Luang Prabang Temple
Up early to get down to the town’s museums. Luang Prabang houses the kings home, which is now a museum of gifts of state. These range from beautiful Japanese murals to a model of the moon lander from the US that looked as though a kid had failed to copy a Blue Peter egg box and Fairy Liquid make properly and his parents couldn’t be bothered to help with the sharp scissors.
Next was a wander round a couple of temples and a monk craft shop which isn’t my thing, but on the walk there we scouted out a few good bars and restaurants for later in the day.
With not much to do at midday we retired to an air conditioned Internet cafe to research the next town and make a start on the blogging. Typically that got dull and we moved next door to a bar with enough bean bags for everyone, and early drinks.
Suitably refreshed we climbed up 400 Buddha lined steps to the top of a hill overlooking the town, which is a popular spot to watch the sunset. Seems we picked the same day as a specialist Japanese photo tour as 40 tripod wielding, utility coat wearing but quite short fellows had lined every inch of free space around the edge of the hill with cameras. I could see over their heads but the others got a bit irate. To be honest it wasn’t much of a sunset anyway, but took an unexpected twist when a chap appeared from nowhere, presumably having free climbed the cliff face, and took position on the edge of the rock in front of the dismayed Japanese and started juggling.
After recovering from making our way down the steps we wandered round the night market looking for dinner but got distracted by Oreo milkshakes. We walked about for over an hour until we reached the other side of the market, conveniently close to one of the bars we’d noticed earlier which had a 2-for-1 happy hour from 6-9 which seemed to last until gone midnight. (The Hive bar).
