Our last day in Vietnam starts off with another delicious, fruit filled breakfast buffet, where I once again fill my plate up with an assortment of dragon fruit, passion fruit, mango, and melon. We get our coffees, finish up eating, then go back to the room to pack up all of our bags for our flight over to Luang Prabang, Laos.
We went back down to reception, checked out, and hopped in our ride to go over to the airport. After a pretty unremarkable journey through the airport, which for airpoets is usually a good thing, we get to our terminal and wait for the plane to board while I go on the hunt for a cold drink and a snack. After settling on and eating my sandwhich, we het on the shortest international flight I’ve been on. Just over an hour after taking off, we are touching back down in a much smaller airport with much hotter temperatures.
Immigration process in Luang Prabang is a little conolicated and slow, but we got through it regardless and meet our driver who takes us out of the airport and over to our hotel. The hotel isn’t one building, but around 20 little cabins that have a decent amount of space, a large wetroom, complimentary drinks, and some amazing AC. Once we’re checked in, we toss our bags down and head out to get some Lao Kip (their currency), as well as a new pair of shades and hat for myself. One trip to the bank later, and we’re off roaming around the main street in Luang Prabang.
The town isn’t that large of a place, with a population of around 50k people and very few buildings passing a couple stories. The downtown street is full of small stores, cafés, restaurants and temples, having a much more cozy atmosphere than something like Hanoi. The roads are still dominated by motorbikes above cars, but with much less chaotic traffic and horns being honked, though both can still occur on occasion.
We made a reservation at a local restaurant to grab a bite at shortly while we kill some time browsing the main street in Luang Prabang. We stop by a bar for a drink, as my dad tries the signature beer of Laos and I continue to fully utilize the fruit options with a smoothie.
After some time passes, we make the short commute from the bar we were at to the restaurant we reserved seats at. The restaurant is called Tamarind, and has set meals designed to introduce many common Laos flavours and foods in one meal. They also do a good job of explaining some Lao etiquette and the foods that they serve. We both ordered one of their signautre drinks to start. I got a Jujube drink, while my dad ordered the Tamarind drink, which came with some very good bamboo chips.
The set meals we ordered started with a hearty bitter green soup, which was actually pretty good, followed by a platter containing sausage, sesame seaweed, buffalo jerky, Jeow Bong (Lao chili paste), and two dips. We also got a large amount of sticky rice, lemongrass skewered chicken, papaya salad, and banana leaf wrapped fish. The soup alone was filling, so all in all, it was a ton of food to get through. Basically all of the food was good, with the dips and chili paste adding a ton of flavour
Despite already being full, we failed to notice the set meal also includes dessert, which I’m not about to skip out on. So after downing my portion of banana, mango, dragon fruit, and sweet sticky rice, we finally pay for the meal and walk back to the hotel for the night.
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