Luang Prabang

Day 33 – Luang Prabang, Laos

This is my second day of doing nothing but walking around a bit in my neighbourhood, and it is glorious.

(It’s less glamourous if I explain that yesterday I didn’t dare go out before getting my laundry back, all cleaned up and dry.)

Of course, I chose a backpacker hostel smack in the middle of the tourist quarter, with the temples, the museum, the botanical gardens and so on at an easy distance walk.

I suspect that the two English-speaking girls whowho left my dormitory this morning where replaced by a Japanese couple. Listening to people talking to try to get where they are from is fun.

Listening to two French guys trying to chat up two girls in an halting English is also fun. Especially when they do that by trying to talk football.

Yesterday walking along the Mekong river, I took some nice pictures. The river is red, it is the colour of the soil in Asia :  not brown, but red, which, against the lush green jungle, is quite striking. 

There are many cruises on offer, and it is fun when they try to sell you an hour on the river for €15 when a bit further they (French guys living here) offer 2 hours and a free cocktail for €8.5.

Here, the currency is the kip, which goes to around €1 = 10,000 kip. In Vietnam, it was around 24,000 dongs for a dollar or 26,000 for a euro, calculations are very fun that way. In Cambodia, averything is paid in dollars, but you get 4,000 riels for a dollar, and you get your change for 50 cents with 2,000 riels. Thailand is around 37,5 bahts for a euro. And the euro goes to 1.1 or 1.2 dollars. This is so much not fun when going from one country to another.

Did I write something about money exchange shenanigans? 

While preparing to leave Vietnam for Laos, I read that it could be usefull to have a few kips in advance, because they like to add “fees”. 

So I hurriedly bought some kips in Hanoi at an outrageous price, and was ready when they asked for 20,000 kips for the visa fee and 10,000 for overtime fee (because we passed the border on a Saturday). They nicely made me pay twice the visa fee, saying that no I hadn’t paid at the previous window. There is also the 2 dollar tourist fund to which you have to contribute, if you give 5 dollars they give you back 21,000 kips, if you want to pay in kips it is 16,000. Do the math.

They will change money for you also at an outrageous rate, no trouble. Well, I got rid of my last Vietnamese dongs.

And, of course, I knew that I needed 30 dollars and an ID picture for the visa, and I was prepared… which wasn’t everybody’s case. So in the whole, the processus was quick and relatively painless for me.

So, for the next days, I want to see the Botanical Gardens, the royal palace turned national museum, go on the sunset cruise, and maybe try for a waterfall.