"Luang Prabang"

Luang Prabang is by far the most relaxed place I have been in my life, up to this point. There is nothing stressful going on there, although, 60% of the people walking down the streets around the market, are tourists. The city is dominated by French architecture, with massive Buddhist temples in between. There are heaps (All Australians say "heaps" in almost every sentence, so after traveling with Paul for a while now, I seem to be picking it up.) of Buddhist monks walking down the street, wearing their orange robes and carrying an umbrella, hiding from the sun. All over Asia you can see advertisement for skin-whitening cream, sun block and umbrellas. But to be honest I did not expect the monks to care all that much. There might be other reasons to carry the umbrella than the skin color, but whatever their reason for carrying the umbrellas, they are a vital part of the city atmosphere, and they bring a peaceful feeling to walking down the "strip". Except for the TukTuks driving by, there is not much traffic, and everywhere there are well kept, old Citroëns and Mercedeses, reminding us about the colonial times. Wherever you go you will find nice restaurants, street food, and smiling people.
The city is located on a small peninsula, having the Mekong River run down on one side, and a smaller side river on the other side. We lived right on the smallest one, but there was only a 10 minutes walk to the Mekong.
Most tourists are old here, and that also helps bringing the tempo down a bit. The only thing we could not slow down on was the food. We would eat the entire day, often multiple meals in an hour. We also tried to find a good bar, but it took a while before we could find anywhere with other people. This is the down season here, but there are always quite a few people visiting. The locals only account for 26 000 of the population, which I would guess is above 30 000, on any given time of the year. We found a bar showing English Premier League, and decided to hang out there. Watching Arsenal- Chelsea, we ordered towers of beer. One tower is 3 liter. The price was about 7 USD. Paul and me challenged the people by the pool table, and after being down by seven balls; we turned it around and won. The next game we also won, almost in the same way. And by the time the bar closed we were undefeated. We can still not believe this really happened.
In Luang Prabang most bars close between 12:30 and 1:00, but the bowling alley stays open till 3 AM, so that is where everyone heads when the bars shut their doors closed. At 6 AM the Super Ball was on in a sports bar, but I was way too tired to be watching commercials, and headed to bed.

Laos is for sure an upcoming tourist destination. More and more people find this pearl, and everywhere you can see the infrastructure around tourism being built up. In Norway, most people go traveling to find beaches, and believe it or not, the Australians do too. This is now changing I think, and you can tell by the number of tourist visiting Laos. For years and years, Bali has been the "Canary Islands" for the Australians. That is where everyone goes for their vacation time. Just like in Europe, people have been to their "Gran Canaria" several times already, and start looking around for something a little more interesting. Lao turns out to be more interesting, and the Auzzies have realized that. The country is completely land locked, so beaches are scarce, but with mighty rivers, beautiful lagoons and cheap plane tickets on Jet Star, the tourist industry in Laos is a gold mine. And I have not yet mentioned the Chinese. The growing middle class is for sure going to travel a lot more in the coming years, and they are also looking out of their own country for tourist destinations. Vietnam is already benefiting from the Chinese invasion (No dragons sent by the gods will be welcomed by the Vietnamese today). And Laos will eventually do the same. I think the economy here in Laos will be spinning so fast that they will get problems with inflation here, just like they do in Vietnam now, and the banks and the government will have to figure out what to do about it. The people of Lao have a different way of handling their economics than we do in the West, so I think that massive inflation will not affect the tourist industry all that much. All guesthouses are run by families who usually live in the reception. They sleep on the floor and run the Internet café, the kiosk, the clothing store and the bar next door. The families are huge, and kids at the age of four work there, while playing around with the other kids in town. You can tell that they have no mortgage, but build a little more as soon as they get their hands on some cash. Everywhere things are built half way, and the rooms are always the first to be built. (The guesthouse in Phonsavan was all concrete, except for the rooms. The owner was saving up money to build a café down stairs.) All of this will change now, especially because of foreign investors. The communist regime realized that further isolation would do them no good, and in the 1980's they opened the country to foreign investment. Now there will be built resorts all over the country, and there is nothing that can stop the boom. The government is stabile, there are not that many natural disasters here (mud slides are common in the rainy season, but other than that there is not that much worth talking about), and the visa keeps getting easier to get. The only question is for how long they can keep this boom going. There will for sure be built far too many guesthouses and resorts here, so they might end up running each other out of business.