Features of Luang Prabang

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Luang Prabang is a city where old things are still visible. We can see the Lao temples and their architecture from that time with our own eyes. Also, the street buildings built when the French conquered Laos can still be seen in Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang has two major rivers, the Mekong River and another. The main tourist area in Luang Prabang is a delta between two rivers. As a city, Luang Prabang is a very rich city in terms of people and their entertainment, as well as architecture and natural beauty. There is also a special tourist vibe created by the food and tourism industry in Luang Prabang City.

How to get to Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is the most popular tourist destination in Laos. You can also go there directly by plane. There are direct flights from Vietnam and Bangkok in Thailand to Luang Prabang. Now, you can reach the Lao capital Vientiane from the China-Lao Railway and Luang Prabang from the Chinese side by train. You can also reach Luang Prabang from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, by bus or shared taxi, as in the old days.

Accommodation, food and drink

There is hardly a tourist city like this in Sri Lanka, which is close to us. There are many fun activities prepared especially for tourists in Luang Prabang, such as hotels, restaurants, massages, clubs, etc. Luang Prabang is a great destination for those who are looking for things to see and those who are looking for a rest.

Temple on the mountain

The temple on the mountain is a beautiful viewpoint. When you climb up there, you can see the Mekong River on one side, the Mekong River on the other side, and another river on the other side. You have to buy a ticket for a few days. We went to temple. Even though it was raining at that time, there were a lot of tourists. Tourists flock to this place to see the wonderful sunset and sunrise.

A temple

Even though it is a temple, there is no rule that you have to take off your sandals or wear them long. If you want to go inside the temple, you have to take off your sandals. But there is no problem with sandals to go to the temple grounds. And the white people, the white people, had come there wearing shorts.

Even though they are Buddhists, each country has its own traditions. Although there are similarities, there are also some differences. In any case, we, as Buddhists by birth, went there and worshipped and came back as Sadhus.

 

Enter Luang Prabang

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The capital of Laos used to be Luang Prabang. There was a king there. Later, the capital was moved to Vientiane. I think Luang Prabang has a scene like our Kandy in Sri Lanka. Luang Prabang is the most popular place among tourists.

Station and accommodation
We got off at Luang Prabang and went to a shop to have something to drink before going to the airport. We asked for a watermelon, which cost seven to eight hundred rupees in Sri Lankan money. Why would we drink watermelon for that much? We selected a random juice and drank it.
It was delicious.

After drinking something from the stall outside the station, we went back to the station to get a taxi. I heard that Laos is a budget taxi service. They took us for a reasonable price. It was a high-roof dolphin taxi service right at Luang Prabang station. The price was reasonable. Also, since it was AC inside, the dust from outside didn't fall.

But it was like an oil tanker. It was time to leave. Four groups of people going to the city got on like us. Four groups got off at four different places. We got off at the end. This is one of the few places on the China-Lao Railway that is a bit far from the city center from the station. It was about a kilometer from the station to the city center in Luang Prabang.

Hostel accommodation
This time we had booked a hostel. Even that was getting used to. It was too hot when we left. We left that trip with our bags and went for a walk. First, we looked around, exchanged some money, and looked for a place to buy something. We found a place right by the river. We stopped there because we could eat while looking at the river. That river was the Mekong River. We had seen the Mekong in southern Laos before..now we see the Mekong, but there is a distance of more than eight hundred kilometers between those two places. It must have been even more. The river does not flow in a straight line, right?

Snake wine and food
After ordering the food, two people came and brought two bottles of wine from the shop. They were a type of whiskey infused with snakes and lizards. We only saw them and took pictures, but we didn't go to drink them. But our friends were a little surprised when they saw the place.

Next, we went to see the boats on the Mekong River. They charged 400,000 Kip per hour for the boat trip. The boatman explained to us with gestures and a little bit of a laugh that he would show us around here and there. We got off at 3 o'clock again. But our friends didn't seem to be very interested in the boat trip. A jockey came and asked for a small boat for two laks. I was happy to go on one leg. But our friends were a little scared to go on the small boat without a jacket on the steep road. That trip was a waste of time.

When we walked back to the accommodation, we saw a temple. Knowing that we were in Sri Lanka, the ticket office at the temple was happy. It was a monument, or rather, an old temple near the royal palace, and tickets were sold for it. So when we went there, I was shocked to see that my glasses and hat were missing. I had forgotten them. I went back to the village and brought them back, and I had forgotten them where the snake whiskey I had drunk earlier was.

When we got back, we saw people busy getting ready for a night market on the main road where we had booked our accommodation. As soon as the sun had risen and the sun had set, the people were preparing big box tents and setting them up on the road, getting ready for the night market.

 

Breakfast at Vang Vieng

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Eating breakfast at the hotel is fun. There are delicious food and delicious views. Sleepy people staying at the hotel come to eat in shorts and even in their night clothes. We can see not only the surrounding scenery, but also the food while eating breakfast. Also, since there is a buffet, we get the opportunity to eat fried rice and fried chicken. So we ate as usual.

To the train station..

I don't remember how it went. But I remember a scene I saw at one train station. We were in line to enter the station. Before entering, they checked our tickets and passports. For the Lao people, they probably showed their identity cards. So, the place where they checked is where an outsider has the opportunity to see someone entering the station. This is a two- or three-hour journey, but before the railway was built, some took seven or eight hours. Even on the train, there are also five or six-hour journeys in Laos.

Sensual vision

In our house, there are two pairs of sandals that my father used to wear to work in the garden. Sometimes, when they get dirty, my father himself fixes them with two pieces of rubber lace zippers. There was a mother wearing a simple dress like a cloth top and wearing two sandals, coming into the station. She also carried a small bag. The daughter, who had the same face as her mother, was holding her mother's hand with a very calm face. A little further away, there was a boy who could be suspected of being her mother's son-in-law.

So, that must have been the moment when that mother said goodbye to her daughter. If you look a little deeper, there is a good bond between a mother and daughter, no matter where they are in the world. After that, when the daughter grew up and settled in her own place, the mother could only come and see her. The daughter could not go back to hanging on her mother's arm like before. They both had to hug and cry for a while. The son-in-law also came and comforted the daughter.

No matter how big the newly built concrete floors and the creations are, such human scenes are more impressive than anything else.

The queue to enter the station was like a refugee queue. Western tourists going from one tourist destination to another with big and small bags hanging from their hands, Chinese who had returned to their motherland by train, Laotians who had come to travel from one city to another in their own country, etc. Many colorful faces were seen in the station queue.

 

That evening

I went to a small restaurant without many people. The food was very lemongrass and ginger in the food. I forgot what to do and ate it. The food is good, but not every restaurant always has a good taste. On backpacking trips like ours, you can get a lot of cheap food and food that quickly upsets your stomach.

The night market.
Every place we went to in Laos had a night market option. The clothes, shoes, etc. in the night market in these villages were cheap. I wasn't that interested in those markets and the goods. It seemed that our friends were buying items from them.

The people who sell goods in those night markets are like the people who sell goods in our weekly markets. In the evening, they come with their own basic carts loaded with luggage and push them along the road. They come and set up their tents and put their belongings on. Even though it is a tourist area, there are not many. Some of the ideas we hold in our minds are not always correct. For example, even the price of goods in tourist areas is sometimes wrong. The goods in this tourist night market are really cheap. Oh my, I thought that Bangkok would be cheaper than Laos, but I was wrong. Bangkok goods are more expensive than Laos.

Searching for suspicious massages
This is also a very fun hobby. For some reason, it is a bit difficult to find massages that give more sexual pleasure in Laos. Every massage is the same. We look at the massage and measure it in our minds. Was there a young woman in shorts in front of it? Is the massage visible? We also used various maths to find massages that were extra fun, such as whether the girls would talk to us or not. Sometimes it worked. We might be doing these things for the sake of sex or something else. But there are a lot of uncooperative people like us. That's why there are places like that in those tourist areas.

Anyway, it's fun. Some massages that look really wild from the outside and go in are not really fun at all, they just massage until you're exhausted. "This place looks good, has a traditional look, and needs a good massage," he said, and then went to the counter and started calculating how much it would cost for the massage therapist, how much for the hand massage, and how much for the full service.

Sakura Club
The club is just a model club like the ones in Sinhala movies. You can get drinks. There were a few more balloons and it must have been an intoxicating gas. Even then, the people were drunk. The prices of beer, arrack, and cocktails were not very high. They were about twenty percent higher than the market price.

A girl called me and said, "Where did you get the call?"
This is a rare scene in life. I had a beer and stood alone at that table and was drinking. The next table was filled with four girls and a boy. One of them was laughing with me. After a while, the girl handed me the Summersby that was in the bottle and we both put a bottle cap on my bottle. It was so loud inside that club. So we didn't get a chance to talk. Besides, we weren't shy guys. It didn't make much sense to talk to girls like that. However, a local set also goes to those clubs. Knowingly or unknowingly, if we had talked a little, we might have had a chance to do something.

 

Along the Brown Road

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We went to the Blue Lagoon, the Water Cave and the Dark Caves and got ready to return to the forest canopy. We got there along a brown Road. When before 2000 came, there were such roads in our Village. The Brown  Road was muddy in the rain and dusty in the heat. Although there were vast roads in Laos, there are such Brown Roads in Village.

Land Master
Since we also have a bar at home, I took a good look at the Land Master there or the small tractor. A group of people were cutting the paddy fields and loading them on that hand tractor and throwing the paddy leaves on the side of the road. Due to the rain, the paddy leaves might not have been thrown in the paddy fields. The trailer of that hand tractor did not have a box for the driver to sit in, like the trailers in Sri Lanka. The driver sits on a short bench on the board and raises his arms to control the small tractor.

Paddy fields
These paddy fields are just like in Sri Lanka. I don't know how to say whether the harvest is better than in Sri Lanka. Most of the rice grown there is sticky rice. I have heard that some sticky rice is good for fried rice.

Food stop and rain
When we rode our bikes, it was dark. There was a rustic restaurant in a beautiful place near a wide watercourse that had to be crossed by a bridge. We got into it. When it started raining like us, other white people came and got into it. We ate Chinese noodles, papaya salad, coffee and something else. I saw white people eating as they usually do.

After a while, a heavy rain came. The tables of the people who were sitting next to that small restaurant were getting wet. The heavy rain fell on the roof of the restaurant where we were, flowing down and falling all around. When a wind came, the water from the rain soaked the entire group in the restaurant.

In that rain, the little ones from the nearby houses would come out and jump from the bridge into the nearby water. They would jump and run, grab the bank and land. The little ones can't play that much. They would play in a place where the tide was low..but those little faces were filled with joy as they came out and danced in the rain. The little one inside the restaurant we went to, who was so excited by the excitement of the little ones dancing outside, also took off his school uniform and went to dance in the water in his jeans. The parents didn't seem to mind dancing in the water. It must have been normal.

The little ones who said no to photos
When we went to see the boat ride, two little ones climbed a fence and waved at us. When we went to take pictures, they got scared and left. Did we do something wrong by taking pictures, because the little ones missed their fun because of us. Actually, the fence was near the fence.. In the distance, the mountain range would have been beautiful with the two of them, but they ran and danced.

Near the river
There is also harvesting work on the other side of the river. Harvesting has been delayed due to the rain. Like in our rivers, we take food and go on bikes and park the bikes near the river and work on the fields. When I used to go to help in the fields, my favorite thing was when I stopped work and said, "Come on, let's eat together." After sharing the rice brought in plastic plates and sat on the table, I remembered how the life was like a meal. The beautiful flowing river road where we went was also there. The water-logged palm trees in the shade were all the same as in Sri Lanka. Even when we met those Laotian people because of the language barrier, it was difficult to find anything more than a smile.

Getting wet
During our trip to Laos, we had fun in the rain several times. That evening, we could have taken a boat ride if the rain had stopped. I thought it would not be so good to ride a boat when it was raining heavily. Somehow, we missed the boat ride, which was the best fun we had in Van Vieng.

 

 

Water Cave Tunnel

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There is a big board called Water Cave. Underneath it, there is a large rock wall above the water path. I saw a white man floating in a tube filled with air once or twice through that gap. There is a kind of river there. So we are ready to go now.

Entering the Water Cave
You don't have to walk to the Water Cave. You have to climb into a tube and float on the water. There is no path to go. There was a rope to hold on to. We sat in the tube and slowly moved forward along that rope. We had no idea where we were going. It was dark inside the cave. The tube was only a foot or two from the wall at the top of the water cave. We floated on the tube and slowly moved forward. There must have been about four or five meters of rope left. It was dark inside. A white man who was there came back.

When I reached the end, I realized that water was flowing. Oh.. I don't know if it was raining outside. What would happen if the water level increased at this time? I was scared. If the water level in that cave suddenly increased, we would go straight up with the water. If it went and filled completely, we would be trapped inside the cave. It would drown the entire cave. I was a little scared.

When I felt that there was water, I realized that the water was flowing quickly after I reached the end. Then I put aside our photo-taking, video-taking, and shaking rituals and started to grab the rope again and come out. Even then, I realized that the water was flowing. However, there was no real sign that the water level was going up. I came out of the cave before the other two because I was scared.

I came out and went a little further and saw that there was water there, but there was a sluice to control the water level. If there was a problem, if that sluice was opened, the water would flow out and the water level would stop rising. However, we don't know the language to hear anything about it. The Lao people don't speak English as well as we do.

Next, Blue Lagoon 4
This Blue Lagoon was also near the cave complex. We went to it too. The ticket was a small amount. It was like the previous ones, you had to go up and down. There were slides and other things that you could get into the water from a boat. The young white gentlemen who had come to that place were bathing a few women. They swam and boarded a boat-like boat and were relaxing. The white ladies were very beautiful when they were just standing there and when they took off their clothes and bathed. We looked because we could see it, but we didn't focus on them. We weren't important people.

We also went and ran around a bit and came back from there. It was a little late at night when we left the shelter in the morning. We couldn't eat. So we were a little hungry. And there was also a rainy sky. With both of those, we got back on the scooters and started coming back to the shelter. That side was beautiful. We stopped along the way and tried to take photos at one place.

Also, to see if we could go for a boat ride in the morning or that afternoon, we went to the river. We went to a place where we could suspect that boats were brought and put into the river by vehicles. But there were no boats or people. We could see a few people working in the rice fields on the other side of the river.

To the caves

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We left the station with the intention of returning to the station. As we saw, there are caves etc. about 15 kilometers away. We walked on wide roads. In some places, the scooter even overturned. That scooter was good. Also, the roads were wide, so there was no big fear. Like in almost every city in Laos, we could see multi-axle long and wide cargo trucks. We got them on this trip too. So, giving way to those vehicles, we left for the caves. On the way, we found a view point, a small stream. We could also see the mountains. We stopped there and took about 5 minutes to take pictures.

Stopover
On the way, we stopped at a small shop to get something to drink. My friend bought a Sumersby apple. My good friend, who was completely free from alcohol, bought some water. I bought a Lao beer dark. There is no difference in the taste of the beer. The quality of the beer is not that bad because Lao beer is cheap.

Caves
To go to these caves, you need to pay for a headlamp that you can put on your head. Without it, you can't see anything in the world inside the cave. The first cave we went to was not that difficult to enter, it was like a regular rail tunnel. There was a lot of space inside. This is not a cave at all, but a thick tunnel. Even when the lights were turned off, it was pitch black. At least there was no fireman. When we turned off all the lights, we went out to test the darkness. After a while, the white people in the distance also turned off their lights. The darkness that came was ultra-dark. A thick darkness with no light.

A guide had said that there was no end to this huge rock formation we were talking about. The guide had brought two white men. He had walked a little further with them. Although the inside of these tunnels was large, the path to go through was not flat. You had to climb and crawl over the rocks and climb over uneven rocks. In some places, there were Buddha statues inside the caves. We also worshipped them with sincere hearts.

The second cave
These caves are really fantastic. We have to pay another twenty thousand kip for this second cave and buy a set of lights. I think that's the ticket. But if you go into these caves alone and disappear inside, no one seems to know. They don't even ask for any information before you go.

The second cave is more difficult than the first one. You have to climb up and dig a hole to enter it. The stairs to go up and down were made of iron and wood. So when we went down, we saw different types of rocks and structures that had been formed by water over time. It was even more chaotic than the first one. You have to jump and crawl over slippery rocks. It was raining when we went, so water was dripping on the rocks everywhere.

There is no way to take photos of the beautiful natural rock formations inside these dark caves. Even though we took a torch and put on the light and took pictures with difficulty, the photos don't fully capture the fun there.

The book mentions that these rock caves were used by the Vietnamese to hide during the Vietnam War. I didn't realize until I went inside that there was so much space in these caves. These caves can really hold tens of thousands of people without any problem.