Luang Prabang - where prices are ridiculously cheap.

Tuesday 6 November

I slept well until midnight, then found it difficult until around 4 am when I went out like a light until 6-ish. I think I was a bit cold with just a sheet. The temperature must have dropped to all of around 20 C! Ah but I had another hot shower to look forward to - and that shave with hot water that I was looking forward to; now that was just what the doctor ordered. I felt refreshed.

Our frugal accommodation came with the most charming of friendly smiles.

We didn’t hear from the trekking company so that good idea evaporated into thin air. Instead, Jim organised a couple of push bikes - for a dollar for the day. We had breakfast up the road for $1.50 as Jim said it was ‘too expensive’ at the guest house. There we would have had to pay $2.20! Apologies for going on so much about the cost of things here, but when you can spend AUD 1,000 per day on some tours you see advertised around the place, prices here are ridiculously cheap. Someone's making a mint out of high end tourists. Mind you, we are not travelling at that end of the market. But when push comes to shove, the room does not HAVE to have plasma TV’s, DVD players, hair dryers (although some ladies may disagree on that one), coffee making gear, shoe shine things and hundreds of people to wait on you hand and foot. My room here is perfectly adequate. It is lined with a beautiful rich-coloured, highly polished tropical timber as is the floor and ceiling. Now I know how a wood borer feels, except that, of course, they don’t have all the space around them that I have. The wardrobe is a row of hooks on one wall and a chest of drawers, (well, a set of open cane shelves), takes up one corner. The bathroom is tiled, has a shower, a basin with a sign that warns against leaning on it as ‘it will break’, a mirror, a fan and a loo that gets drowned each time the shower is used…all perfectly adequate and it all comes with the most charming set of friendly smiles I’ve seen since I was last in Fiji.

Our goal for the morning was to visit the old Royal Palace. However that attempt was thwarted as it is closed on Tuesdays. Never mind, there is a nice lily pond in the grounds and these were open until 12.30, when we were thrown out, so the video camera worked overtime on getting some nice reflection shots. We walked back to our guest house and were planning the rest of the day when P. turned up with her friend. This was good because Jim had managed to persuade P. to let him borrow her small step-through motor bike for a day so that he could visit the countryside. Now all we had to do was persuade her friend to do likewise so that I could go with him. P’s bike would be free to us since Jim paid at least half of its cost some time ago, but some sort of deal had to be done to get her friend W’s bike. Now, W. works for the government forestry department as an accountant and earns the princely some of 158,000 Kip per month – USD 15.80. Jim offered her a month’s pay, a full tank of petrol on handing the bike back and promised that we would be very careful and not travel too fast. She was not able to refuse! We’ll get the bikes tomorrow morning at 6.30 am. ( Why, you well might ask, did we not just rent motor bikes? We, as westerners, ‘falangs’, are not permitted to do so. So borrow we must.)

This mode of transport will enable us to travel some 15 km out of town to a village where Stephen’s wife is financing the building of a temple. Steve also gave Jim a computer that we will deliver to the village head. It should be a really interesting day, and we WILL be very careful with the bikes.

Grateful to the girls, we shouted them lunch at a cafe on the banks of the Mekong, sitting on a deck under some lovely big trees. Jim’s stomach began to play up a bit so we went back to the guest house for a rest during the heat of the afternoon. We arranged to have our feet on the ground and ready to take on a ride around the town at 5 pm. This was when we finally got to ride our dollar-a-day bikes! We rode along the bank of the Mekong, around the northern end of the town, and back through the middle, which just happened to take us past a massage place Jim has been to before.

The girls here are from Pak Lai, Chanla’s village which is a long road trip from here - Jim and I are going there in a couple of days. These girls support themselves by giving massages when not at school. They were happy to practice their English on us as we submitted to an oil massage. It still feels good. After riding the bikes back to the guest house, we delivered them to the little place across the street where upon Jim’s passport was returned to him... what great faith he has in these people!

Jim’s tummy is now a bit worse so he did not come with me down the street for food. I ended up in Jomo’s again where a cheese melt with BBQ chicken, onion, tomato and mustard slid down very nicely. I just had to follow that with a cinnamon bun and muggaccino. It is now 9.45 pm, time for another hot shower, to wash a bit of the oil off me, and hopefully a longer and more restful sleep than last night.