Visiting Laos (part 4)


This is the fourth part of the small "guide" through Laos. 

Buddha statue at sunset

Luang Phrabang

Luang Phrabang is one of the most visited places in Laos. It's on the UNESCO world heritage list, so the city gets more and more visitors every year. The city has a lot of natural and historical sites. 

It used to be the capital when Laos was a kingdom and you can clearly see why the king choose this place to be his residency. It's in a very beautiful area of the country, and the city itself is also beautiful.
On each sides of the streets there are hotels, restaurants and temples. One of the main attractions are the beautiful monasteries and temples.  In the mornings hundreds of monks walk on the streets collecting donations from the people. Unfortunately we missed it, but maybe the next time .

Places to visit and things to do in Luang Phrabang:

Temple inside

• Buddist temples and monasteries - as I wrote before there are so many gorgeous temples where you can go. usually the young monks are studing outside and if you are lucky you can see the buddhist ceremonies.

  colorful textiles

  rice liqour

  

   cave

Pak Ou Caves - about half an hour from Luang Phrabang. It's a natural cave where monks placed many buddha statues in various sizes. Most of them are very tiny and sometimes they are in some hidden part of the cave. Even you can bring a buddha statue and put it somewhere. And we saw a monster rat in the dark!(about as big as a cat) :D You have to go to a small village where you can cross the river with a boat. You can see how the people are making the hand made textiles and chlothes. It's so colorful!:) And we even saw how they make rice liqour with snakes and scorpions. there are many tourists visiting this place, so it's really crowded all the time.

Kuang Si Falls

Kuang Si Falls - full of tourists but very beautiful. In the lower part of the fall you can swim as well, but the water is pretty cold.

Busker

Night Market

night market - We just loved it! :) It's on the main street every night and you can find really nice handmade scarves, chlothes, slippers and a lot of suveniers. That's where we saw an old busker playing on a traditional instument called "erhu".

tuk tuk in Luang Phrabang

Royal palace - Nowdays, the building is the national museum. It's not like any of the European palaces. It has one impressive room for the guests and the rest are not that luxorious at all. As usual this place is always crowded as well as the rest of the sites in Luang Phrabang

Garden of the Royal palace

just get lost in the city! :)

River side

walking by the river side

We had a really good time here and hope one day we can visit it again. Next time I will write about Vang Vieng, the last city we visited in Laos.

Visiting Laos (part 3)

This is the third part of the small "guide" through Laos. 

Xieng Khouang

Xieng Khouang

Xieng Khouang is located north-east of Laos. It's a really nice hilly and mountainy area of the country. It takes about 6-7 hours from Vientiane to get here through a very curvy road. We were stunned by the beautiful landscapes next to the road. You can see small villages, rice fields and huge jungles.
It's a poorer part of Laos and there are less tourists also. During the Vietnam war it was bombed and there are still a lot of armed mines left hiden in the ground. Fortunately the authoraties already cleard most of the visited parts of Xieng Khouang, and you can see people looking for mines to disarm them. But it's not dangerous at all to visit this place. You can still feel the impact of the war. Locals use bombs as fances and decorations for their restaurants and pubs or they cut them in half and they plant flowers in the bomb shells. It looks really surreal and it's nice to see that the people found a way to "recycle" the garbage of the war.

Recycling bombs

Recycling bombs

It can get pretty cold expecially in the mornings and late evenings in this region because of the mountains. Mornings are really foggy and sometimes you can't even see your own hands in front of you, but it get's clear after a while and really hot and sunny. :)

Places to visit:

• plain of Jars - it's in the UNESCO world heritage. The archaeologists are still not sure what they were used for.

  

  plain of jars

• Wat Piawat temple - it was the oldest and biggest temple in Xiengkhouang ,but it was destroyed by US bombing during the Vietnam war. Just the buddha statue remained almost undamaged. 

  

  Wat Piawat

• War Memorials(caves and statues) - victims of the Vietnam war - About an hour away from the city there is a cave which during the war was used as a hiding place for civilians. The US supected that there might be also some high ranking people from the military hiding in the cave so they bombed the cave. Thousands of innocent people lost their lives. Now it's a memorial for the victims of the war. We met here with some buddisht monks who were praying for the victims and we got to talk with them a little bit. It was one of the best moments in our trip.

  

  Monks

• quarry of the Jars and a secret tunnel - a little hike through endless staircase up to the mountain. The view is really nice from up there. 

  

  on the top

• Hotspring - This natural mineral hot spring is located at Muong Kham District . There is a little bath place for the visitors but don't expect the luxury of the West. There's a row of small cabins with tiny bathtubs in them. When we were there a really old lady was working in the garden there and we gave her a small bottle of water. She said that we are so kind and we have a good heart and wished us good luck and happiness and long life and you could see in her eyes that she really meant it. So many kind words for such a tiny gesture( a small bottle of water). It was a really touching moment... It made me think a lot how people from the west (including myself) don't appreciate what we have as much as we should. We're complaning way too much about nothing. 

  

  hot spring
• walking in the city - it's quite a small city with a lot of interesting bars and restaurants and of course with lots of karaoke. Close to the old airport there's a huge building where locals go to spend their freetime. It is kind of a "casino". It's full of life. There's a game where they use 3 cubes with images on each side and you have to guess which one will be on the top. It's quite fun! :)

  

  Xieng Khouang at night

Xieng Khouang is a must visit place when you are in Laos. Don't miss it! 

Next time I will write about Luang Phrabang, the old capital of Laos.

Paintings of Laos

Busker- oil on canvas

After we left Laos, I felt really inspired by the experiance and I felt the need to paint. I've painted continuasly for 3 weeks but soon we will leave again (on the 29th of April yuppie! :)) so I won't have the time to create new ones but to get more inspiration. :)

Here are the resoults: 

Buddhist monks - aquarell

Sawing lady - aquarell

Bicycle - aquarell

Bisu - oil on canvas

sawing girl variation - oil on canvas

girls in Xieng Khuang - oil on canvas

dream - oil on canvas

Visiting Laos (part 2)

This is the second part of the small "guide" through Laos. 

We knew that the culture is very different and we heard quite a lot of stories about Laos before the trip. We even saw some pictures of the country but still we found it hard to imagine what it would feel like to be there. Is the air so hot that you can't breathe? Do elephants walk up and down on the streets? Are there any huge spiders and insects climbing on the wall? Is it really true that Lao people eat almost anything that moves? What does an insect taste like? And we had a lot more similar questions in our head.

Well we got some answers but we still left a lot of things undiscovered. Maybe next time :P

Vientiane:

As soon as we arrived we got an answer to our first question. Yes it's as hot as everybody describes it. It was 30-32 degrees. But it can get way hotter and more humid in the rainy season. So we actually chose the best time to travel.

Vientiane

Vientiane is the biggest and the most populated city in Laos. We were suprised because there were actually a lot of turists everywhere. Ofcourse not as much as in Thailand but Laos gets more and more popularity. Mostly the travelers who visit Laos are looking for a quiet place where the "western civilization" hasn't destroyed the beauty of simple life. Well Vientiane has two different faces. It's developing really fast, there's a lot of cars on the roads and you can find huge hotels and fancy restaurants next to the main road. On the other hand you see tons of electric cabels above your head, the traffic is really chaotic sometimes and the air is filled with red dust and some of the houses are in a really bad shape but people seem happy all the time.

Street view

Smiling monks

Vientiane has its charm that is hard to put in words. Maybe it's the people who are always smiling at you and it seems they're always in a good mood and nothing bothers them or the old Buddhist temples filled with a strong smell of incense sticks and the monks orange robes that you can't take your eyes of or the long red sunsets at the Mekong river or the little cute geckos on the walls of houses that makes this whole city so alive.

Tips on what to do and visit:

Sunset

• whatch the sunset next to the Mekong river. The Asian sunset is nothing like in Europe. Words cannot describe the view and the athmosphere.

Tuktuk

• Take a ride with a tuktuk. it's the Asian taxi. :) 

Buddha park

• Visit the Buddha park. It is not that old but you will find here beautiful buddhist and hindu sculptures everywhere.

Market

• Go to at least one local market. These places are really chaotic. You'll see a lot of weird stuff, like insects, frogs, snakes, lizards, rats sometimes cats and beautiful birds for sale. Of course they sell them as food and not as pets :P You'll be amazed by the amounts of vegetables and fruits also. The smell usually is horrible because of the meat and the heat and there are flies everywhere but if you won't visit at least one  market in Laos you haven't seen the country :P

• Morning Market - Talat Sao. It's a huge market on several floors. I think it's the best place in Vientiane to buy souvenirs for your friends and relatives.

Pha That Luang

• Visit the Buddhist temples (like Pha That Luang) You can't miss this beautiful temples. They are not as renovated as in Bangkok but maybe because of this they look more real.

• For breakfast the locals eat a huge portion of noodle or rice soup which is quite heavy for the stomach. So usually we ordered fried eggs with some bread :P If you want "normal" breakfast you have to find a western restaurant.

• Try some local food. Most of them are really delicious. I really like the ones that you have to cook for yourself. On each table there is a little hole for the fire place and you have to fry your meat on it :) And the fruits are really delicious! And I can tell the same thing about the fruit shakes.

Boat restaurant

Down to the river

• Boat restaurants are awsome! It's quite close to Vientiane but unfortunatly I don't remember the name of the river where it was. :( Around 10-20 people fit in one boat and while you're eating you can enjoy the beautiful view from the river. And most of them have a karaoke machine on it and locals like to use it quite a lot :)

So if you are in Laos, Vientiane is a must see. Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! :)

Next time I'll write about Xieng Khuang.

Visiting Laos (part 1)

the Mekong river at sunset

In February we've been to Laos (and we saw a bit of Thailand also) for 2 weeks and we've spent a short but wonderful time there. This post will be about travelling rather than busking (actually we saw an old musician on the street). We got hipnotized by the beautiful Asia and we'll defenetly visit this part of the World again sometimes in the future.

I will post this Asian trip in more parts otherwise it would be too long and boring in one "dose". :)

From Amsterdam it's a 10 hour flight to get to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. It's a really long and tiring flight but the view is really nice if you get a seat next to the window.

somwhere over Europe

First I would like to give you some advice. The following information is useful if you are travelling in this part of Asia

• be careful with street foods (expecially uncooked stuff) - vegetables and fruits (fruits that you can pill are okay like banana, mango etc.) might not be washed well. And you should avoid foods with half raw or raw meat, sometimes they get rotten in the heat. 
• clean the cutleries in restaurants before you eat with them (unless it's a fancy restaurant :P) at least with a napkin. Usually they put a ball of hot water next to them.

Of course you can try the local specialities but I don't think so that you would like to get a diarrhea and spend most of your time on the toilett. So still be careful with what you eat. By the way...

example of the Asian toilett

• always keep toilett paper with you because in most of the places there is none... or you can try to wash 'it' with a bowl of water... :P
• drink a lot of water even if you won't feel like it. You can get dehidrated really fast.
• don't drink from the tap water. It can be really dirty. It's better to drink from bottled water.
• you can bargain everywhere in markets and shops. Actually if you dont they'll do it for you :)
• get a nice hat. you can easily get a sunstroke if you stay too much in the sun
• for girls: if you go to a temple cover your shoulders and legs (anyway there will be signs)

that's it for now I guess :) 

Plans for 2013

First of all we would like to say thanks to everybody for the help and support. We hope that the information we shared was useful. 

We're on our "vacation" till the begining of April(maybe a bit longer) and than we would like to continue our busking experiance in countries we've never been to in Europe such as Switzerland, France, Spain, maybe Portugal and Italy.

ready for the next year :)

We can't wait to be on the road again :) We'll start learning new songs and if the weather lets us, "rehears" on the streets of Szeged and Budapest.

For warming up here are the videos from 2012. The trip was financed only by the money we made from busking. So you really don't need a lot of things to travel. :) I hope more people will get the courage to do what they really want to do and they don't let their fears hold them back. 

   

The way back home

After Brugge we went back to Gent and stayed there another week to have time to make the CD-s and we decided to head towards Germany again and slowly go home before the winter cought up with us. France and Spain can wait till next Spring :P

the end is close :(

We went back to the places where we knew it's good for busking like Brussels and Liége, but we were unlucky and we both cought a cold plus the weather turned really bad. For more than two weeks we couldn't play at all so we spent all our savings. In Maastricht it was raining all the time and I got a bit deppressed about the situation but we had to move on. On the way back we met some old friends of ours, we've made on the road and it gave us such a warm feeling to meet these people again. :)

Maastricht 

Lübeck

Brussels

On the train to Berlin

In Germany we went all the way up to Lübeck through Aachen, Köln, Münster and Bremen again hoping that we would get a couch in Hamburg for at least a week but we weren't lucky so in the end we stayed in Lübeck for 3 weeks again. Our friends made it really easy and comfortable for us to stay there for such a long time. Hope one day we can do something for them. :)

We left Lübeck with a hundred euros and went back to Berlin where we stayed for four days to make money for Prague! :) We were really excited because this was the first time that we could see the capital of Czech Republic and we 've been planning for so long to visit it :)