Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is a former capital of Laos, and is UNESCO listed for its unique history, colourful temples and French influenced architecture. It also has one of the largest night markets we have seen which Georgia and Linsday visited at some length.



We got up at sunrise to watch the locals give offerings of sticky rice (the main Laos staple) and other food to the many monks who live in Luang Prabang. This happens every day in every town in Laos and is an interesting custom to observe. As every Lao man is expected to become a monk at some point in his life, and there are many temples in Luang Prabang, there were a large number of orange-clad monks walking along the roads offering blessings to the kneeling people who donated food.

The town is pretty and caters well to travelers with good restuarants, places to relax and activities. However, we have seen too many temples to be interested in the ones on offer here so after just a day of looking around we decided to move on. After taking several tourist buses, we decided to return to the generally more interesting (and inexpensive!) option of local transport. The local 'bus' to Nong Khiew maintained our expectation of interest as it was basically a large tuktuk. The forcibly air-conditioned four hour ride through morning mists was much colder than we were expecting!