Laidback in Laos

It takes just an hour to fly on an ATR7 prop, over the mountains from Hanoi to Luang Prabang. It's like going from chaos to calm. Whereas the Vietnamese will one day take over the world, the Laotians are far to into searching for inner peace to get too flustered about anything. Alex has joined us from London and we have caught up with our dear friends Jacqui and Tom and their youngest, one of my godsons Brendan, from Sydney. The daytime temperature has also risen by about 10 degrees and the sun has shone brightly, since we left northern Vietnam.


We are staying in a self styled boutique hotel set on the banks of the Nam Khan river, a wide tributary of the mighty Mekong, about 1 km from the confluence of the two. In fact a large part of Luang Prabang is on a peninsula framed by the two rivers. From our hotel, the sun sets behind a large hill in the centre of LP crowned with a Buddhist temple. At dusk, the young monks in their orange robes, are swimming of the sandbars that occupy large parts of the Nam Khan. Our quickest way to walk into central LP is to pay 5000 kip (about 40p) and walk across a bamboo bridge that is rebuilt every year. In the rainy season the river flows far too quickly for the bridge to survive so it is dismantled and then rebuilt when the flow loses its strength.


Perhaps one of the key differences between the Vietnamese and the Laotians is their respective attitudes to driving on the roads. They don't use their horn here at all unlike the constant beeping in Vietnam. Cars and mopeds stop at junctions, give way to those with the right of way and drive on the correct side of the road.  It's tranquil.


Today we visited the Kuang Si waterfalls, about 30km south of LP. The water cascades down into beautiful turquoise pools surrounded by wonderfully green jungle. It is winter here and despite the fact that the temperature rises to as high as 30 degrees in the afternoon, the temperature falls away as soon as the sun goes down. It is so cool in the morning for breakfast and in the evening, that the restaurant here at the hotel places little brick burners under your tables to keep you warm.  Winter does mean it is dry but the water in the falls is on the cool side. It was only us lads who ventured into the turquoise waters after hiking to the top of the falls. We all turned purple initially but it was worth it.


Tomorrow holds out a day of silk weaving for the ladies with the blokes heading up the Mekong to a cave containing 1000 Buddhas and a stop at a whiskey making village. This place is great.