Our bus from Vientiane took about 9 hours, so we arrived in town in the late afternoon. We walked to our guesthouse with two lovely couples: Mick and Sarah, a British couple, and Mike and Sarah, an Americanadian couple. We all ended up in rooms next to each other, but after that, we didn’t see each other for ages. T and I settled in our room and went out to dinner, where we met a hilarious Kiwi couple who had arrived in Luang Prabang in the afternoon and had been drinking ever since, to recover from their trip up the river from Chiang Mai, which took three days on a boat meant for 70 Asians but held 140 Westerners, during which a dead body floated past. I would have wanted a drink too, after that.

Luang Prabang is a quiet little place that also happens to be a UNESCO Heritage Site. Apparently, this combination is quite enticing for tourists, because the place was packed with them. And not just white tourists–a fair number of Chinese and Japanese, as well. LP is full of lovely French architecture, with dozens of restaurants and bars and internet cafes meant to cater to the flocks of tourists everywhere, which made it extraordinarily easy to get around, if a little disconcerting. Even the stray dogs are well-groomed, including the golden retriever we saw who looked just like my parents’ dog Finn, who spent all day cruising around town eating scraps. As T said, that dog was living the dream!

The best news about LP was that there was a HMONG MARKET at night, which took up streets and streets. And these Hmongs sold more that just jewelry and blankets–they sold baby clothes, and duvet covers and Beer Lao t-shirts and all kinds of other potentially useful stuff. The good news is that I cemented my bargaining skills at this market when I bought a Beer Lao t-shirt. The man selling it told me its price, and instead of begging for less, I handed it back to him and walked away. As I was walking away, he offered me less, and I countered with an even lesser price, and he accepted! Take that, Grow! The bad news is that these Hmongs don’t seem to be anywhere near as sassy and hilarious as our girls in Sa Pa, which just made me sad that we didnt go there in the end, because I miss those kids, and our Facebook friendship just doesn’t cut it.

In addition to the hundreds of tourists and Hmongs, there were also a fair few monks wandering the streets. There were quite a few in the internet cafes at any give time, and at one point, I was standing in the street waiting for T, and a little one walked by and sneezed, so I blessed him. Thats right, I BLESSED A MONK. I think that makes me pretty holy. I’m going to heaven for SURE!

T and I managed to come up with a pretty great routine while we were in LP: sleep until about 10-11, then bathe and stretch (my yoga mat finally came out of the backpack), and go for breakfast. Then, wander around and check our email for a few hours, then come back to the room and watch TV for a little while, then go back out for dinner. Then come back to the room, watch some more TV, and then go to sleep. It worked like a charm.

The best thing, hands down, about LP was the bagels. Yes, you heard me right. There is bakery chain in Laos that is clearly Western-owned, called JoMa Bakery. Theres one in LP, where our tuktuk driver dropped us, and we decided to go there on our first day for breakfast. I was waffling about what to get for breakfast when T told me he was getting a bagel. I thought he was deranged–not only getting a bagel outside of NYC, but getting one in LAOS???!! At best, it would taste like concrete! Not wanting to miss out on the small chance it was good, I got one too. OH MAMA. It was so good. It was the best bagel Ive had outside of New York, and now I am totally pissed because we will have to go back to Laos to get them (bad news: Laos is far away; good news: we get to go back to Laos). And so, every morning left in LP and Vientiane, we ate bagels for breakfast. And we liked it.

On our penultimate day in LP, we decided we should stop slacking and actually see something, so we did a directed walk around town. We walked down the banks of the river and sat for ages watching the kids playing: little boys shrieking and being swept by the current, before grabbing a rock and jumping off, shrieking some more; little girls in the river carefully washing their hair, yelling at the little shrieking boys who come by, splashing the newly washed hair. It was great. Then we walked down to the tip of the city, to look at our guidebook. At this point, we were greeted by an old man with a bicycle, who told us he was poor and selling ice cream. Did we want some ice cream? When we said no, he nodded and said, “Good luck and prosperity to you in life!” Eh? We just said no and you’re wishing us good luck? Have I mentioned I LOVE LAOS?! After the ice cream man, we walked to LP’s most famous wat, which was lovely and also quite deserted, which worked for me. Unfortunately, the desertion didn’t last long, because we decided to go to Phu Si Hill.

There is a wat perched on the top of Phu Si Hill, in the middle of town. At night, it’s all lit up and is quite beautiful. Our book said the best time to hike up there was sunset, and we stupidly listened to the book. Damn you, Lonely Planet!! We forgot that other people have the Lonely Planet guide as well, and Others were everywhere, crawling all over the wat like ants, many of them elbowing people out of the way so they could get the best photo position at the front of the wat. I don’t understand what’s wrong with people like this. First of all, its a friggin’ holy site! Get a grip on yourself and have some respect! Second, why should you get the rights to the best pictures just because you are a pushy little bastard? Take your pictures and cycle through like a decent human being! At one point, there were about ten people all perched on the tip of a rock, clicking away with their cameras while about 50 other people, INCLUDING MONKS, craned to get even a view. It was at this point that I imagined a swift gust of wind coming along, making them plummet to their deaths. It was a good vision. Then I remembered that I was at a Buddhist holy site, and I should rein it in.

On our final day in town, we happened to run into Mick and Sarah at JoMa Bakery (I told you it was good–everyone goes there!). They told us they were going to the waterfall; we told them we were too, and did they want to share a tuktuk? They did! FRIENDS!! Hurrah! Mick and Sarah are a lovely couple who live in Leeds, but are planning to move to France! How glamorous! They had also just come from India and were full of useful information. They were also very charming and interesting and not 12 years old like so many of the people we meet. I loved them.

The waterfall turned out not to be a waterfall in the woods as we all imagined; it was a waterfall in the woods surrounded by shopping stalls and restaurants, with tourists everywhere. Nonetheless, it was quite an impressive spectacle. We had heard you could swim at the top, and Mick and Sarah brought their swimsuits, so we started the trek up. It was quite a scramble, but we made it, only to find no swimming pools. So we carefully stepped across the shallow pool at the top of the waterfall, trying not to fly over the edge and face certain death, and we went down the other side, where we (or the boys) could see a girl in a pink bikini swimming further down. About halfway down the hill, there was a way to climb out to the pool, and T and Mick, overcome by testosterone, quickly vanished. Sarah and I were left squinting to see them in the distance, but instead seeing the silhouettes of people who appeared to be hurling themselves off the side of the waterfall to land in a bloody heap (they weren’t). Eventually, the boys came back down and we carefully stepped our way back down the hill, only to find that at the very bottom of the waterfall, on the path we didnt take on the way in, were a number of beautiful pools that did not involve risking one’s neck to reach.

Also at the waterfall were a number of bears who had been rescued from the jungle and were lazily hanging around, and a beautiful Asian tiger named Phet, who was meandering around when we arrived, but pacing like my father by the time we left. She was really beautiful and had also been rescued as a baby. It pained me to hear one of the tourists comment that she was the same kind of tiger they just shot at the San Francisco Zoo (she wasn’t) because she was truly, truly glorious to see. And so that I don’t start crying all over our new computer about how people are stupid to kill such beautiful animals so that the remainder have to live in cages and it makes me really angry, I will stop talking about this now.

We spent our last night in town having dinner with Mick and Sarah at a pizza place we discovered few nights earlier. I can’t say enough how nice it is to meet people you like when you travel–even though it’s lovely to travel with T, it’s always exciting to have some new blood and discuss things you don’t normally discuss or discuss to death with your partner. Mick and Sarah were really interesting and smart and funny, and to prove it, I have attached their blog at right. They are traveling for a year, because they are much cooler than we are. We’re not jealous, really. (Do you believe me?)