Laid-back in Luang Prabang

The first quip we heard from our Laotian guide as he gave his welcome spiel in the tourist van was that the initials usually contained in his country’s official name, Lao PDR (for People’s Democratic Republic), could also mean Please Don’t Rush.

We had heard something similar from our Vietnamese guide a day before, that when we hopped over the border from Hanoi to Luang Prabang, we shouldn’t expect the same intensity of activity from the tourism-related personnel.

“You can’t rush them. They’re not used to it.” In other words, Laos came with laid-back ambience and services.

We had flown on a red-eye PAL flight from Manila to Ho Chi Minh City, were quickly subjected to familiar stops (Cu Chi with its tunnel system, the War Remnants Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral and General Post Office) before checking in at a hotel overnight. Then we had to re-gather in the wee hours for yet another dawn flight to Hanoi, from where we took the short connecting flight to Luang Prabang. 

As a UNESCO World Heritage town, Luang Prabang immediately captivates a visitor with its rustic environment, a myriad of quaint temples, riverside streets where conveyances larger than vans are prohibited, and interior streets lined with modest boutique hotels and guesthouses, as well as rows of cafes, restos and crafts shops.

It seemed like a town made for young hipsters and aging hippies both, or a backpackers’ haven, albeit most of the tourists we saw were of a different demographic.

Laos, the only land-locked ASEAN country, squeezed in by neighboring Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, only has a population of 7.8 million, with a little over 50,000 residing in Luang Prabang.

We were told that the town had 522 guesthouses and over 200 villas and boutique hotels, none of which could stand taller than 25 meters. Temples seemed to be present in every block. Where we lodged, the two-story Issada with a modest if charming wooden structure, the second-floor rooms with hardwood floors opened up to a balcony with a back view of the neighborhood. It was a short block off the main riverside road where a number of other hotels and restos stood cheek-by-jowl.

Soon after checking in, we were taken to one such resto for late lunch: the Tamarind, also a cooking school, where we had our first delightful sampling of Laotian cuisine. While the chunky bamboo and vegetable soup was forgettable for its murky color and blandness, the subsequent platter of specialties was intriguing at the very least. It included the much-heralded Luang Prabang sausage, the khai pene or riverweed (thicker than nori and studded with sesame seeds), buffalo skin jerky, eggplant and tomato dips, plus the spicy concoction called jeow bong.

This platter was accompanied by a woven cylindrical basket containing sticky white rice, which tended to toughen up once it’s aired on one’s plate. The piece de resistance was fragrant chicken in lemongrass: four lemongrass stalks laid out on a banana leaf, with their ends inflated to bursting where minced chicken had been forced through to swell up the stalk before grilling. Pretty to look at and very tasty.

Followed a fruit platter consisting of slices of dragon fruit, mango, passion fruit halves and half-opened rambutan and longan, plus Laotian coffee with condensed milk at the bottom, akin to what’s commonly served in Vietnam.

The passion fruit was of a green variety, rough and sour, unlike our sweet yellow ones grown in the Cordillera. But we learned to love the chunky mango cut-ups, also never ripening to a golden yellow but staying whitish-green, though surprisingly soft and delicious without ever getting cloyingly sweet.

Our first tour stop after lunch was at Wat Ayam, where saffron-clad monks went about their activities, some praying before a large seated Buddha in a dimly-lit hall, flanked by two standing Buddhas. Across this main temple was a vast courtyard that featured an impressive, weather-beaten stupa rising taller than all the other pavilions in the complex.

From one smaller temple with delicately pitched, layered roofs reminiscent of Thai architecture with its curlicued extensions, emerged a young monk paying rapt attention to his cellphone. Might he have been pursuing a Pokemon, we wondered. The pun was irresistible: a Pokemonk!

Next stop was a physical challenge: a steep climb of over 400 steps to the top of Phoussi Mountain, each level of which featured configurations of golden Buddhas. Each pit stop for catching one’s breath rewarded one with a panoramic view of the town below and the river snaking around it. At the peak was a stupa, around which were over a hundred tourists waiting to catch magic hour and a resplendent sunset across another river. 

The climb down on the other side of the mountain led to the night market with its multi-colored tents bordering yet another golden temple with multiple layers of sloping roofs. We had to forego the market stalls in favor of our shower stalls back at Issada — to refresh us from all that copious sweat from the climb. Then we were further refreshed with an al fresco dinner at the riverside Sun Set View resto, with BeerLao and iced coffee topping the Lao version of fried spring rolls and minced catfish smothered with cilantro.

Our guide Yae, a lawyer and gentleman farmer at his Hmong home fields when he takes a break from being a genial xenagogue, informed us that tourism is the next best income generator in Laos after agriculture, this last heavily dependent on the cultivation of hops for the popular BeerLao. Third is hydroelectric power sourced to several dams, with excess clean energy sold to neighboring countries.

Day Three started with a visit to Wat Xiengthong, another impressive temple complex, with the main pavilion sporting a heavily gilded frontage. Ornate and intricate were the mythological figures represented, other than the Buddhas.

Another pavilion had a large lotus-like sculpture adorning a corner of its steps, with square glass tiles of green and blue rendering it as an in-the-round mosaic.

The second stop was at Luang Prabang National Museum, its stately grounds hosting yet another gilded temple that houses the Prabang Buddha, as well as the Royal Ballet Theatre, lotus ponds, and what used to be the Royal Palace — now turned over to ethnographic exhibits after the monarchy was deposed in 1975.

Followed the major highlight of our three-day itinerary in Laos: lunch by the roaring Kuang Si Falls. A constant spray was generated by the main waterfalls, not so high at about 150 feet, but broad and with such volume of pouring water that the cascade could drench any thrill-seeker crossing a footbridge a good 100 feet away. 

Swimming in a safer area downriver was supposed to have been part of the excursion, but the waters were in such a roiling condition, after a series of lesser falls, that it was deemed unsafe.

The next option was to hike down the jungle road to the Bear Rescue Center, where over a score of moon bears and sloth bears rescued from poachers live temporarily in an enclosure before they’re returned to the wilds. The Free the Bears Fund effort is supported by Australia.

On the way back to town, we stopped by a Hmong village for traditional crafts, such as embroidered aprons and water bottle holders being sold by an old lady, with elephants as prevalent images. Some of us entered a typical Hmong hut with a dirt floor, where Yae showed us a shaman’s wall that resembled an art installation, with paper prints and small bowls of herbal concoctions assembled on makeshift shelves. Beside it was another seeming wall installation, resembling a small altar where the centerpiece was a two-dollar American bill. This was explained as a ritual decoration usually done after a holiday, with money bills being honored for good fortune.

That evening featured another memorable highlight of our packed itinerary in Luang Prabang. On the same block as our hotel was a two-story building billed as Sonphao or Lao Ethnic Café and Dining. A long table had been reserved for us on the second floor, where the dining area faced a performance dais before a brick wall. The sumptuous dinner came with a show: five dances performed onstage, with a quartet of musicians fiddling along in a corner.

It was just our luck, too, that the evening featured a full moon rising above yet another temple complex across the street, visible through the French doors of the dining area that opened to a balcony. As we walked back in the moonglow to retire for the night, we all agreed that the lunch by Kuang Si Falls and the full-moon dinner and show we experienced that day were enough to bolster any recommendation we’d care to give for such a three-day Luang Prabang tour as we were yet to complete.

The next day had early risers join the streetside activity of handing out rice balls to a long line of monks, to the ritual beat of drums at dawn. I just heard about the spiritual story, not the drums, since I started with leisurely breakfast at riverside.

Then we were off to a silkworm cottage industry where we picked up paper scrolls bound accordion-style for journal writing or sketching. On a nearby yard was a naked man applying hammer and chisel on a block of wood to craft yet another souvenir Buddha.

We then boarded a long, low-slung boat for our Mekong River cruise, our 12-person party accommodated on comfy seats that included a couple of settees up front where one could incline, as I did, the better to enjoy the river breeze and sights along the way. These included surprising villas and boat communities, but mostly only lush vegetation. A laid-back cruise.

After an hour, the boat glided to a stop at a riverbank. We clambered out and up a trail to enter Xanghai Village of the Pak Ou district, which our guide Yae called the “Sacred Water Village” or “Whisky Village.” Of course my ears pricked.

Here was where Lao alcoholic products were made, bootleg-style. White or black sticky rice fermented with yeast turned into wine. Some of the liquid, filling up four jars, were boiled for two hours in a drum over firewood, with the resultant condensation having it drip into one jar, good for 20 liters of whisky. Crude distillation, but the 55-proof whisky we tasted was passable, and as Yae said, guaranteed to make you dance.

Other bottles looked more curious, including gallon jars that had medicinal drinks for Chinese tourists, since attendant to the aging process were parts of deer horn, tiger bone, elephant penis, bear’s paw, cobra, scorpion, and gecko — the last good for cough, the rest for virility enhancement. Since this involved protected species, it was purely bootlegged. The Chinese could only take sips when they visited, but couldn’t smuggle the illegal stuff across the border.

Back to the river, we cruised on to a limestone bluff that featured an entrance above the waterline to the Pak Ou cave or Thousand Buddha Cave. Then across the river to a restaurant on stilts that was full of European tourists, a few of them indulging in an elephant ride through a narrow dirt road flanked by souvenir stalls.

We didn’t have to cruise back to our starting point, but were met instead at another stop by the two vans that took us back to the center of Luang Prabang for last-minute shopping before heading out to the airport. Our last sight of the Mekong treated us to a dragon boat team practicing for competition two weeks hence.

The 40-minute flight back to Hanoi had us landing just in time for dinner at the popular Koto resto: excellent pho, just perfect for the rainy night and cooler clime.

For Day Five’s tour, I begged off from the itinerary I had just done last February: the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, the Presidential Palace and House on Stilts, the Temple of Literature, Sword Lake and Ngoc Son Temple, and the French Quarter.

Stayed in the hotel to write all day, going out in the rain only for late lunch of banh my picked up from a corner stall. Then rejoined the team for early dinner at the elegant 5 Spice resto: Ha noi grilled pork “bun cha,” Ha noi style spring rolls, Ha noi grilled fish or cha ca, roasted duck with orange sauce, grilled eggplant with oil and shallot — this last I savored no end. Oh yes, mixed fried rice, followed by ice cream with watermelon and dragon fruit and coconut slivers. And Ha noi iced coffee. Early dinner since we had to re-assemble at 3:30 a.m. for the ride to the airport, flight to Ho Chi Minh, and final flight back to Manila. 

Thanks to Ella Sanchez of Executive Tours and Tisha Escalona of Vietnam Airlines, the five days and nights in Vietnam and Laos produced good memories, especially of the middle days, when even the hectic itinerary didn’t exactly contradict the leisurely experience of being laid-back in Luang Prabang.

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Vietnam Airlines flies daily from Manila to Ho Chi Minh city in code share with Philippine Airlines. For bookings, tours, promotions and more information, please call Airesources, Inc. (GSA) at (63 2) 528-5854 or email vn@airesources.com.ph.