Laos day 2 – Luang Prabang

Today is a lazy, chilling day.  We don’t wake up until 10am and eventually have breakfast around midday in a small, unpretentious restaurant run by a Laotian family over-looking the Mekong.  From this vantage point we can watch life on the long boats moored on the riverbank below as well as the comings and goings of the small ferry boat service which takes people back and forth to the village of Ban Xiengmene on the opposite side of the Mekong.  It’s sunny and the temperature is perfect.  After breakfast we return to the guest house and spend some time in the garden chatting to a French woman from Brittany who has the room next to ours.  She is travelling for four months and is heading to Siem Reap for Christmas.  After catching up on some emails we head off for a late lunch and a walk along the Mekong river road to the end of the peninsular.  Here is a rickety bamboo foot bridge over the Nam Khan and after paying 8000 Kip towards the upkeep, we make our way across to the other side.  A short walk up and over the river bank brings us to a small village  which is home to several craft workshops producing paper and textiles.  Naively we think we have stumbled on a tourist free refuge, but no, as we get further down the dirt lane we discover this is a stop off on the tour trail from Luang Prabang!  Probably unsuspecting tourists don’t realise that they are being driven to a village only a short walk from the centre of town.  On our way back to the bridge we make a short detour to the promontory where the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers meet.  Here an enterprising Lao family have set up a palm-covered shelter under which it is possible to sit with a (warm) beer and have a perfect view of the sunset.  We round off the day with cocktails at a street bar chatting to a young American couple who are travelling from Hanoi to Ko Pi Pi in  Thailand.