There is a derisory joke in Indochina about the Laotians, namely, the Vietnamese plant rice and tend it, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Laotians listen to it grow. We are expecting a quiet time!
We hub through Yangon, for a four hour layover, visiting places we missed a week ago and getting some passport photos, before flying to Bangkok, for an overnight stay, our second visit, of three, headed for Luang Prabang, which has to be my favourite pronunciation of the trip!
This is another country were you cannot buy their currency abroad and a photo visa is only issued at the airport, at a mere $35 per head. Ironically, when we arrived it was very officious, the first line was to hand over your passport, visa application and photos before being sent to another line where you were repatriated with your passport and had to pay the $70, which now had a $1admin fee and they didn't want the photos, insisted upon online. just before i could vent my spleen you are sent off to another line to finally get your pristine visa stamped in triplicate!
According to our friends at UNESCO, this is the "best preserved city in Southeast Asia". It sits on the Mekong river, known as the "Thousand Pagoda City" and has a rich French colonial background. Talking of colonies, the flight from Bangkok is rather full of cotton, linen and varicose veins, if you get my drift!
In one weeks time the trip will be over! It seems strange to be able to envisage the end, especially as it has been such a fantastic trip and I don't want it to! If someone ere to add a few days in Borneo to see some orang-utans, a visit to Kunming in Southern China and a flit to Taipei to give me the full set, I'd be up for it! Plus, that takes us to the end of February and it might be a tad warmer, drier and spring like back in Blighty!
We have a great hotel, The Apsala with rooms on Rive Droite and more rooms and a great restaurant, a gauge, plied by little boat upon request. It's that or a bamboo bridge! The manager, a well travelled Austrian by the name of Brita, is engaging and informative.
The town is restaurants, cafes and hotels/dorms, a fusion of Rex and Moira with Brett and Kylie. It is quite bizarre to have it so French one direction and pure Asian in the other. A citron presse and croissant au beurre set the tone!
What to do? Limestone caves, elephant riding and bathing, waterfalls, all manner of extreme sport and get up early to watch the 100 or so monks collecting alms. Due to circumstances we just did the early rising! The Buddhist monks walk the streets at 6.00 am to receive food from the locals. This is a hugely cultural experience but with 10 other cultures it becomes a feeding frenzy of gratuitous photo ops. I have to say I found it very soulless and unattractive. We enjoyed having a cycle ride which made checking out the town and surrounding areas a doddle, and a lot cooler as its very humid to be walking miles! Apart from that it was too much eating, lots of sleeping and generally getting into the mindset that its nearly over, so better get the Tesco online order in then!