Laos with the Vang Family - Part 3

I’m going to try and squeeze the last 2 days into one blog post, so this doesn’t go into a Part 4.  I hope it doesn’t get too lengthy, but there’s always a risk!

Our third day was fairly lazy.  We hung around the hotel all morning, walking the grounds and enjoying our last few hours at the Santi Resort.  James and the kids got in one last swim too.

Our 2 rooms were on the bottom floor of this building, one of many on the resort grounds.

The resort’s organic garden, where the produce is grown for the restaurant.

Around noon we checked out of the Santi and took a taxi into Luang Prabang to our new hotel, the Jasmine.  This was tactical.  We wanted at least one night in town so we could get up early to watch the monks walk through town.  I’ll come back to that later though.  

We had a lovely welcome snack of dragon fruit, mango and watermelon at the new hotel.  So refreshing!  Our new hotel rooms were scented with jasmine and the towels were shaped like swans on the bed.  It was by no means as fancy as the Santi, but it still had many sweet touches to make us feel pampered.

After our snack, I convinced Eric and Janny to take a walk through town with me.  Everyone else wanted to stay at the hotel and relax by the pool.  That suited me just fine.  Thanks for babysitting, James! We walked the length of the Luang Prabang peninsula along the main central road and then came back via the north river road.  Check out the interactive map to see where it is.

Along the way, we went into a shop selling items made from recycled Hmong fabrics.  They had many displays of traditional Hmong outfits.  They are turning old skirts into handbags and pillowcases to sell to tourists.  Janny wondered what they would do when they ran out of old skirts.  

Laos was a French colony from 1893-1945 and, as such, was influenced when it came to architecture.  We enjoyed walking the streets and seeing the beautiful gardens and upper balconies.

  

This size Tuk Tuk could hold all 9 of us.

At the near tip of the peninsula, we toured Wat Xieng Thong.  It was built between 1559 and 1560 and its name translates to Temple of the Golden City.  The city of Luang Prabang was originally named Xieng Thong and was the original capital of Laos. The royal temple’s many structures are covered in beautiful colored glass mosaics that glitter in the sun, and also, there is a ton of shiny gold.

On our way back to the Jasmine hotel, we saw a guy selling crafts made out of bamboo chopsticks. They were pretty awesome!  Janny bought a dragonfly that balances on your finger tip.... or even your nose!

One more quick stop to peek over the wall at Haw Pha Bang.  It sits on the grounds of the Royal Palace Museum and it holds Laos’ most sacred Buddha image.  But I just got a pic of the outside.

 We arrived back just in time to eat some yummy calzones and pizza that James had ordered.  It was a good time to rest and play.

Just after 4, we decided to go for another walk.  This time we took all the kids with us except Preston. The pizza hadn’t agreed with him, so James and Preston stayed back.  We walked in the other direction from the peninsula, along a very busy road, for about a mile or so.  We arrived at Ock Pop Tok Silk Road Cafe just as the sun was setting over the Mekong River.  Kia had told me about this place, laughing at how I’d tried to see the sunset from Phousi Hill with a thousand other tourists.  He said this was the best place to see the sunset, and he wasn’t lying.  The cafe is part of a bigger complex including a Living Crafts Centre that has classes where you can learn weaving, dyeing, batik making or bamboo basket weaving.  We sat and enjoyed the sunset while eating lava cake and ice cream.  Yum!

You can reserve the treehouse for watching the sunset and having your dinner served to you up there.

A free shuttle ride back to the hotel and we were done for the night.  The next morning, as I had alluded to earlier, Janny, Eric, and I got up at 6am to walk around the town in the dark to watch the monks come by for the daily alms giving.  Local people sit/stand on the sidewalk with food offerings for the monks.  The monks walk by with canisters to collect the food.  This is their only source of food for the day.  We didn't want to watch with the rest of the tourists on the main street, so we found a spot on a side street where we could watch from a respectful distance in the shadows.  We had read not to participate if this wasn't our religion. 

We came back to the hotel for breakfast and then we grabbed Maya, Willow, and Charlie for a walk to the local UXO LAO visitor center.  I was so moved by what we saw there, that I created a whole other website for it.  Please check it out here.  It is so important that we understand what happened in Laos and what is still happening as a result.  It is not a proud moment in American History and that is why most Americans aren’t even aware it happened at all.  They certainly don’t teach it in schools. 

I won’t paraphrase here what I put in the other website.  If you’re interested, and I hope you are, please check it out.

 

When we got back to the hotel, it was time to head to the airport again.  By this time, COVID-19 had become a serious threat, so we all wore masks in the airport.

We flew back to Vientiane first and had several hours to kill before our flight home.  Unfortunately, there are no lockers or storage facilities for luggage at the Vientiane airport, so we had to lug our bags with us around town.  We found a taxi man to take us to Patuxay Monument.  It is a war monument dedicated to those who lost their lives to gain independence from France.  Its appearance is similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  Janny and I took the kids to the very top, leaving the men at the bottom with our suitcases.  Eric found a convenience store that sold ice cold beverages, so we didn’t worry about them.

The many floors of the monument had gift shops so you could pause during your ascent to do a little browsing.  We found two curious objects while up there.  The first was a reminder that Laos is a communist country and the second was the silver bars used in a Hmong wedding as the bride price.

From the monument, we took a Tuk Tuk to Chao Anouvong Park where the Vientiane night market is.  They were still setting up the market, so we let the kids play on the playground and get all their wiggles out.  It occurred to me, while sitting their with our bags at the playground, that this park was right along the Mekong River and that here is where you could see Thailand on the other side.  I ran up the embankment to catch a glimpse of what the river might have looked like when the Hmong crossed it. I wasn’t in a good spot, but you can see the river as a skinny white ribbon in the pic below.

From the park, we decided to find somewhere we could walk to for dinner where we could sit awhile, since we wouldn’t be able to maneuver around much after dark with all of our bags in tow.  James and Eric found a place called Tyson’s Kitchen that had a very Canadian vibe to it.  

After lingering over our meal for a ridiculously long time, we finally decided we should head back to the airport.  It was still too early to actually check in to our flight, but we had run out of options.  

So, that’s it!  Our trip to Laos was fantastic.  The country is beautiful and wondrous.  I loved watching the Vang family interact with the Hmong, speaking their language and explaining the nuances and history of their culture to me.  I learned so much about the Hmong people and the devastating effects of the war. Definitely forged memories I will never forget.