Day 16: Three Countries In One Day

(Well, kinda)

Hello from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic or as we say in the UK: Laos 🇱🇦

More specifically, hello from Luang Prabang aka Louangphabang aka ຫລວງພະບາງ in north central Laos.

Getting here from Vietnam was easy if not particularly direct. I flew at 9:30 from Đã Nẵng to Bangkok Don Mueang, sat in transfer purgatory for about three hours, then 90 minutes to the teeny Laos airport LPQ. It’s one of those where the plane has to turn around at the end of the runway to taxi back to the terminal.

Definite brownie points for me in getting an e-visa: no standing in the 200-person line for visa on arrival, only standing in line for immigration (which VoA people also have to do). $10USD more? IDGAF, worth every cent.

First impressions

First impressions were actually from the air. Coming in to land, we flew over the green-brown mountains that define the landscape here. Already I was captivated, it gave me a certain feeling of the Peak District as you see it approaching Manchester by air.

A key difference: zero infrastructure. There are people and villages down there, but there are no asphalt roads, no electricity pylons, no LEDs.

But that’s just the outer reaches. Luang Prabang has all mod-cons including electricity, lighting and its own beer. But no traffic lights, not really needed.

There’s also way more ATMs than GMaps would have you believe, which is good because if you read the reviews, each and every ATM will eat your card and debit your account and not deliver any money and pull the whiskers off a kitten and drown a donkey and … I obtained 2,000,000 kip (about 90€) without incident.

Otherwise: I had some good food. I walked through a pleasant night market (shocker, there was actually some nice stuff there), spent no more than 5% of my time walking in the road because the (wide, evenly laid) pavements were not always blocked by scooters and am now settled on the veranda of my very wooden hotel wondering why I didn’t come here earlier.