I don't even know where to begin this post. So much has happened since Saturday night it's impossible to remember everything. To be perfectly honest, I don't even know what day of the week it is today! That must be a reliable indicator of a good holiday. It's important for me to post today because I'm in the city and doubt I'll have internet access until later this week. I call Luang Prabang the "city" but believe me I'm using that term loosely. I suppose by Laos standards it is fairly big, although the population is only around 200,000 people. After this Grace and I will head to a village called Muan Ngoi Nua, which is very remote, actually I've heard they only have electricity for about four hours per day, and lights go out in the town at 10pm.
So allow me to back up and offer my "two cents" about the World Expo in Shanghai. There were a lot of "nay sayers" out there that said the trip to Shanghai was a waste of time, but I had a good time. As a matter of fact, if I didn't have to fly out at seven o'clock on Monday morning I would have gone back to the Expo for another day. I visited about six pavilions, the standouts being Denmark, Portugal and South Korea. I also checked out Switzerland, Finland, Vietnam, Hungary and India. The theme of the Expo is "Better City, Better Life" so the emphasis of course is on sustainable living and how different countries are coping with urban sprawl and other environmental concerns. Denmark was different because they had bicycles available so you could ride through the pavilion, they also had a few silent movies which portrayed how people interact daily with the natural elements around them. Very simple and well done. Portugal had some historical items that emphasized the long relationship between China and Portugal, including the first Portuguese/Chinese dictionary which was over four hundred years old and also the treaty which effectively returned Macao to China. The lines weren't too long, the worst one was South Korea, but very worth the ninety minute wait to enter. They are host of the next Expo so definetly were putting their best foot forward. All in all a very good day. The disappointments were not being able to enter the Taiwan pavilion for seemingly ludicrous reasons that I won't delve into here and of course the food prices were simply outrageous.
I slept for three hours then headed for Hongqiao International Airport to catch my short flight to Kunming. I spent seven very uneventful hours in Kunming before loading onto a old, rickety bus with forty sleeper beds. The first main destination was Boten, the land-border crossing from China into Laos. I was told I'd arrive in Luang Prabang "tomorrow afternoon" but I realized quickly that was never going to happen. Three hours were spent at the border doing essentially nothing. The bus drivers had to unload all of the produce they loaded onto the bus at some ungodly hour of the night and then we spent two hours at customs while the police and border patrol stood in front of the bus smoking cigarettes. We finally got on the road but Northern Laos is pretty rugged terrain and the roads are not only poor but they also snake through the mountains, so travel was slow. We stopped at least a half dozen times on the way, for what seemed like no reason, and the ride was probably less than pleasant due to the cigarette smoke wafting in every direction, I was completely surrounded by smokers, loud talkers and the guy above me was rocking out to K-pop at full volume on his cell phone for a majority of the trip. Twenty eight hours total to Luang Prabang, where I was woken up with an abrupt "Xia che" (Get off the bus!). The driver knew I was the only one getting off at LP so dropped me past the city center as to avoid taking a detour off the main road. I was picked up quickly by a tuk-tuk driver and after some initial confusion locating my hotel, eventually he got me to the place which Grace and I agreed to meet before saying goodbye in Kunming. She had been in town for a full day so already had scoped out the city and had a feel for what was happening. In a stroke of good luck, the following day was a Buddha Festival, so schools and businesses were closed and there was a dragon boat race at the Nom Khaw River. We woke up at 5:30 am to watch the monks collect their alms and get a traditional Lao breakfast, a noodle soup with prawn paste and chilis. I had some french pastries and Lao coffee as well. We went down to the River and watched the race, even got to sneak our way into the VIP area with the military and the Luang Prabang elite. There was a street fair and kids running everywhere with toy guns and balloons. We continued to wander around town, found a tour guide to book a walk up to the Kuang Xi waterfall for the next morning and then went back to the hotel for a nap. All said and done, I had four showers and four naps during the course of the day! That night we went to the night market a walked around, grabbed a spicy papaya salad and a bacon sandwich on a Frech baguette. We had to get to bed early because the following day was surely going to be exhausting.
Actually, I'll end the post here, because the next two days had a lot of stories and this one is getting pretty long to begin with. Plus I'm coming unglued because all of my photos are in "NEF" format as opposed to JPEG-the computer at this cafe is slow enough to begin with and I don't have the patience to write this and do the photo conversion together. I'll leave this as a "to be continued..."
man zou,
~Christopher~
