Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree in Lao

We arrived in Luang Prabang at 6am in the morning (night bus) and got to see the monks walking along the street getting food from the town that supports them. The street was lined with monks wearing their saffron robes as they collected food like rice and other delicacies in small bowls that they would eat during the day. It is quite phenomenal, amongst the myriad western tourists walking around during the day, you will see seas of saffron robes as young monks make their way from the school to the Internet cafes to the monastery to wherever else.

Luang Prabang is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which ensures reasonable tourist development and preservation. The city was the capital of an old kingdom by the same name and was also a seat of the independent Kingdom of Lao from 1954-1975. Situated between two rivers with the mighty Me Kong river on the west, it is a beautiful old town and more importantly a springboard town for all of the amazing trekking and adventures in the northern Lao mountains.

On our night bus we met a couple, Joe and Kim, who were studying in Singapore and spent the day with them seeing the local waterfalls in the area. We hit Sai Waterfall which, via tuk-tuk, was about an hour outside the city. We walked through the forest areas and came to the beautiful waterfall. We hiked up to the top of the falls for a beautiful look down the mountain to the water pool below. While at the falls we met Corey, an American that was also traveling the same direction as we were. We decided to join forces and Corey traveled with our group for the next week.

Later that night for dinner we discovered the amazing sandwich stalls which we consumed almost every day for the remainder of our time in Lao. These were huge sandwiches with fresh cut up chicken, laughing cow cheese, loads of veggies, for about $2. Heaven. We grabbed a Beer Lao and checked out the market. Luang Probang has an amazing night market. The main street is lined with families selling cute bags with flower decorations sewn on them, lots of jewelry and woven bracelets, Beer Lao tee-shirts, and beautiful embroidered bedspreads with the same flower pattern... Now, let me take a moment to tell you about this Beer. Beer Lao, the national beer, is a lager that is easily one of the finest brews in the entire world. I'm not just saying it was good because I was in Lao. It is seriously a world class lager that needs to be exported in massive quantities and sold the world over. We have found it difficult to find this beer in Thailand and they are neighboring countries!

We kept our eyes peeled all day for Hari (an Indian guy with a beard probably wearing a blue soccer jersey, shouldn't be too hard). Since Luang Prabang is a tiny old town with a massive tourist vibe you constantly run into people. While walking through the night market Mary spotted Hari and suddenly took off running and jumped into the arms of Hari giving him a huge hug. The threesome was back together again, now in Lao.

Before long, a motley crew had been assembled together that night including: Mary/Sarah, some friends Hari had met along the way -Neil (UK) and Sevan/Tara (Canada) - our friends from DonDet, Yanni/Annuka (Finland), and Cory (USA). All would make it to Vang Vieng. Mary and I decided that we wanted to have a Christmas Eve party, as we were all away from home for the holidays and we both love Christmas - you should see the number of Christmas songs on our iPods. We were to have the party the following evening, complete with Santa hats that we had been hauling around since Vietnam.

On Christmas Eve, we started the evening off with some drinks at our room, some Xmas music, Santa hats, Christmas cookies (aka Oreo cookies) and some more drinks. Eventually, the party took us across town to a couple of outdoor bars where they had bonfires and Xmas trees, Santa's sleighs, tinsel and faux snow. Did I mention we was in a tourist town in the middle of Lao. Despite the sadness at seeing poor non-Christian Laotians wearing Santa clothing as they worked the restaurants and bars, it was nice to be in a festive atmosphere amongst good people and loved ones.

In this evening, we learned of a fascinating sociological phenomenon from Neil. Singles night at the grocery store. Where Neil is from, in Redding, England, Thursday night around 10pm is single's night at the local Safeway equivalent. He was telling us how this affects what you buy (you don't want girls seeing you stuff yourself full of junk food), causes you to become a more innovative cook (you sometimes end up buying some random ingredients for reasons similar to the first and have to concoct some recipes when you get back home and realize the error of your ways), and can result in some dates. In Neil's case, the icebreaker was those damn vegetable bags that are impossible to open. It led to two dates with a Czech girl. Bloody brilliant.

Xmas day itself was a little bit of a quiet one (translation: hangover day). After taking care of some errands and booking our trek, Cory, Hari, Mary and I headed off to the Pak Ou Caves, about 2 hours up the Me Kong from Luang Prabang. Somewhat disappointing, the boat trip is down the beautiful stretch of the Me Kong and the caves that have many Buddhist relics.

That night we finally had our first random friend sighting (we had been waiting for the day that we ran into someone we knew from home, it's a small world style). Out at a bar I ran into my friend from high school, Christina Penfield. It was so great to see her and we got to spend some time catching up on. All in all we had a quiet evening and dinner as we all prepared for our trek the next morning.

I couldn't have completed this entry in the time I did without help, so to give credit where credit is due- Thanks Hari!

(http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chiapoe/1/1230449340/tpod.html)