The Slow Boat to Luang Prabang

9 August 2009

From Nam Tha, drove down to the little town of Nong Khieaw. If Nam Tha is laid back, Nong Khieaw makes it look like New York at rush hour...picture the Nam Ou River flowing muddily by, between green-drenched limestone karst mountains, with draped with little bungalows on both sides. Fishing boats along the pier, carting westerners along the river. A few river-side places to eat, loads of huge ferns and big pink flowers. All very mellow.

David is a bit poorly, has picked up some bug along the way, and spent the evening in our bungalow on the river bank, draped with a very pink mosquito net and being lazily fanned in the intense heat. Hopefully he'll be more the thing in a day or two...

Today we've come down from Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang, the ancient Lao royal town on a little peninsula in the Mekong River. Lots of French colonial white buildings, French restaurants, and a night market that looks promising. Made the 5-hour trip along the Nam Ou and thence the Mekong itself, in a pair of brightly coloured narrow boats with motors, as Tim & Cheryl drove the truck. Boats are a bit spartan, but the scenery was lush and gorgeous and green and (to be honest) a bit boring after about an hour. I am not a nature girl. But the breeze was lovely, and we stopped partway at a river-side cavern full of hundreds of buddhas, called Pak-Ou Caves. Sort of a graveyard for unwanted figurines, and also full of small children offering to sell birds in little cages which can be freed by sentimental westerners...said birds are of course trained to fly right back to the cages. Silly white people.