We flew to Luang Prabang from Siem Reap, quick ride to our hotel and straight into town. We found an amazing French place that had some lovely cheese platters with white wine.. Followed by the night market. I feel that the Laotian night market had more authentic stuff than any other I had been to, less of those fabulous touristy tops that say Laos. Laos, I think, is a slight bit more expensive than Cambodia. They also prefer to use their own currency, kip, instead of US dollars (which are also accepted in shops) unlike Cambodia, where US dollars are used more commonly than the local currency (riel).
We were upgraded to a very lovely room for our first night. In the morning we woke up to a fresh hotel breakfast. I was really upset that the hotel didn't serve coffee (what is that all about!) so we headed down to the Mekong river, less than a minute walk away, to enjoy 'second breakfast'. We rented out some bicycle for the day and enjoyed the day by just driving around the city and along the river, occasionally stopping for more food and drinks. Luang Prabang is a breathtaking, peaceful small city filled with flowers, temples and amazing food. The Mekong river definitely makes the city more attractive and fun, there are a few bamboo bridges over it providing the possibility to see the side of the city most locals live on.
We had the most fabulous dinner by the river before we headed for a Mekong river sunset cruise. We spent two hours roaming around the river, ending the day with the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. Sun falling into the river in all the colours of the spectrum.
The next day we rented a motorbike to drive to the Kuang Si waterfalls. The road took us past local villages, rice fields and mountain vales. There is a small tourist village by the waterfalls where you can buy food and little souvenirs. At the entrance to the waterfalls is a bear sanctuary. The bears have been saved from the wild after an injury. One of the cuties was missing a pawn and another had had a brain surgery. The place was quite fascinating and the bears were messing around, enjoying the sun. The waterfalls were turquoise. Just turquoise. It was beautiful, unfortunately, so cold that I only dipped myself in and got out. For lunch we had a whole grilled fish with some vegetable skewers.
We found a lovely place at the end of the market street that has some sunbeds and books on the rooftop so I spent the next day there just reading classics and drinking beer Lao. Such a relaxing day, true holiday feeling. The trip was all about them sunsets so we climbed to mount Phousi to see the sunset that night. There are steps all the way up and a fee of 2,5 dollars. Views were incredible yet again. We also discovered a yummy street food buffet for two dollars so we feasted that night. I met some great people in the city so I spent two evenings playing cards against humanity at the local night club; Utopia.
For our final day, we had booked a 'rice is life' tour to go see a local rice farm; Living Land Farm, and to try some farming! The tour allowed us to get to know all the 14 steps rice farming has. They include, picking the right grains, planting them, turning over the field with a water buffalo, harvesting, peeling the grains and grinding it. The experience was one of a kind and so much fun. I will personally never buy Uncle Ben's again, rice farming is such hard work, and it requires plenty of skills. From a grain to plate is a four-month process. At the end of the tour, we made our own sugarcane juice and had a tasting of various rice products.
All in all, I am very blessed, my holiday was absolutely fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone. #onceinalifetime
Haha bye,
Mira
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