us, a half hour very steep trek saw us at the top of the waterfall, it looks absolutely incredible from here and you can see right into the mountains!! Another half hour slippery trek back down we went for a little paddle in the incredibly blue lagoon at the bottom, where, of course, Shaun did his huge bomb shells (look at the slow mo pics)!!
In the evening we ate down a street where there are loads of stools of food, all for a plate for 10,000 kip!! Yummy!! We were really warn out from the walking today so we got an early night and I managed not to buy anything from the market!!
We are flying to Hanoi, Vietnam tomorrow. No way are we getting a bus back and apparently the bus from here to Hanoi is the most horrific journey ever and takes a whole day, an hour on a plane will do us fine!
A la perchoine, Jodie and Shaun x
