Lao: Luang Prabang, a serene town on the verge of being submerged by mass tourism

Taking the traditional train in Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang was quite an experience.

We arrived by Tuk Tuk at Vang Vieng's train station, a vast building looking like a red and white temple, with an immense waiting area.

The train station is part of the new railway line called the Lao China Railway that goes from Vientiane to Boten, a city at the border with China.

Mostly financed by the People's Republic of China, it should allow massive tourism from China to flow into Lao, which is probably beneficial to both countries, but will definitely change Lao. We are glad to discover it before it is changed too much by mass tourism.

The Lao China Railway is also supposed to be extended to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in the coming years with the goal of creating a direct rail link between Kunming, the capital of Yunnan's province in China, and Singapore, reducing weeks of travel by car to mere days by train with a cheap fare.

As we were boarding the train we noticed that, for some reason, all the people that were boarding at Vang Vieng were in the same 2 cars. They may have decided to put all the tourists together instead of mixing them up with the rest of the Chinese/Lao 😜

Obviously, the boarding process was a mess as people were not seated on the right seats and luggage space was scarce compared to the amount of luggage people were bringing with them. Our seats were not the most comfortable as they were benches covered with fabric, and not actual seats, but it was ok for a 1h30 trip.

We passed a lot of tunnels and some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes we had seen. It was a pity we could not stop the train for a selfie 🤳.

Once in Luang Prabang, we got out to a beautiful train station, very similar to the one in Vang Vieng, but with a curvy roof. Because those brand new LCR stations were built very far from the city centers (which was also the case in Vientiane and Vang Vieng), it developed a new transportation market for the locals. Indeed, outside the train station, there were a lot of 12-seaters minivans (white with a blue and red line across) waiting to take us to our hotels, for 35k LAK each. Very convenient!

The city of Luang Prabang is very charming with mostly very low buildings and a huge number of temples, located around a hill and surrounded by two rivers, the Mekong and the Nam Khan river.

Fun fact: why is the Mekong so famous? Because it crosses several of the south East Asian countries: China, Lao, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. And plays an important role for those countries (we recommend the documentary "Mekong River with Sue Perkins" on Netflix. Absolutely funny and educational!). And those countries have awesome food that have popularized the name Mekong. I am sure you know a restaurant with the name Mekong in it 😉

As we were visiting the city, we found out that a bamboo bridge is built every year over the Nam Khan river for only 6 months and then dismantled as it would be destroyed by the strong currents during the rainy season.

Continuing the tour of the city, we visited Wat Xieng Thong, a royal Buddhist temple whose name is the former name of Luang Prabang, where kings have been crowned since the 16th century. There were several very beautiful temples in the site, with a lot of fresques done with golden paint, and mosaiques representing life of the Lao at the time.

Close to there, you have, every morning, the ceremony of the Tak Bat, the alms ceremony. This is a ceremony just before dawn, where young monks (in groups of 10) collect morning alms from local Buddhists. I missed it the first time but caught it the second time - it was such a silent and peaceful ceremony where we could see the monks in their traditional orange clothes just walking swiftly, taking the alms and continuing, sometimes stopping to give the poor some of their earnings.

The monks roaming the town were coming from all the dozens of beautiful Buddhist temples around town, including That Chomsi.

That Chomsi is located on top of Phousi Hill, which has a great bird's-eye view of the city and its surroundings but we needed to climb a little bit more than 100 steps (felt like 300 steps after having climbed to the Nam Xay viewpoint in Vang Vieng 😫)

Another temple to see, but not an active one, the Haw Pha Bang is part of the Luang Prabang museum site and can be seen from the street despite being surrounded by walls. And you can have an even better view from across the street.

To relax, we went for a boat ride on the Mekong to see the sunset. We took the Sa Sa Sunset boat for 150k LAK/pax.

On the boat, we learnt a Lao tradition to release fish and little notes on banana leaves where you write a wish. Though entertaining, it was a little bit cruel that the fish had been caught only for the purpose of being released by tourists from the height of 3m.

One of the major attractions to do in LP is the Night market. It is certainly one of the widest in Asia with an open air food court offering a lot of yummy meals and snacks. I loved the fish shaped cake with pandan leaf filling. I ate 3! 🎏😋

On the way to the Luang Prabang airport, we say goodbye to the tranquil country of Lao, where the mountains are beautiful and serenity and calm reign, but where, curiously, night markets are enormous, busy and loud. The country and its people are still authentic, but mass tourism is already starting to corrupt this gentle way of life.