La vie en repose

Out on the Nam Ou river
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Luang Prabang is Laos' primary tourist attraction, a world heritage city set in rolling green hills, sandwiched between 2 rivers and full of ancient temples and french colonial architecture.

The city is quite laid back and a lovely place to spend a few days while getting cheap massages and browsing the big tourist night market. Every morning at dawn the many monks of Luang Prabang roam the streets looking for alms, asking for food donations as they are not allowed to buy and cook food for themselves. This tradition was probably once peaceful but with tons of tourists trying to get their best "monk shot" and old woman aggressively trying to get you to buy their sticky rice so you can participate in the alms giving it has lost much of the spiritualilty it once had.

French architecture and buddhist spirituality in a world heritage city

A much more difficult to navigate 1-person kayak
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A lot of Luang Prabang's charm comes from it's surroundings. Surrounded by beautiful hills, traditional villages and many rivers, there's a stunning view around every corner. The Kuang Si waterfalls 30km away from town are popular and rightly so. 7 tiers of turquoise pools - you can swim in a number of them - in a pristine forest setting makes for a great day trip.  We ended up spending 2 days kayaking down local rivers. The kayaking was a lot of fun, with the rapids never being stronger than a class 2. The 2-person kayaks were pretty easy to manoever but the single kayaks were tough indeed, each of us capsized at least once! Watching the Lao people along the river (bathing, swimming, fishing, even panning for gold!) while paddling along was an amazing experience.

Our requisite "monk shot"
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We met several new friends and re-acquainted ourselves with some old friends following the same path as us in Laos. Nights were spent going to the great restaurants in Luang Prabang and enjoying good Lao food. And of course, we took yet another cooking course in Luang Prabang, learning the subtleties of Lao cooking. A lot of the food is delicious but don't worry we won't be using buffalo skin, insects, bats, cobras, embryonic eggs or dog in our dishes back home!