Day 9 - Welcome to Laos

Woke up around 8 today to get some breakfast then take a cab to the airport at 9. Getting to the airport took about an hour and getting through airport security took about 3 minutes. It was seriously a joke, people walked through the metal detector with watches on and the metal detector would clearly go off but the guard still waved them through. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 12:30 and since security took no time we were at the gate two hours early. To make matters worse our flight got delayed another hour. The airline bought everyone free drinks to make up for it so that was nice. Once it was finally time to board we were bused out to a propeller plane! The plane was fairly small with only about 60 passengers. 

Nevertheless it was a short, smooth 1 hour flight. When we landed in Luang Prabang the weather was awesome! Really sunny and warm. We made our way through visa on arrival and customs and shared a cab with a girl from holland to get to our hostel. No shoes were allowed in the hostel so in order to enter you had to take them off and leave them at the front door. That was all fine and dandy but when they showed us the room there was a problem...

They booked us in a single bed! There weren't any double beds open for tonight either so it looks like we're sharing until tomorrow haha. Another weird thing was the shower in the bathroom was literally just a hose and drain next to the toilet, no walls, no tub, just a drain haha. 

Other than that the place was great! Haha

After getting settled we went out to explore the town and get some food. Luang Prabang is a much much smaller town than Hanoi (only like 2 miles long and a few blocks wide for the main area). This makes Luang Prabang much less hectic and more laid back (no one honking their horn every two seconds while driving like in Hanoi). We stumbled into a random retaurant off of the main strip. I ordered the Lao soup and beer Lao. 

The beer was grata and the soup was good. It tasted very peppery and I wasn't sure what all was in it but there were wood chips in it! I guess the use it to cook the soup? Also I'm pretty sure there was seaweed in it (I couldn't tell what it was but I know seaweed is a very popular Lao dish). After dinner we ventured farther down the main strip where they have the night market, basically what you'd expect - a million tents filled with people selling the crafts. It was very big and kinda cool, I think I'm going to buy some elephant pants tomorrow haha. We also stopped at one of the tour shops and booked an elephant riding and waterfall trip which will go all day tomorrow and should be really fun! To end the night we stopped at an ice cream place then made our way back to the hostel. On the way back we ended up running into one of the people we went on the cruise with in Ha Long Bay, talk about a small world!