Luang Prabang - Town, temples and a bit of a disappointment

Royal Palace Museum, Luang Prabang

From Chiang Rai, we took an overnight bus to Luang Prabang. The nice thing about the journey is that you arrive at the Thai/Laos border, in this case the International Border Control Friendship Bridge IV, fairly soon, so none of that nasty 'middle of the night border crossing' disruption.

On the subject of the border crossing, we got our visa on arrival, at a cost (at that time) of US$35 each.

Royal Palace Museum, Luang Prabang

That is for UK passport holders, but it does vary by country, (a) whether you can get a visa on arrival, and (b) how much it is, so do check first. Be aware that the fee has to be paid in cash in dollars; you might be able to pay in Thai Baht, but it will cost you significantly more, and if you are there any time other than 8am to 4pm on a normal (non-holiday) weekday, there will be an extra out-of-hours charge of US$1. There was also a 10,000 Laos Kip entry fee.

The not so nice thing about the journey, other than a distinct lack of sleep, was the time and place that we arrived in Luang Prabang. We got there at around 6am, but the bus didn't drop us in town, it dropped us at the main bus station, some distance out, just as it was starting to rain. The jumbos - the mini trucks that are the common form of transport here - soon arrived to take us in to town; we thought the price was far more expensive than seemed reasonable, but of course they rather have you over a barrel.

Wat Mai Souvannaphummaham, Luang Prabang

At least the hotel were had booked had a night duty guy on, who let us in to the reception area, where we could sit and have a hot drink while we waited for the day to start. We did consider that, as we were actually up before sunrise, we might take the opportunity to go along to see the famous gathering of alms by the local monks.

Wat Mai Souvannaphummaham, Luang Prabang

However, this was another one of those times where we feel that tourists are in danger of ruining a local tradition, as we have seen video of tourists getting in the way, interrupting, and generally being totally obnoxious. Obviously we would not have behaved that way, but we took the view that we didn't want to add to, or encourage, this being viewed as a sightseeing opportunity. So we gave it a miss.

Luckily the hotel had a room ready for us nice and early, so we were able to get a bit of sleep before heading out for the day.

Wat Mai Souvannaphummaham, Luang Prabang

Now, Laos is a country that I have been looking forward to visiting for a while, because it appealed as a place that might still be relatively unspoiled by large scale tourism. It is also somewhere that we have only ever heard positive things about - everyone who has been here seems to love it, and they often return.

But we didn't love it and I'll explain why in this and some of the other Laos posts to come. That doesn't mean we didn't enjoy any of it - there were some good aspects - but overall, we felt that Laos was the country where we most felt like we were being treated as a cash cow, to be ripped of if possible. It also felt like there was a real split between the local people and the tourists here, with we tourists being corralled into our own areas.

Luang Prabang

Here in Luang Prabang, the peninsula of the city, which is a UNESCO world heritage site, is effectively entirely given over to tourism, with locals living further inland. Aside from the temples, almost everything here was a hotel, tour group agent, souvenir shop or a western style restaurant or bar.

Now don't get me wrong, as an easy place to chill out, to take a break from any Asia overload, or to have a holiday somewhere in Asia without having to immerse yourself too much into the food and culture, it is probably perfect.

Night Market, Luang Prabang

And we enjoyed our time here as a relaxing break. But it really doesn't feel like you are engaging with the country. I suspect that you need to go to less well known areas, probably in the south of the country, to do that.

And then there are the prices. We were genuinely surprised at how much things cost here, be it tours, meals or souvenirs. Given the low price of groceries, and what we learned about wages in the country, there is absolutely no way that the prices we were being charged were anything other than extortionate.

Morning Market, Luang Prabang

I know that they have to import some many things, making base prices a little higher than Thailand, and I don't mind that they put prices a bit higher for tourists, but the amounts here felt unreasonable. Even worse, we got the distinct impression that those people working directly with tourists, and those that own the factories where the souvenirs are made, and various officials, all make a very nice profit, while those working for them or in the rest of the country, are left in poverty.

It also seems that most of the tours are not very ethical. The hill tribe tours sounded like they are of the 'human zoo' variety, and the elephant ones all seem to involve riding.

Garavek storytelling, Luang Prabang

So anyway, what about what we did like here. You can quite see why the whole of the old town here on the peninsula is a UNESCO site. It is full of lovely old buildings, from temples to French Colonial. You can very easily imagine the streets devoid of any kind of motorised vehicle, and you will still see the odd handcart being pushed now.

There were some nice places to eat and drink. The Coconut Garden was a reliable and reasonably priced place. If you want to spend a bit more L'Elephant is supposed to be good, though we didn't try it, the 3 Nagas was OK, and Blue Lagoon was excellent.

There were some good cafes - Saffron Coffee and Le Café Ban Wat Sene - which were also by far the best place to get wifi and aircon. Another café, Le Banneton, is known for its croissants.

Wat Sensoukaram, Luang Prabang

We also rather liked a nice little bar and tapas place called Opera House, which also had good wifi. There are other, livelier bars like Utopia, Hive etc, but we didn't bother with them.

Wat Sensoukaram, Luang Prabang

And bear in mind that Luang Prabang has a curfew; I can't remember the exact time, but it was about 11:30pm, and many of the smaller hotels do actually close their doors then, because the staff go to bed.

One evening here, we went along to Garavek, which is a little company that holds story telling shows, in a little room with about thirty seats. It isn't a totally authentic experience - realistically, nothing for tourists ever is - but it is enjoyable and sufficiently informative to be worthwhile. You can buy a drink there to take in with you if you want to.

But perhaps the most interesting thing that we did in town, was a couple of hours spent at Big Brother Mouse. BBM is part of an aim to get Lao people reading. Sasha, Khamla and Siphone have worked together to provide childrens' story books that are written in the Lao language and English, so that children can learn to read, learn English and learn enjoy reading. In addition, in Luang Prabang, they run two sessions a day where tourists come in to help local youths with their English. That can be reading to them, listening to them read, helping them with their homework, or even just having a conversation with them.

Wat Sensoukaram, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Mekong River, Luang Prabang

Mekong River, Luang Prabang

Mekong River, Luang Prabang

Farewell to Myanmar / Burma

Our last full day in Myanmar was a long driving day to Dawei, so that we would be in a good place to make the push to the border.


We stopped off at the Thanbyuzayat Allied War Memorial, which again was a beautifully kept place of remembrance, with some graves relating to people who died in the construction of the death railway. More on that when we get to Thailand though.

Dawei itself is a little inland from Myanmar's south westerly coastline, but for those who felt a couple of hours at the beach was worth a very early morning, the truck made a trip out before we set off for the border. Those that went enjoyed it, but we opted for a nice lay in instead.

We also managed to pick up a few extra passengers today. The man who runs the local tourist bureau had a few apprentices and they joined us to make the crossing into Thailand.

I don't know how much they learned officially, but we did introduce them to some new music including Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations and Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which they got most excited about, so that was good.

We in turn, were quite excited when someone spotted an elephant down in the hills below us. Admittedly it was a working elephant, with a boy on its back, but still, it was interesting to see.


We were slightly less enthusiastic about being stopped at two armed checkpoints.


We were in the area of Myanmar that is held by the Karen Rebels, and there is known to be an issue in the area because of the Karen resistance to the development of the road that we were travelling down to facilitate the creation of a transportation and manufacturing hub near to Dawei.

The first stop was the Myanmar police, checking where we were going and why. There seemed to be some reluctance to let us through, as we were there for quite a while, but in the end with Myo, our government escort, and the tourism guy all fighting our case, we were allowed through.


The second stop was the Karen Rebels. They seemed more easily satisfied, and we were soon waved on our way with lots of smiles. I guess we didn't look like we were planning on doing any road construction.

We reached the border, which while not as smooth a process as it could have been, was not too much of a delay, and we were soon saying our goodbyes to Myo, our escorts, and our extra passengers and crossing in to Thailand. It seemed slightly strange being just us again, and somehow slightly naughty, as if we had given our watchers the slip!

Crossing into The Republic of the Union of Myanmar

 From Dali we drove to the Chinese border town of Ruili, with its strange proliferation of neon lit buildings, where we spent the night ready to hit the border as soon as it opened at 8:30am.



Our first Burmese Buddha of many!

We got there in good time, and our guide started the process of getting the truck cleared through customs for departure.  And then we waited. And waited. That took us around an hour and a half, and then we had to get off the truck and take our bags through the x-Ray machines.  From there it was a short drive on to the border itself, where it took another forty minutes or so to actually leave the country.

At this point we waved goodbye to our Chinese guide Jason and met up with our new Burmese guide Myo Win Tun. But Myo is not going to be our only travelling companion in Myanmar. Because we are a foreign group travelling independently, rather than using Burmese companies, we are a bit of a new experience from the country, and this is only the third time a Dragoman truck has been here.  So we have to have special arrangements.  Not only do we have to provide a plan of where we are going and where we will be staying, which cannot be altered, we also have to have an escort.

So we were introduced to Mr Khaing, who will drive the little white car that will be our shadow for the next four weeks, and Tang, the government official from the Ministry of Tourism.  These two will be with us wherever we go. As I am posting this towards the end of our time in Burma, I can tell you that in fact this was not nearly as bad as it sounds, and in fact they were both great guys who clearly wanted us to enjoy our trip. Of course they didn't speak English, so there was no real conversation, but we all got along very nicely.


Now that we were out of China, we just needed to get in to Myanmar.  That actually went quite smoothly, albeit slowly, until we discovered that one of our fellow passenger's visa was not quite right as it didn't cover the whole time here. And so began a series of lengthy discussions and negotiations about whether he could be allowed in.  Eventually someone who had sufficient authority decided to allow it, and we were in.


Our paparazzi

After a further interlude spent changing money, as you can't get currency before you arrive, we were off.  Little tip here, Myanmar is another place that if you want to exchange US dollars, they have to be in perfect condition.  Also, you get a slightly better rate for $100 notes.



Getting gifts

Almost before we could go anywhere, we needed to stop off to see the man in charge of driving licenses.  I'm still not entirely sure whether there was really an official need for this, but apparently they wanted a photo of us all with the truck.  So we all got off and smiled for a bunch of people who all wanted to get in on the chance to take a photo of these foreigners and their strange vehicle. But they did also give us all a small gift, so that was nice.

Once released from photo duty, we took a short drive to grab some lunch. Despite gaining an hour and a half in the time change, it was well after 2pm, and we had a long drive ahead of us to get to our campsite at a Monastery in Hsipaw.



Dinner stop

The plan had been to cook once we arrived, but as the hours passed and darkness fell, we stopped off en route for dinner, where I was amused to a flat screen TV box sitting where otherwise you might expect to see the TV itself, and finally arrived at around 9:30pm to get the tents up and collapse.