12.28.09-1.1.10
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Luang Prabang is a Unesco world heritage town located at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan Rivers. The architecture and cuisine are remnants of the French occupation and the baguettes and pastries were a welcome sight, or better yet - taste. It’s a small town that has become a tourist hub because of its location and we spent our time here doing a little shopping, visiting waterfalls and frequenting the spas. Like Thailand, Laos is littered with cheap spa’s that cater to Western tourists. We happen to stumble upon a relatively obscure place populated by only locals that provided unlimited sauna for about $1.15. Needless to say, it became almost a daily stop.
We spent New Year’s with Jonah and Alicia in LPB which catered to the Western holiday. A short happy hour at the guesthouse was followed by a semi-traditional Lao dinner at a riverside restaurant. Good food, good drink and good friends - what more could you want to usher in the new decade. (A couple notes about Lao food – in general, it is not as tasty as Thai food although the ingredients are very similar: chili, lemongrass, cilantro and similar herbs, noodles, fish and meats (chicken, buffalo, pork) and of course lots of soup. It is also almost impossible to be full without eating a significant helping of sticky rice! It begins to explain the Laotians physic.) The main course of the meal was a Lao BBQ which consists of a nifty contraption that cooks meat in the middle and soup on the perimeter.
After dinner we stopped in town to pick up a couple rice paper lanterns to send off our new year’s wishes. Along the way we stopped at a local celebration that included dancing Laos in Santa hats as well as assorted small fireworks which we had somehow gotten our hands on. We made our way to “Utopia”, a riverside bamboo bar, just in time to count down the last moments of 2009. Jonah and Alicia lit their lantern and, in what would have been a perfectly timed release, they let it go. Unfortunately instead of going up, it went down! The gathering crowd “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” as the lantern fell and then just as easily began to rise. The bamboo roof overhang, however, almost provided the first tragedy of 2010 as it caught the lantern on the way up. We now had a burning paper lantern trapped in the roof rafters of a very dry bamboo structure which covered a hundred or so celebrating tourists! After some tense moments, someone climbed a nearby bamboo pole and pushed the mischievous lantern into the night sky. Jonah let out a final cry, “Our baby made it!”
The rest of the evening was spent dancing without incident and we left the next day for Phonsavah, albeit a bit tired and dazed!
look fabulous!
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