TP Trails

We arrived in Luang Prabang via the slow boat from Thailand (see blog post here for more details). The first evening that we arrived was Thanksgiving! We probably could have searched around for a Thanksgiving-like meal, but we figured this would be mediocre at best. Instead, we walked over to the night market. Our hotel (Villa Kee Lee Hotel) was on the northeast side of the town (on the peninsula). From this direction, we walked through the souvenir part of the night market until we reached the alleyway filled with food carts (off Sisavangvong Road, just north of Kingkitsalat Road intersection). Most of the food choices were BBQ meat/fish, vegetarian buffets, and a “make your own soup” buffet. Since it was Thanksgiving, we went a little crazy with our BBQ and selected a small tilapia and cut of pork with sticky rice and beer. Delicious! We walked down the street out of the night market and got some beers at a small restaurant (Hometown). The lady who works here (and likely owns it) was very nice. For some reason, this place was empty compared to the surrounding restaurants/bars, but we don’t understand why. We had a small table on the patio next to the street – great for people watching.

The next morning, we woke up to the sounds of adjacent construction around 7 am. Aside from the construction noise, the hotel is great, and our hosts are very friendly. They served us free breakfast at our private table just outside our room and the breakfast choices are plentiful. We ordered a range of meal types during our five-night stay (e.g., beef fried rice, beef noodle soup, banana pancakes, fried eggs) plus got coffee/tea and fruit with each meal. Not to mention, they have the cutest puppy.

When we arrive in a city, we typically like to spend the first day taking a self-guided walking tour. And so that’s what we did here. The town is not that big, but plenty of streets to wander down. We could have also walked up to the top of Phousi Hill, but had heard this was a good spot to watch the sunset, so we saved this visit for later. For lunch we stopped at a sandwich cart and ordered to “Laos-style” sandwiches. They were delicious! Reminded us of banh mi sandwiches to come in Vietnam. There are many sandwich carts around the city, but this was the only one that we found that served the “Laos-style”. It was located just across from the small restaurant pavilion area along Kingkitsalat Road (on google maps, the name appears to be ร้านน้ำปั่นในตำนาน). We visited this sandwich shop a few times during our stay. We relaxed at the hotel in the afternoon and spent some time researching our next stops in Laos. For dinner, we again visited the night market (cheap and delicious, so hard to pass up), where we ordered a whole duck and sticky rice, with beer of course. We ended up ordering some chicken and more sticky rice afterwards, because, well, why not. We got drinks at the same bar (Hometown) as the previous night before heading back to the hotel.

The next morning, we were up early to enjoy our breakfast before heading over to our cooking class, which started at 8 am! This is something we had both been interested in trying at some point on our trip and we had read great reviews about the Tamarind Cooking Class. Not to mention, it was one of the cheaper ones we had seen during our travels so far at $33/person. We were both very excited! We met the rest of our group at the Tamarind Restaurant in town (only 5 minutes from our hotel). The class started with some welcome beverages (hot fruity tea) and introductions here before we all piled into a van to go to the market. Our instructor, Sit, took us around the market and explained many of the local ingredients. He spoke very good English and was very funny, so he made the tour and class very enjoyable. We were led around the different sections of the market (e.g., vegetables, meats, fish, coffee, rice) with explanations at each.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After our visit to the market, we got back in the van and drove another 15 minutes or so to the Tamarind Cooking School. The setting of the school is serene – we cooked/ate beneath covered pagodas adjacent to a small pond with lily pads and lotus flowers. Five dishes were on the menu for the day and we all worked in pairs (although we each cooked everything):

1a.  Sticky rice – we were given a tutorial on how they wash and then cook sticky rice (both typical white sticky rice and a dessert purple sticky rice) in bamboo baskets over heat. Very interesting!

1. Jeow Mak – a dipping sauce for sticky rice or as a sauce for meals. We enjoyed it both ways, first eating it with a small amount of sticky rice as a pre-meal snack and then saving the remainder of the sauce for our lunch. We made two different kinds; Patrick made a tomato-based sauce and I made an eggplant-based sauce (which we both shared). Ingredients included tomatoes/eggplant, garlic, shallot, and chilis with water and fish sauce. We placed the ingredients on skewers and seared them over charcoal before peeling (as appropriate) and grinding all ingredients together with a mortar and pestle. Patrick and I both preferred the tomato based Jeow Mak.

2. Fish steamed in banana leaf – self-explanatory. First step was to make the marinade. Ingredients were again mixed/grinded before adding the fish to marinate for a few minutes while Sit taught us how to heat and fold our banana leaves. We threw the dark sides of the banana leaves over the charcoal to make the leaves more malleable. Then we added the marinated fish to the middle of two stacked banana leaves, fold one side, add the sauce, and fold the other side, finally tying the folded leaves with pieces of bamboo. Sounds easy, but I was glad there were many cooking assistants to help us. After this, we had a quick break to enjoy some beer!

• 

• 

3. Lemongrass stuffed chicken – we started with the herb/veggie mixture/grinding (appears to be a typical step with all Laotian dishes) and then added the pre-minced chicken. Note that we always chopped our own herbs/veggies for each dish. This part was easy, but then came the stuffing of the lemongrass. Sit showed us how to cut the lemongrass so that you can create a basket out of the cut stem. NOT EASY. I lost one lemongrass to the cause (which they replaced so I could try again). Since lemongrass is not in season, they are smaller than normal, so we stuff two pieces of lemongrass. Later we would dunk these in egg and fry them for about 5-10 minutes.

• 

• 

4. Laap with buffalo meat – a salad/meat mixture, one of the well-known Laotian dishes. First we browned/cooked the meat over charcoal and then we added green beans and other minced herbs into the meat. We even got to add some buffalo bile to our mix (yes, you read that right, buffalo bile)! Ultimately we plated our laap onto different kinds of lettuce to create a final salad.

At this time, we all sat down to eat our lunch together. It was fun to mingle with the rest of the group (there were 12 of us total). We didn’t feel rushed to eat quickly at all! After lunch, we went back to our stations to finish our meal off with some dessert.

• 

• 

5. Coconut sticky rice with fruit and tamarind sauce – dessert! First, we made our coconut milk using shredded coconut mixed with hot water. For about five minutes, we squeezed the shredded coconut pulp until we were satisfied with our milky water. The pulp was thrown out and then we added some sugar before boiling. Once boiling, we added our purple sticky rice made earlier and left it on the heat for a few minutes to absorb the coconut milk. Finally we transferred the sticky rice into a bowl and added fruit. Delicious!

• 

• 

By the end of the day, we were absolutely stuffed, but everything was so delicious that we couldn’t leave anything on our plates. We were transported back to the Tamarind Restaurant and arrived around 3:45 pm. Overall an amazing day and we would highly recommend this cooking class! We were so full from lunch that we ended up skipping dinner for the night, choosing to relax with some beers instead.

Our third day was a relaxing one – we walked around town in the morning (after free breakfast of course) and then headed to the Utopia Bar for the afternoon with our books and laptop. The bar looks out onto the Nam Khan River and there are plenty of tables and bean bag chairs to lounge in during the day. At night, it becomes more of a nightclub/backpacker scene (not for us). And if you get up early, there is a morning yoga class on the patio. Instead, we decided to do evening yoga at the Luang Prabang Yoga studio above the Sena Restaurant. Patrick had never done yoga and he wanted to try it at some point on this trip. This class was a Yin Yoga class, which is a passive style of yoga – more meditation and stretching, with focus on your breathing and clearing your mind. It was still a nice class, but not a workout by any means. We hope to try a more active-style yoga class somewhere in the future (I’m also clearly not an expert, so my yoga vocabulary is probably inaccurate). After yoga, we got sandwiches for dinner and an oreo banana shake for dessert. There are so many smoothie/shake carts in Luang Prabang (and Southeast Asia in general). We can never believe how much fruit they pack into such a cheap smoothie!

• 

• 

We had saved the Kuang Si Waterfall for our last full day in Luang Prabang. The falls are located about 23 km outside of town and there are several ways to get there. We evaluated them by reading others’ blogs and walking around town getting price quotes from tuk tuk drivers and tour companies. I won’t detail everything, because there are many other blogs that do a good job of that already (see here and here for example), but generally our options were as follows:

1. Rent a motorbike – since we have never ridden motorbikes and read that the road to the falls is not in the best condition, we eliminated this option pretty quickly. But it does seem like a great, independent way to see the falls and be in control of your own schedule.
2. Hire our own tuk tuk for the day (200,000 kip for the day), or if we were more outgoing, we could have tried to find another couple to split it with us (but then you have to agree on when and how long you want to go). It seems tuk tuk drivers are okay with about a 3-hour visit, but trying to negotiate anything longer than that may result in an argument.
3. Go with a tour group – all of the shops around town operate together. There are four different “shifts” (9 am, 11:30 am, 1:30 pm, and 3:30 pm), although each shop may advertise a slightly different time. They also all offer different prices ranging from 30,000 kip to 55,000 kip, just based on our inquiries, so it was good that we shopped around.

Patrick wanted to get to the falls early (before 9 am) to get some good pictures before the crowds arrived. However, that meant our only option would have been to hire our own tuk tuk for the day. It tended to be cooler in the early mornings, so we were hesitant that we would want to swim if we went too early. After a lot of back and forth, we ultimately decided to save money and opted for a 30,000 kip/person group tour. Unfortunately, we regretted this decision. Since all of the tour groups operate together, there are a team of vans that pick people up. Then they all join together and move people around. Once a van is filled, it will go to the waterfall. For us, people were moved out of our van twice for us to go pick up more people in town. So, we didn’t end up getting to the falls until 10:30 am (picked up around 9 am). It was very frustrating and in the end, we wished we would have just paid the extra for a tuk tuk. Oh well! Once we got to the falls, we had about 2.5 hours before we had to be back at the van, so we made the most of it. First we bypassed the bear refuge center, saving this for the walk out to make sure we had enough time exploring the falls area. It’s a quick 10-minute hike to the top of the falls, where I jumped in. There are also some great views from the top! However, I preferred the views of the falls themselves down lower – beautiful turquoise waters, just like all the pictures. Patrick jumped in at the bottom pools. It wasn’t the hottest day, so neither of us felt like swimming for a long time, which ended up being a good thing, because we probably would have run out of time!

• 

• 

On the way back to the van, we walked through the bear sanctuary. It felt more like a zoo, but it was still fun to see them. Not nearly as scary or amazing as seeing them in Grand Teton back in the US!

Since we selected the earlier waterfall tour, we had all afternoon back in Luang Prabang. We got some lunch and coffee in town and then relaxed for a bit at the hotel. That evening, we climbed to top of Phousi Hill to watch the sunset at the temple. This would have been a great spot if there were fewer crowds… we could hardly see the sun setting with everyone’s cameras out and above their heads. We ended up watching the sky change in the other direction, which was a beautiful view overlooking the city. For dinner, we got some chicken and sticky rice at the market and then wandered into a small restaurant looking for noodles. We just pointed to a picture of the noodles we wanted as there was no English being spoken. At some point a group of women came in and had an animated discussion with the owner/chef, but they ended up ordering and sitting, so I guess all was well in the end! If only we could understand what they were saying. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Luang Prabang, but it was time to move on! We were headed to Pakse, Laos the next morning.

• 

• 

•