South by Southeast: Exploring Luang Prabang

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Welcome back to Gadling’s series on backpacking in Southeast Asia, South by Southeast. As travelers, we have a tendency to overload our trips with adventure and movement. This is especially true in Southeast Asia – as I’ve discovered in Thailand and Laos, there’s no shortage of motorbikes to ride or zip lines to catch. But if you truly want to understand this part of the world, it’s not a vigorous itinerary you need. Instead, you need to spend a few days on foot, letting the pungent smells, vivid colors and urgent sounds of the Southeast soak into your subconscious. And there’s no better place for this to happen than Luang Prabang.

Located in the sleepy nation of Laos, Luang Prabang is truly a crown jewel of Southeast Asia. This former royal capital, atmospheric river port and UNESCO World Heritage Site has emerged in recent years as one of the region’s newest must-see destinations. It’s not the blockbuster sights that make Luang Prabang such a fantastic place to visit. It’s the simple act of walking and observing that becomes the focus of your stay: exploring fading French villas and evening handicraft markets, sampling the town’s fresh-baked baguettes or watching a procession of orange-robed monks silently march down the road.

This sensory overload is what makes Luang Prabang a must-see for any Southeast Asian traveler’s itinerary. Curious about visiting this underrated Laotian capital of French/Asian style, vivid color and Buddhist serenity? Let’s take a look at some of the essentials and highlights of any Luang Prabang visit. Keep reading below for more.

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Getting There
Luang Prabang is located smack-dab in the middle of Northern Laos, making it easy to reach from points North or South. Overland travelers from Thailand will often stop in the Laos border town of Huay Xai, where a two-day “slow boat” plies the Mekong River all the way to Luang Prabang. From within Laos, frequent buses connect Luang Prabang with the nation’s capital in Vientiane and backpacker hub of Vang Vieng. Luang Prabang’s airstrip is also served by a number of Southeast Asian regional airlines including Bangkok Airways and Lao Airlines.

What to Do
Due to its unique location at the confluence of two rivers, Luang Prabang has long been an important religious, political and economic hub. You’ll find the town reflects this historic grandeur, dotted with ornate Buddhist temples and lavish royal palaces. The main highlights include:

  • Wat Xieng Thong – in a city studded with important Buddhist “Wats,” Wat Xieng Thong is perhaps Luang Prabang’s most ornate and well-known temple complex.
  • Royal Palace – until they were deposed by the Lao Communist Revolution in 1975, the Lao royal family made its home in Luang Prabang. Visitors can tour the ornate royal complex, peering into the King and Queen’s teak-lined living quarters. Out back is a collection of vintage cars gifted by the French and American governments.
  • Night Market – as the sun begins to set each evening, Luang Prabang’s main street is crowded with an huge array of vendors, selling everything from grilled fish to locally made textiles to handicrafts.
  • Kuang Si Falls – about an hour’s ride outside Luang Prabang you’ll find an impressive series of waterfalls at Kuang Si, as well as a swimming area and a “Bear Rescue Center” for mistreated animals.

Keep in mind that “seeing the sights” of Luang Prabang is only half the story: the longer I spent wandering this picturesque river peninsula, the more I enjoyed simply soaking in the town’s unique atmosphere. Make sure to leave some time to simply explore without purpose.

Where to Stay
There are accommodation options in Luang Prabang to suit just about any budget and lifestyle, from luxurious boutique resorts housed in ancient French villas to clean no-frills backpacker haunts. For those on the thrifty side, you’ll find plenty of simple and clean guesthouses (under $10/night) clustered around Sisavong Street near the Joma Bakery. Those looking to splurge should check out 3 Nagas, a beautiful mansion nestled in the heart of Luang Prabang’s historic district (rates start at $125/night).

Gadling writer Jeremy Kressmann is spending the next few months in Southeast Asia. You can read other posts on his adventures “South by Southeast” HERE.

East of Africa: City of the Thousand

by Stephen Greenwood on

In Antananarivo, the French colonial influence is everywhere: spired churches sit atop the city’s prominent hills. Pretty jacaranda trees line Lake Anosy, which wraps around a war memorial statue in the center of the water.

A large defunct train station sits negelected at the end of a wide boulevard. The sign below the grand clock spells the city’s old French name: “Tananarive”. Horse-drawn carriages and 1960’s Renault and Citroën taxis jam the stone-covered roads, with crackling radios blaring out a french news broadcast.

In this sense, Antananarivo feels like a fractured, soiled apparition of Paris.

But unlike most of the capital cities in Southern Africa, Tana was already a major city before colonization. Around 1625, King Andrianjaka conquered the twelve sacred hills of the city and established it as the capital. He named the city Antananarivo, “City of the Thousand”, because of the thousand guards that were kept to watch over the new establishment.

After the French captured the city in 1895, they remodeled many parts of it to host the growing population and improve transportation for trade and manufacturing. The population of Tana expanded from 100,000 to 175,000 by 1950, which has since exploded to a staggering 1.4 million people after independence in 1960.

The surge in growth, an unstable government, and a struggling niche economy has left many on the streets.There’s undoubtedly a strange beauty and exoticism possessed by the city, but also an almost equally dark and heavy atmosphere in the streets.

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Mothers with small babies wrapped on their backs come and walk alongside me for several street blocks, holding out their hands and saying in a hushed, raspy voice: “le medecin pour le bebe, s’il vous plait”. Their requests need no translation, but I’m rarely able to justify the act of handing out money on the streets in a foreign country.

Local people refer to the beggars as the “quatre-mis” or “kat-mis” for short. In post-revolutionary France, society was broken into three estates, with the poorest being in the third estate. The Malagasy slang term evolved out of the connotation that the beggars were below even the poorest of the third class. The forgotten ones. Useless to society. The lowest of the low.

I finally find that the only way to halt their pursuit is by stopping, and looking at them eye to eye, and regretfully shaking my head. It’s easy to keep walking and pretend to ignore the quatre-mis, and just as easy for them to keep following and keep begging. In that sudden moment of acknowledgement, there’s suddenly nothing left to say – nowhere left to go. We are two antithetical souls staring at one another on a busy sidewalk.

The mother turns around and walks away. I stand in the same spot, waching as the baby on her back bobs up and down with every step. The lump in my throat lodges a little deeper.

I decide to walk up a network of small streets to see the Rova – the Queen’s palace. A young man who claims to be a college student approaches me and says that he’ll show me the way, which I know will end with me handing over a couple thousand ariary (a few dollars) for his guidance. He’s pretty knowledgeable, and I have no problem with paying in exchange for historical information, so I walk with him through the neighborhood.

He tells me about the fire in the Rova, the mixed up political situation, and the riots that took place this past February. When I press him about his studies, he admits that he’s not yet a student but is saving up, and giving impromptu tours to help fund his dreams.

On the way back to the hotel, I deliberately take as many side streets and small alleyways as possible. I pass a group of boys playing on a half broken fooseball table, and practice a few more words of French.

Ahead, a busy Sunday market is closing for the day, and vendors package up scores of textiles, shoes, and cheap Chinese electronics. A large taxi-brousse fills its rows with as many people as possible, for the last ride of the day.

Eventually, I find my way back to familiar streets just in time for another Tana sunset, and take a moment to look out over the twelve sacred hills now painted in an orange glow. It may have started as the city of the thousand, but it’s now the city of a million; with requisite scars to bear from such growth.

East of Africa: Arrival

by Stephen Greenwood on

Adriaan and I are barreling down a small cobblestone street in a dusty 4×4. Several people narrowly miss the car’s bull bars as they dash across the road, yet hardly flinch when we brush past them. I look out into the mass of people; skin tones are a mix of brown and black. Moderately well dressed people walk next to beggars with torn shirts.

The market we’re passing feels as crowded and energetic as those that I left behind in Hong Kong 48 hours ago, except there are far fewer neon lights and far more visible indications of poverty.

I hang my arm out of the window; the air is noticeably chilly and thin. I mention this to Adriaan and he explains that Antananarivo sits at roughly 4,200 ft above sea level in Madagascar’s central highlands – not quite the hot, dry, barren desert I had somehow pictured.Adriaan is the co-founder of an enterprise called ToughStuff, a company that manufactures solar panels & LED lamps for people in developing nations. He speaks with an air of sincerity and conviction about the company, and tells me that he’s spent over 15 years working in Africa with various organizations, but this is by far the most exciting project he’s seen.

The excitement is infectious, and I realize that I have an interesting twelve days ahead of me as I document and gather promotional material for their launch.

He justifies why Madagascar is an appropriate location to begin ToughStuff’s rollout: it’s the fifteenth poorest country in the world, two thirds of the population live below the international poverty line, and some areas of the 226,597 sq mile island are so remote that they won’t be linked to the electricity grid until 2040 or 2050. I try to take all of this in as we approach the center of Antananarivo.

We pull into view of the tallest hill in the city, where the Queen’s Palace is perched high above the congested streets. Its inescapable presence on the hill feels like a permanent reminder to the masses of their lowly place in the world. The unattainable.

Ironically enough, the palace was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1995. Work has since been done in an effort to reconstruct the building, but today it’s still mostly a hollow stone shell. A grand work in progress; an appropriate symbol for a country undergoing so much political turmoil in recent years.

Beneath the palace, large letters hang onto the hillside in a strange attempt to mimic the famous Hollywood sign. A-N-T-A-N-A-N-A-R-I-V-O. An-tana-na-rivo. It’s an intimidating word if you don’t break it down. Adriaan tells me that most of the locals refer to it simply as “Tana”, but warns me that I’ll encounter plenty of trouble pronouncing other town names and people’s last names.

We exit the car on a main street in the hills of the city. My ears are filled with a buzz of strange language and commotion. Vendors anxious to sell me things call out a word I haven’t heard before. “Vazaa! Vazaa!” they call out.

Adriaan tells me that it will be my new name for the next two weeks; foreigner. After getting my attention, they begin speaking quickly in French – which immediately tests the boundaries of the 8am French courses I took in college.

I stumble through a few botched sentences, and they transition into broken English. We end up meeting somewhere in the middle, as my brain begins to recall the daunting conjugations, precious masculine and feminine assignments, and proper syntax.

It becomes clear that it’s possible to get by with English in Tana, but it certainly helps to know a bit of French if you’re going out on your own.

We make it to a hotel near the center of town called the Radama, named after the first King of Madagascar. It’s a clean, quiet place with a surprisingly reliable wireless internet connection and a hospitable staff.

The room I’m given has a balcony, and I spend a few moments staring out over the city as the sun begins its descent for the evening. It’s a beautiful scene, and I soak it up; anxious to scrub off the last traces of Hong Kong smog to make space for the red dirt of Madagascar.

Follow the East of Africa series, all throughout this month – here. If you missed the introduction to this series, check it out here.

Madagascar: East of Africa

by Stephen Greenwood on

I have this habit of never preparing adequately for trips. The tickets get booked, the bags get packed at the last moment, and I suddenly find myself about to touch down in a foreign place.

When I found out I was going to Madagascar for work, I did some brief Wikipedia and Wikitravel skimming: fourth largest island in the world…lots of plants and animals…used to be a French colony…etc…etc…but I really had no idea what to expect.

I hadn’t seen the famous animated movie, my French was mediocre at best, and I knew very little about the history of the country.A year prior I spent five months in Tanzania and one month going overland from Mombasa to Cape Town, and figured it couldn’t be that different…right? The shortest distance between the shore of Madagascar and Eastern Coast of Africa is just 250 miles. As far as I was concerned, it was practically still East Africa.

The plane touched down, and I stepped onto the tarmac. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was wrong, again. Madagascar was not East Africa. It was East of Africa.

In the first few days on the island, a lot of things surprised me. I hadn’t realized that the population was so racially diverse and had assumed that the majority of people would be African because of proximity. But the land was first colonized by Austronesian people, (think Borneo, Malaysia, Indonesia) which has allowed Madagascar to develop an intriguing blend of language, skin tones, culture, and practices.

Another surprise was the apparent lack of tourists in the country’s capital, Antananarivo. The political unrest at the beginning of this year has put a big damper on the tourism industry; which survives because of Madagascar’s ecological attractions, animal life, and large national parks. And while a safari is a good reason to make the voyage out to Madagascar – it’s certainly not the only thing that the country has to offer.

I quickly came to appreciate the hospitality and sincerity of Malagasy people, the simplicity of the local food, the remarkably beautiful landscape, and the shreds of French charm scattered from the colonial period. On the contrary, I struggled to comprehend the strong presence of beggars in Antananarivo, the intricacies of the political disarray, and the reported corruption in business in the country.

Of course, there are things that Madagascar has in common with the African nations 250 miles to the West, but it’s clearly a place that has had a unique development, and will have a distinctive future.

For the rest of this month on Gadling, I’ll be sharing my observations from Madagascar through writing, photos, audio clips, and video. From the capital of Antananarivo to the southern coastal town of Toliara and back, I’ll be bringing you stories from the road, the beaten path, and everywhere in between. Tonga soa… welcome to Madagascar.

Starting this week, Gadling will be bringing you stories, photos, audio and video from the fourth largest island in the world: Madagascar. Check out all the posts in this series by following along here.

Gadlinks for Monday 7.13.09

by Brenda Yun on


Well, it’s Monday, and it’s back to the grind for most of us. I, however, am down with the flu and am writing this from bed. I hope the rest of you are having a more healthy day. Here are the latest travel stories from the world wide web.

‘Til tomorrow, have a great evening.

More Gadlinks HERE.