We just got back from our trip - it was so brilliant we can%26#39;t wait to return.
We spent alot of time in LP and just relaxed into being there. We didn%26#39;t do much %26#39;sight-seeing%26#39; as such, and no official tours.
The highlights for us were Tad Sae Waterfall and hanging out with the elephants there! They sell bunches of bananas to feed the elephants for 5000 kip and I think we bought out the entire stall....we hung out with the elephants for ages...so so beautiful. The waterfall was beautiful too...only marred by SMOKING Western tourists!!! (this is another subject...very annoying, they smoke everywhere...vile)
Khongsi waterfall was amazing too, but there was nowhere to just hang out in this beautiful place and explore.
From Luang Prabang we took a boat over the river to the village with the abandoned wat and played with the kids for ages...it was terrific!
We also spent afew hours on the river going to different villages. The stand out was the pottery village. Our child %26#39;guide%26#39; befriended us as we stepped off the boat and for afew dollars guided us through his village. We met his mum and bought a clay elephant from him. This elephant is our favourite souvenir as we picture him and his village each time we look at it. The potter village seemed to be much worse off than the weaving villages (of which some have cars in the driveways of big houses...) as I guess it is harder for tourists to take home heavy breakable clay items. We were happy to pay the small amount he asked for the elephant....I just wished we%26#39;d brought books from Big Brother mouse to bring with us to these village visits.
Accomodation wise we made the mistake of pre-booking Thong Bay guesthouse (against the advice in this forum....wish we%26#39;d listened to you there Rufuscat!!!). For what you paid (the same as other guest houses in town)it was way overpriced. It is MILES from town, so getting to town and back cost us almost $10! So, if you add that to the already standard prices it makes it very expensive. Also, it only had fans and it was hot hot hot. The railings were also very dangerous for children and the verandahs had massive dangerous drop offs. No TV in the room (compared to town where the same price includes one). Also, their restaurant was terrible. The atmosphere looked nice but then the mossies started biting, and then the meals arrived....they were so seriously tiny that if they had thimbles as crockery they would have used them! I thought they were the kids plates but they were for adults. I don%26#39;t understand this - food is so cheap to buy...why are they so stingy with it??
Good news is that we left and moved to another guest house which was BRILLIANT - location was great, the facilities excellent and the staff terrific. We were so glad that we moved!!
Food wise,we had a %26#39;five bites%26#39; meal at Tamarind which introduced us to the cuisine and then went to the markets and ate there as we then knew what things were.
We ate at alot of roadside stalls and ate dinner at the night stalls near the night markets. Here we ate the most delicious freshly grilled river fish, delectable chicken on a stick and other local foods such as buffalo bits and grated bamboo (among other things). This was cheap and yummy. There was also a stall near the night markets with fill a plate of vegetarian food for less than a dollar. This was a popular place and we ate there a few times - quite nice and very fresh.
We watched the Tak Bat once very discreetly...and were very very saddened by the majority of the tourists behaviour. Despite signs around town asking tourists to be respectful it seems that this notice is ignored....tourists were jumping in the monks faces with flashes and pursuing them. It made me feel very ashamed to be a westerner....why do some tourists do this? There are excellent postcards you can buy with the images...you don%26#39;t need to bring a camera...
Speaking of tourists...there are signs all over LP with NO Smoking as it is world heritage. This is also ignored by just about every smoking western tourist. They smoke inside and out of restaurants, in temple grounds...everywhere. It is disgraceful.
On a happier note we enjoyed plenty of fresh coconut %26#39;juice%26#39; from the coconut - it was a delicious thirst quencher and very good for our health too.
Enjoyed massages at Khmu massage...until they were a big too vigorous on my Mum%26#39;s back and she had to take painkillers and rest for a few days...it might be worth mentioning to your masseuse to go easy on your back or sensitive regions as they have very strong hands.
The highlight of our trip would have been the bus trip from LP to Vang Vieng. We had gathered together all our unused clothing, blankets,toiletries and bought book packs and pencils from Big Brother Mouse as well as boxes of band-aids (bought out of town for only $1.50 per box of 110)and asked the manager of our guesthouse to write a note to our bus driver. In it we asked our bus driver if he could stop at a poor village so we could drop off these items to people who would need them. In the middle of a high mountain pass the bus stopped and we were able to give these things away. For the village people it was like Christmas....for us we felt humbled and left wishing we could do more...If you are a traveller carrying excess items then maybe you could consider this option of giving your unused items a very very grateful home. If you wanted to go further you could do some shopping for them at Talat Chin (the Chinese market). Things like baby and kids clothes would be very useful and are very cheap to buy there. Even better would be to collect things in your country before you come from second hand shops. The op-shops would probably gladly even give you clothes if you told them why you were wanting them. Why not use your baggage allowance to bring these items? Next time we will go to the maximum allowed and bring as much as we can.
In Vang Vieng we stayed at the Le Organique Guesthouse on the river which was excellent. We stayed at the Elephant Crossing also but it was overpriced and not as nice as we thought it would be so moved out to the guesthouses again.
In Vientianne we stayed at the Villa Manoly which was perfect for us.
We didn%26#39;t eat in any of the fancier places recommended as we were trying to save money, but we did enjoy the Full Moon Cafe in Vientiane immensely. Yummy food and very relaxed (this price range was as high as we went on the whole trip, but was a luxury for us). The choco frappe%26#39;s will stand out in the kids memories for ages - so fancy looking!
Health wise we travelled with a small selection of homeopathic remedies and tissue salts. They were invaluable and continue to be - great safe first aid! Also, we brought lots of vitamins and took them daily - Vit C, zinc, and an immune booster with the excellent herb andrograhpis. We were healthy for the whole trip, with only minor tummy upsets which were healed with the tissue salts, but having a comprehensive first aid kit there if we needed them was worth it.
I know I will think of many more things to add..I hope this is helpful to some travellers out there. Laos is such an incredible country. The Lao people are beautiful. We would love to return.
Travel report for Laos
Hi Greenjoy,
Thanks for a wonderful trip report.
I would like to know more about your boat trips to the villages in Luang Prabang.
How did you organise these trips and how much did you pay?
Do you think 4 days is enough in Luang Prabang?
We are thinking of staying at The Grand Luang Prabang Hotel, is this too far away from the town?
How many days did you stay in Vientiane?
Cheers,
Stewie.
Travel report for Laos
Niiice post Joy. Glad you enjoyed your trip. Full Moon Cafe is ok; I have eaten a umber of meals there. Shame about the tourists in LP though. I didn%26#39;t realise it was quite that bad.
Good report Greenjoy. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Couple of questions:
What was the new guest house you moved to in Luang Prabang and what was the cost?
What are %26#39;tissue salts%26#39;? And what homeopathic remedies you carried?
I hope my holiday would become as good as yours. :-)
Thanks for the report Joy- it sounds like you had a very memorable trip!
I would just like to comment about one thing-
Folks-
If you have items you no longer need at the end of your travels, PLEASE donate them to a school or orphanage. There are elementary schools which are bone-bare of supplies, and even a cake of soap, towels, pens and memo pads would be greatly appreciated. Handing things out at random encourages begging, and if one person gets handed something and another doesn%26#39;t, that is simply not fair (you can also see this in a child%26#39;s eyes!). If you could bring along items like sports items or educational supplies, local schools woudl be VERY happy. Quality sports items can be brought form home, but you can help the local economy by picking up school supplies at a local market.(It is also fairly easy to contact places beforehand to see what they need!) Cheers!
Thank you Greenjoy, for taking the time to let us know how your trip went.
So pleased you all went well %26amp; enjoyed.
Thanks Greenjoy for a great report on the area. We will be there in November. I also booked Thong Bay guest house for the first two nights of our 8 night stay in LP. What was the name of the place you moved to in town? ( I was also worried that Thong Bay may be too far out of town).We arrive around 8:30PM and don%26#39;t want the hassel of arriving that late and looking for a place. Would appreciate any tips. You sounded like you had a great trip. I%26#39;m already wondering if we should not have spent longer in Laos!!!
After looking at about 6 other guest houses in LP we decided on the Sayo Guest House - the one on the River (it is in the Lonely Planet guidebook). The rooms upstairs are $40 per night in the offseason (which is now but you wouldn%26#39;t think so as most guesthouses were packed and we had to wait for 2 days to even get into the Sayo!), with the downstairs ones at $30 per night.
We were upstairs in a massive room with high ceilings and a bathroom that was so massive the kids soaped up the floor and used it as a %26#39;wet and wild%26#39; play area for hours! It was very very clean.
It seems that the Sayo is always full though so I%26#39;d recommend you book in advance.
The Sayo is a short walk from town - an atmospheric one!- and is around the corner from Le Elephant restaurant and the Callao and walking distance to 3 Nagas (none of which we went to as we just couldn%26#39;t get ourselves to spend the money even though compared to %26#39;home%26#39; it was cheap - the street stalls were too good!).
What are tissue salts - They are a kind of homeopathic type remedy I was put on to years ago to help with my sons leg cramps, and they are brilliant. You can get them at any chemist though health shops may have a larger range. We carried ones for fever, stomach upsets, cold and flu etc - have a look at the range available and choose what you may need. They are not expensive and if you have kids they are excellent as most kids love taking them (I have to hide them from ours!!).
With the homeopathics the only one we used daily was the anti-malaria one, the others we had with us were
Aconite 30 for fevers, earache, sudden onset of cold or flu
Belladonna 30C - for more intense symptons of these conditions.
Arsenicum 30C for diarrhorea, vomiting, no energy, restlessness, burning pains
Ipecac 30C for vomiting, persistent nausea, Vomiting or gagging with cough.
Nux Vomica 30C for irritability, headache (dulland heavy), stress, insomnia, nausea, hangover and constipation.
Arnica 30C for bruises, bumps, muscular sprains and aches, fractures, shock and nosebleeds.
This sounds like a massive list but the whole kit fitted into an old floppy disk box. The remedies come in tiny little glass bottles, cost about $6 per bottle and you take them either in drops or 2 little white balls (the kids love the balls). There is a much longer list you can choose from - I researched for mine on line at Mullum Herbals. You can either buy the whole kit (23 different remedies) or individual remedies. Make sure you get info on how to take them (15 minutes prior to or after food and drink - except water) and the frequency.
BOAT TRIPS and Sightseeing Trips
Staying over the road from the Mekong was just beautiful and the boat trips all leave from there. We just talked to individual boat drivers and agreed on a price (I think we paid about 80,000 for all 6 of us to spend about 4-5 hours on the river going to villages etc).
We did the same with the tuk tuk drivers to the waterfalls etc. We probably paid more than they expected (they were always super dooper happy!!!) but to us it was still very reasonable and to them a fortune. We were all happy.
Re giving items to villages : Maneki-neko raises a very important point about the begging side of things. I guess were we stopped (in the middle of nowhere and at random) it would be difficult to start this kind of culture, but in the villages on walks it would be a problem. Actually, the kids at the village over the Mekong accosted us as we got off the boat for pens and wanted us to buy their %26#39;flowers for buddha%26#39; and they already had a flashy pen in hand so someone had succumbed...but it wasn%26#39;t pleasant....luckily we overcame that and our kids played with them for over an hour outside the temple......joyfilled memories!
I hope this has helped. If you have any more questions I%26#39;m happy to help.
I don%26#39;t know much about the Grand LP hotel
Tissue Salts - I forgot to add a bit more info here!
THey are called Schuessler Tissue Salts and are quite cheap.
Another thing we took each day was an immune booster with the brilliant herbs Andrographis and Echinacea in them. The brand we bought was %26#39;Ethical Nutrients%26#39; and called ';cold defence%26#39;. Brilliant one to have. If you feel yourself coming down with anything it will help you greatly. I up the dosage if I am feeling under the weather (it works really well for all the colds going around at home now - we only used it as maintenance in Laos).
One last essential for your medical kit - BACTROBAN. It is a miracle antibiotic cream to apply to wounds that have gotten infected.
My mum went to the fish spa in Malaysia and they bit through her skin and made her bleed all over her legs, these sores (over 100 of them - man those fish are like piranhas!!!) got badly infected and were turning to ulcers when we applied the cream.
You can buy it cheaply in malaysia (you need a script at home and it costs a fortune), but I couldn%26#39;t find it in Laos.
Of course, seek medical advice if things get worse!
Ack, that%26#39;s really gross about the fish, Joy! Your poor mum!!!
In my little medi-kit I usually carry Immodium, aspirin, cranberry caps(for bladder infections), Japanese stomach medicine, a tube of anti-bacterial cream and ciprofloxacin, which is good to zap stomach bugs. I eat well so no need to be schlepping vitamins with me, and I think I get enough nutrients from eating papaya salad %26amp; drinking dark Beerlao. :-)
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