Luang Prabang
02/12/2026 - 02/21/2026
We had a pretty decent travel day from Cambodia to Laos. We arrived to the airport earlier than needed, and our flight was delayed, so we spent a bit more time sitting around the airport than we would have liked, but no big deal. It was an easy non-stop flight and our Air BnB host picked us up once we arrived in Luang Prabang, so the transfer was nice and easy.
We spent 8 days in Luang Prabang, which is a really cute town with a population of about 57,000. It is a UNESCO World Heritage City known for its traditional Lao wooden architecture and French colonial villas. Parts of town literally feel like you have been transported to a 19th century town in France (except for all the scooters!). The town sits where the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers meet and the sunsets over the Mekong were really pretty! It was the was the ancient royal capitol from 1353-1545, and it is the country's spiritual center.
Because it is the spiritual center of the country, there are A LOT of temples. And therefore A LOT of monks! The town is a major center for Buddhist learning, so we saw monks wandering all over town (or “running a monk” as we liked to call it!). There were some that were REALLY young. We learned that they were often orphans.
We actually stayed right next to a temple. It was cool in a lot of ways because we got to see the monks going about their day to day life. It was not cool because they get up at 4am every day and are awakened by a drum. And therefore, so were we!
We also did a “Monk Tour”… it was more of a chat where we got to ask all the questions we wanted and learn more about their lives and the rules and restrictions. It was very interesting. Unfortunately, we came up with at least twice as many questions later when we had no one but google to consult for the answers.
One morning we got up at about 5am to go out and watch morning alms. Morning Alms is a centuries-old, daily Theravada Buddhist tradition in Laos and Thailand where monks and novices walk in a silent, barefoot procession to receive food offerings. It occurs every day before the sun rises. Since monks have no source of income, they rely on the generosity of strangers for their food. Hundreds of monks walk through the streets of town collecting food for the day which they can only eat until noon. They fast the rest of the day. It’s sort of like trick or treating! It was actually pretty cool to see!
We spent one day just walking throughout the town and stopping in a handful of the many temples. There are over 30 of them in the tiny historic downtown which is only about a half mile long and just a quarter of a mile wide.
We climbed about 350 stairs to see the temple on Mount Phousi (also known as "Sacred Hill") which is a 100-meter-high hill and religious site located in the heart of the old town. It serves as both a spiritual centerpiece and a gorgeous viewpoint. The hill is crowned by the gilded Wat Chom Si stupa, a 24-meter-high structure built in 1804 that is visible from across the city.
For Valentines Day we had a romantic date at Bistro 1960 in the MyBanLao Hotel which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and notable for its unique history, having served as the CIA Headquarters during the "secret war" of the 1960s (more on that later).
We went on a fantastic food tour with a group of about 8 people, all of whom were really enjoyable to talk to. It was such a fun afternoon/evening! One of the stops was at a restaurant that Obama had visited. We love us some Obama!! 😊 We saw how palm juice is made at a roadside stand. We didn’t really like it… I think it would have been good with some ice and rum though! And we went to the night market where Grady was coerced into eating a fried silk worm! There were a lot of other stops as well… the food is featured in the “Culinary Delights” section.
A couple of the guys on the food tour recommended a sunset cruise they had done, so we did that same cruise a few nights later. We have done plenty of sunset cruises, but this one was really nice – first of all, it was cheap (about $15/person) and included some nice snacks and one drink in the price (and, of course we could purchase additional food and drinks - very important).
In addition to the beautiful sunset, there were a few little “activities” throughout the evening to break up the time. A really sweet girl came around to tie little bracelets on you (for good luck or good health or something like that) – similar to the ones a monk had tied on us a few days prior at a temple. It’s apparently a thing in Laos. Then they came around with little pieces of some kind of leaf that we were to write our wishes and burdens on. They had two enormous tanks on the second deck – one had fish in it and was lit with changing colored lights that our “wishes” went into and a second that our burdens went into that had been wadded together with rocks. Toward the end of the trip, they dumped both into the river. Apparently our wishes are swimming free and being answered and our burdens sunk to the bottom of the Mekong and will no longer burden us… we’ll see.
One of the most sobering/saddest stops we made was to the UXO museum. It was a tiny museum where we learned about the bombing and unexploded ordnances of Laos.
Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history, with over 2 million tons of ordnance dropped by the U.S. between 1964 and 1973. To put this into perspective, that is a plane load of munitions every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for NINE straight years!! This "secret war" aimed to sever North Vietnamese supply lines (the Ho Chi Minh Trail) and prevent the spread of communism. The campaign was largely conducted by the CIA and was covert, because Laos was officially neutral. Let that sink in… we were bombing completely innocent, extremely poor people in a neutral country non-stop for nine years!
An estimated 80 million submunitions failed to detonate, leaving millions of dangerous cluster munitions that continue to cause casualties today. We read a lot of information and watched videos of interviews with children who have been severely injured due to our bombs exploding on them. It was pretty heartbreaking.
UXO Lao is attempting to destroy them… since 1996 they have destroyed just over 2 million unexploded ordnance (UXO) items - out of 80 (EIGHTY) million. Can someone help me understand why the American government isn’t providing some assistance in this monumental task?!?!
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