Market day…..

by Mandeep Gaygoat

After a good breakfast of fresh fruit, I spent a number of hours on the blog, takes a lot of time, uploading pictures to flickr then doing the write up. Hope you guys are enjoying it!

A lady weaving on the hotel grounds, this is to promote a local company called Living Craft Centre

A closer shot

Pictures of the hotel

Hotel gardens and beyond

The hotel provides free one way transfers to the city centre by tuk tuk. We passed through the Living Crafts Centre, where you can see local weavers in action aswell as other crafts of the region. The tuk tuk waited for us whilst we had a look around, we then headed over to the city centre.

Living Crafts Centre

Information about the sources of various colour dyes

The shop

A lady using dyes to print the materials

Back on the tuk tuk

We saw an amazing temple in the middle of town. It is within the grounds of the Royal Palace museum.

Walking on the Main Street

Afterwards, we had a walk past the shops, we stopped at one to pick up coco pops and ritz crackers, as we were both peckish!

Luang Prabang is an amazing city, clean, safe and the people are very friendly! The locals do not hassle you (a welcome change from our experiences the last few weeks) and the place also feels very authentic – the locals seem to be just getting on with their normal daily lives. Tempted to spend the next few weeks here. This place will change as tourism here is really starting to take off and major high speed train links from China will soon pass through Luang Prabang and Vientiane (2014) so now is a good time to visit before it changes and loses it’s charm.

As I was getting very hungry we stopped at

Tat Mor Restaurant
Sakkaline Road
Luang Prabang
Laos

I ordered fried rice

Sangeet decided to wait to eat as the night market was due to open in a couple of hours and there is a vegan food stall there.

As we walked back from the restaurant the night market had started, about half a mile of stalls on the street, under cover. The shoppers will ask if you want to buy anything, if you say no they do not bother you again. Halfway through we found the stall that sells a vegan buffet for 10.000 Lao Kip about GBP£.80p! Sangeet ate there and we chatted to some other backpackers in the very social dining area. Later we bought a few gifts from the stalls then we headed back to the hotel in a tuk tuk.

The Ock Pop Tok shop

Night market

The 10,000 kip food stall

Luang Prabang, or Louangphrabang (literally: “Royal Buddha Image (in the Dispelling Fear mudra)”, is a city located in north central Laos, at the confluence of the Nam Khan river and Mekong River about 425 km north of Vientiane. It is the capital of Luang Prabang Province. The population of the city is about 50,000.
The city was formerly the capital of a kingdom of the same name. Until the communist takeover in 1975, it was the royal capital and seat of government of the Kingdom of Laos. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The main part of the city consists of four main roads located on a peninsula between the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers. The city is well known for its numerous Buddhist temples and monasteries. Every morning, hundreds of monks from the various monasteries walk through the streets collecting alms. One of the major landmarks in the city is a large steep hill on which sits Wat Chom Si.