If you could choose a city where you can relax, enjoy good food and explore the nature surrounding you, that’s definately Luang Prabang.
This gorgeous heritage city in Laos happens to be exactly what you’ll need to spend some time on your own or just to sit back and chill.
In my previous stop in Laos, Vang Vieng, I met a lot of travelers coming from Luang Prabang. Since I was going there, I was curious and asked to all of them how did they find the city I was heading to.
Everybody loved it. Every single person.
They were just smiling a lot and say “Oh you’ll see, it’s a beautiful city!”
So, okay, I was happy and ready to go there and I just started to do some research on what to do and where to chillout. And when I got here, I knew I had high expectations, but Luang Prabang wiped out any doubt.
Not only it’s just a lovely city, but it also turn out to be the place where I learnt some really important things about Lao culture and about life in general.
- You don’t need to know everything
Starting from what you might find in your dish (you’ll never know) to where you are exactly going. In Luang Prabang you will turn off all your worries and just follow the flow. There are plenty of places where you can go to switch to your own personal offline mode, and you will find those places exactly when you’re not planning to go there. Or when you don’t know where you are. Or just when you realize you’re tired and you want a fresh fruit smoothie.
You can just wake up in the morning, start your day and then keep walking, follow your heart, and you will get somewhere. No Maps, no Lonely Planet book, no street name reading. This is how I got to the National Museum Gardens. It’s a quiet and small park where you can just sit on a bench in the shadow and relax, read a book and simply enjoy.
- Extra effort pays back
You probably heard this, but sometimes you need to experience something on your skin so you can totally understand it. And here in Luang Prabang you’ll have a lot of chances to get this point.
On the third day here we finally decided to go to the Kuang Si waterfalls: super popular spot (you can guess why!), 45 minutes driving from the city center. Everybody was going the easy way: hiring a Tuk Tuk and go there, chill a little bit and then go back.
We chose to do something different and we trekked from Hmong and Khmu tribal villages to the waterfalls. It was a good 4 hours hiking in the jungle, in super slippery paths. Our shoes got full of mud and we were sweating like never before.
BUT!
The view from there was ridiculously stunning, and we couldn’t believe we made it there on our own feet. The fact that we walked up the waterfall and enjoy the view made us forget about the early alarm and the 8km long path. So yeah, extra effort definetely pays back.
- Keep calm
I think this is part of Lao culture, because here I’ve never seen someone getting angry at someone else. People try to solve their problem privately or anyway they never display strong feelings in public. It’s not about never get mad at somebody, but more about trying to respect other people’s point of view and to show them it is all right to disagree, but this shouldn’t stop us from being nice at each other.
This is also valid for showing love in public! Simply, do your things at home. Luang Prabang has over a 1,000 years of living culture, it’s important to show some respect. After all, locals welcome you in their own country, they really try their best for making you feel at home and showing some appreciation should be the #1 priority.
Just think about this: the word for “mine” and “yours” is the same in Lao, and there isn’t even a word for an individual person. The concept of possession is completley foreign to Lao people.
View from Phu Si Hill
I hope everyone could visit Luang Prabang one day!
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