I usually get it wrong by thinking that somewhere will be very quiet when it turns out to be a huge metropolis, but I actually got it twisted in reverse with Luang Prabang as I was expecting a similar atmosphere to Thailand or Vietnam, but found it to be more like Cambodia (Siem Reap at least) so from now on I think I should just stop making predictions as they're always wrong!
Almost as contrasting are my first impressions which usually end see my changing my opinion completely from how I felt when I first arrived there. First impressions in foreign lands particularly can be pretty wayward as there's usually too much going on for your brain to properly take everything in.
You may never get a second chance to make another first impression, but I try not to draw too many conclusions from how I feel initially and instead take some time to form an opinion which isn't based on a ride from the airport to the hotel I'm staying in.
It's difficult not to make snap judgements, and I think that is why Asia is such a unique place. Many things are so different and each place is very unique that it can be very difficult to get a real sense of somewhere unless you spend a significant amount of time there.
It often works the same way as with people, sometimes you can click instantly, and other times it can take a while.
Right now I am very much in the middle of my journey, and when I think back to the places I visited at the start it can be difficult to gauge how my opinions of things going on at the time have altered two months on.
My opinions of things tend to form over the time I spent in each city and country, it just so happens that the average amount of time I spend somewhere is about three days which means that I am coming up with new thoughts relatively often.
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Although it was a shortened one due to having spent most of my first day travelling to Luang Prabang my time in the relaxed Laos city was at an end today as I headed south towards the Thai border to spend the next few days in Vientiane.
Luang Prabang was very different to many of the other cities I have visited on my travels in the last two and a bit months, and I keep comparing it to Siem Reap, but I'd say that was only in it's look and feel rather than its overall atmosphere. I think in terms of its 'personality' it is probably closer to Kota Kinabalu or even Kuching where things were fairly moderately paced and it didn't seem like everyone there was in a hurry all of the time.
It was an enjoyable atmosphere to be in and I think that is a large part of the reason why it is such an attractive city for tourists to visit.
I was pleased with the hotel I'd chosen to, I haven't really said very much about it, but it was a good selection. It cost me $60 for three nights stay which is a very good price, and the man who ran the hotel was very accomodating, not just with me but all of the people staying there. I feel like because it was a guest house, the treatment was much more personable without being interfering. The place I stayed pretty much offered every service going and they seemed fairly reasonably priced which is also good. I can't say too much about other hotels in Laos because I've only stayed in the one, but I feel like this was a particularly good choice and although I'd liked to have stayed in a fancy hotel on the banks of the river, for the difference in price I'd much rather have stayed two streets away and been able to enjoy myself just as much.
I'd asked to have a taxi arranged to take me to the airport this morning, and after I packed my belongings I was joined by another person who was staying in the hotel who was going the same direction. My flight was at 1.05pm, but with it being domestic and there being only four gates in the airport there was no need to arrive the usual two hours ahead of schedule and once I'd checked into my flight I think it was about 12.25pm.
The airport itself was pretty quiet with only two or three flights scheduled for the afternoon. It was actually quite modern looking considering it's size, but you honestly wouldn't have known it was an airport had you just stumbled upon it because there was very little traffic on the road leading up to it, and the car park was almost empty. I'll have to check how many flights actually come into Luang Prabang on average.
My flight boarded relatively promptly, and this time rather than a Laos Airlines plane with propellers I was on-board quite a big vehicle considering that I was only travelling for about 35-40 minutes.
It was quite cool again in Luang Prabang this morning, and the decision to wear trousers helped me out as despite the plane being totally full of passengers it was freezing with the air conditioning being on.
Despite the length of the flight we got a drink and a snack, although I made the error of eating the snack without realising what it was and was terribly disappointed to find out that what I'd opened and put in my mouth were fruit flavoured crisps. I'm not a big lover of fruit as it is, and it just so happened that the 'crisp' I'd picked out happened to be pineapple which might be my least favourite amongst them all. Even the free water couldn't wash away the taste completely.
We landed at Vientiane Airport just before 2pm, and for some reason rather than the usual conveyor belt there was just a straight-lined cargo belt which looked more like it belonged in a supermarket (all it was missing was the till). Amazingly my bag was first to come off - I guess that's repayment for when I arrived in Laos when my bag was the last one to appear. There wasn't really much to the domestic section of the airport from what I could tell, and aside from a little convenience store there was just the desk where you could order a taxi from.
I usually read online about the prices of taxis before I arrive somewhere, just so I know how much to expect to pay. Sometimes it's better off to not take ones inside the airport as they tend to be the most expensive, but a lot of the time I've used them because it's better than having to haggle with a driver or even run the risk of being conned by a metered vehicle.
For some reason I had to pay $8, instead of the $7 I'd read about, for my taxi as apparently it was 'out of the city', but I didn't complain too much as it was actually only 61,000 Kip which isn't that much considering.
Bizarely I was sharing the taxi with someone else who was heading in a similar direction to me, and on the way to my hotel, him and the driver were having a good old chinwag in Chinese. It made me realise the little things I miss like conversations - not that I ever talk to taxi drivers, but it would be nice to have the option to if necessary. I feel like I'm very much at their mercy usually.
The driver indicated to me that I would be getting dropped of first as my hotel was only about fifteen minutes away from the airport, but when we pulled up at the Sisavath Villa in a dodgy looking backstreet, I was pretty convinced that this wasn't the right place. It looked to be a very quiet hotel with a pool and very dingily lit outside. I was pretty sure that maybe I hadn't looked at the photos clearly enough but a man came over to ask if I had a reservation, and when I showed him the email I'd received he said that I'd come to the wrong place.
I'd booked the Sisavath Hotel, not the Villa so the taxi driver had obviously been so busy with his conversation that he hadn't paid any attention when I showed him the address - perhaps if I spoke Chinese I'd have been able to clarify of this was correct.
The man in the Sisavath Villa was very helpful and said that my hotel was actually just a one minute around the corner which was extremely lucky indeed. Not really sure what I'd have done if I'd been in completely the wrong place or part of the city.
I walked around the corner and down the street towards a more familiar looking building which looked a lot more like the kind of hotel that I would have actually booked myself. Going up the stairs and into the reception I was glad to be here, but the receptionist put fear into me by not understanding who I was or that I had a reservation.
He called someone who could speak English, but after checking out my reservation email, even this second man didn't have any note of my booking. He asked me to write down my reservation number and from there he eventually managed to find me on the system. For a while I was pretty worried I was going to have to go back to the Sisivath Villa and see if they had any rooms to spare!!!
The hotel itself is fairly old looking with lots of wood everywhere, and dropping my bags off in my room it looked like even that was in need of a little refurbishment as instead of the usual air conditioning unit I had a switch which controlled it all on the wall. It wasn't a very promising start.
I tried to log on using the wifi, but couldn't get any connection what so ever which was odd because in the reception when I'd shown them my emails, the messages I'd received whilst on the plane popped up and I couldn't understand why it wasn't working.
I tried my laptop to see if that was any better, but couldn't get any connection on there, however the moment I stepped outside the door it connected perfectly which was very frustrating.
It may seem trivial but I rely quite heavily on the internet, not only for communication and writing this blog, but also for looking at maps to see where things are in the city, and I'd much prefer to do this from the comfort of my room rather than the hotel lobby so I went downstairs and asked if I could change room. The second room I went into was a little better, but the connection was still crawling. It's better than nothing I suppose.
This second room was a touch more modern, it looked as if the bathroom had been done up recently, and there was actually a normal air conditioning unit on the room - you know, the kind of one you associate with 2015.
The last couple of places I've stayed in both in Cambodia or Vietnam felt as though they were right at the heart of everything. Even though I wasn't quite in the middle of Luang Prabang, at least I was only a two minute walk away from both the river and the main city. Here it felt like I was staying in the middle of nowhere again, it's location reminded me of where I stayed in Yogyakarta or Cebu (my two least enjoyable experiences so far). Thankfully when I looked up a map to see where the hotel was, it was not actually that far away from the city itself, and I decided to go for a little walk in that direction to discover how far away from everything I was.
A picture on the back of the hotel pamphlet from the reception was the only thing that I'd managed to muster up as a map so I looked to see what was nearby that wouldn't take too long to walk to.
Often the most fun part of arriving in a new city is getting your bearings, but I wanted to make sure I was doing this in the light and not the pitch black.
Like Luang Prabang, the built up area of the Lao capital is located on the banks of the Mekong River, and leading to this is the main street where one of Vientiane's main sights is.
Made from concrete donated by the US, the Lao government created something called Victory Gate out of materials which were supposed to go into the refurbishment of the airport runway:
Known as the 'monster of concrete' it is vaguely similar to Paris' Arc de Triumphe and sits on the main road which leads towards the Mekong. It didn't look to be too far away from my hotel, and I figured I could probably navigate my way there without the use of the map so after confirming which direction I needed to be headed in with the guy behind reception, my job was soon made much easier by the presence of a sign which pointed me in the right direction.
Patuaxi as it is known locally is a vividly striking structure, and it caught my eye immediately as I walked around the corner and saw it. I saw the similarities with the Arc de Triumphe, but it looked a lot like something I might have seen in Angkor Wat.
There were a lot of people sitting around it as there were some benches and a fountain nearby. I walked underneath the gate to see if it was still open for walking up, but the shutter appeared to be pulled down on the entrance so I settled instead for just admiring the artwork on the roof:
One similarity that Patuaxi does share with the icon of the Parisian streets is that it is a road which everything seems to lead off. I remember being in Paris and walking up the Champs Elysée and it feeling like I was walking up towards something very royal and when I got there I didn't really have any idea that so many roads led off in different directions from it.
Here in Vientiane only a couple of roads lead off from Patuaxi but the main one appeared to be straight ahead as I could see a very important looking building heading down in that direction (I would later discover this was the Presidential Palace):
Even though I didn't want to do too much exploring and was starting to get very hungry (and still needed to get rid of the taste of fruit crisps out of my mouth) I decided to follow the road down to the Palace and hope that there may be the potential of some food in that direction. My vague skimming of the map also let me know this was the direction of the river and I presumed this was where the majority of the restaurants would be.
I continued walking down the road for about fifteen minutes past what looked to be a mall (tried looking for an entrance but it appeared to be completely closed) and a couple of huge banks before eventually I made the decision to go left at the palace and then right towards the river. I'd timed it well and thought that even if my stomach was beginning to fold in on itself because of a lack of food at least I would be looking at a beautiful sunset whilst starving.
Remember me mentioning the existence of buckets of water on the street the other day?
Well I discovered today that Lao New Year starts on Tuesday next week and along the beach there seemed to be a structure being set up to help people in the capital celebrate this. Just below there was a tremendous amount of sand being sculpted into things of various different shapes so I decided to walk down and take a look:
It was very much a work in progress as only two of three of the sculptures were finished but I figured they represented different parts of south-east Asia as I saw Borobudur (Indonesia), The Merlion (Singapore) and some elephants (Thailand). I wonder if I go back before I leave if they will have finished them all.
Vientiane seems a little busier than Luang Prabang, there are certainly more cars on the road but overall it still sticks to the conventions of Laos which is that it's still in its infancy as a tourist destination.
I hope to spend some more time discovering the city tomorrow.
Can't Speak French
Girls Aloud (2007)
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