The Pearl of the Orient

Our introduction to Laos has been the city widely considered the country's jewel - Luang Prabang. Jen and I arrived ready to be impressed, glowing reports from fellow travellers along with guidebook superlatives that describe it variously as the region's - and possibly the whole continent's - most romantic or charming city combining in our minds to form rather stratospheric expectations. True to the form shown by all our favourite places, it didn't remotely disappoint.

Set beautifully on the Mekong River, Luang Prabang is a gorgeous architectural mix of the ancient, the colonial and the modern, historic yet well preserved temples sharing space with beautifully restored French colonial villas plus - as befitting its current status as a genuine poster child of Asian tourism - a plethora of guesthouses, boutique hotels, bakeries, bars and classy restaurants. The international community has discovered Luang Prabang in a big, big way so it's full of tourists - most places this lovely usually are - but the great thing is that while this means the town is very traveller-friendly, it doesn't feel overrun or hyper-commercialised. Rather, it has the highly addictive vibe of a very pretty, tranquil and yet well-developed riverside town that just happens to get a lot of visitors.

The city has several notable Buddhist sites and temples - the largest being Wat Xieng Thong, on Luang Prabang's historic old-quarter peninsular.

Possibly most impressive however, given its location on a 100m hill overlooking central Luang Prabang, is Wat Tham Phu Si. The temple complex itself is quite cool, even boasting a small cave and a Buddha footprint (helpfully signposted and all)...

...as well as great views from the top.

Unquestionably my favourite part of the experience though was the pair of Buddha statues on display. Now, we've seen roughly fourteen million (that might be an exaggeration, but not by sodding much) Buddha statues over the course of our journey and most of them, facially at least, are fairly uniform in appearance. Not these two Buddhas though - they were how I would imagine Buddha to look if he was a character in the Simpsons, and Homer was his hero. And they were bloody magnificent.

Sightseeing, nice as it is, really does take a back seat in Luang Prabang to just being. Sitting by the river watching the sun go down, cold Beer Lao in hand as the soft breeze hits your face and life goes ambling contentedly by, is a simple and yet magical experience. And speaking of watching the sun go down, regular readers will know that we do like our sunset shots - so here are a couple.

So that's what we've been doing in Luang Prabang - eating, drinking, strolling, observing and just generally letting the loveliness that is Luang Prabang wash over us. And you really do have to love a town that, despite its (very well deserved) reputation as a classy and upscale kind of place, still has somewhere with a menu as backpacker-friendly as this one at the fantastic Arthouse Cafe.

It's touristy and relatively upmarket, yes, but we can't recommend Luang Prabang highly enough. We've spent four wonderful days here and could more than happily have spent four weeks, such is the charm and vibe of the place. But travelling - funnily enough - involves travel, and with this in mind we'll soon be boarding a bus heading south, challenging the rest of the country to live up to the lofty standards Luang Prabang has set.

Things Jennie will remember:

1) Vegetable curry for 15000 dong - yum yum yum (even if I did eat so much of it that I snapped the wooden seat)

2) The bamboo bridge being built to get folks to the restaurant across the river - it started the day we arrived and was probably only one more day from opening when we left. Awesome watching!

3) Finding that Laos was so cheap that suddenly we could afford chocolate cake!

4) Discovering that when a free glass of wine with a main meal is promoted that you can afford to drink wine (and they filled it right up to the top too!): I can thoroughly recommend the bar called "House"

5) That you should never go to bars recommended by the Lonely Planet, but instead go to the bars NEXT to them, as the beers there are always much, much cheaper

6) Our lovely 'cheap baguette' making lady - 5000 dong, beats Pret-A-Manger prices! And so nice to have proper bread again!!

7) Night Market stalls with 'classy' products that actually look really well made

8) The crazy kid who drove his plastic push car trolley toy into Sean's leg, Sean moved and he hit him again, his parents then watched as Sean was attacked by this 3 year old and his car (we had to run to get away from him) - hysterical!

9) Realising that we're now pros at the SE Asian style of 'table barbeque'

10) That Lao Lao (rice whisky) is disgusting but when it's free you're forced to down it

11) That not doing much is really wonderful. We don't have so many photos here as we literally ate and drank and read books the whole time, but it's one of my most favourite places.

12) Sunset over the Mekong drinking a beer with the person you love (everybody say 'ahhhh')

Here are the pics:

BT29_Luang Prabang 1 - 5 Nov 2010