Luang Prabang!

Ok, Jin just yelled at me for posting too long, and blocking out all the pictures she just posted below! Please check page 2, they are pretty cool, and basically recap the end of our stay in China.
We got to Luang Prabang on the night of the 1st, and caught a small Tuk Tuk(motorcycle with a small truck bed on the back) to the main street. We arrived at about 8pm, and were so happy to finally be somewhere, besides on a bus! The city is more like a country town, until you get to the main street on the peninsula. The peninsula of Luang Prabang lies between the Mekong River, and another River and the entire thing is protected as a UNESCO world Heritage site. It so so beautiful here, and the main street is closed down to cars and features a market in the center of the road about 3 blocks long from 5pm until 10 every night. We walked down the main street through the market, and looked for the cheap hostels listed in the LP(lonely planet.) The only ones we found weren't that nice, and fairly unimpressive, and nearly double the cost of that listed in the LP.... listed at 30,000kip per room, actually 5o,000. Luckily, we found an awesome little hotel in the middle of the main street shopping area. Our room is ultra clean, very cool, super quiet, and seemingly rather secure. The owner is really nice, and we were able to score the room for 50,000 kip a night, or about $6.25! A bit more than we had been paying in China, but a lot nicer! Plus, our room, although not underground has the feel of a basement, with two eternally running vent fans pointing outside, glass bricks for windows, and a super powerful oscillating fan pointed straight at our bed! Not too bad!
Luang Prabang is amazing. The city is so quiet and beautiful. There is zero hustle and bustle here, and it feels like Hawaii 70 years ago(or probably thailand around that time.) There is backpackers and travellers from all over the world everywhere, and everyone is just chilling on "Lao time." The night market is beautiful, and has awesome tshirts, silly Lao basketball jerseys, baggy long hippy shorts and pants made of cool ethnic home made fabrics, tons of wood stuff, crystals, fruit smoothies, silver items, womens clothing, and all kinds of other handmade nick nacks and souvenirs! The restaurants here have amazing Lao food, Thai food, Indian food, French food(Lao was a french colony), and general western food! Everything is between 8000 to 60,000 Kip, or 1 to 8 US dollars(exchange rate is 1 dollar to 8200kip)! t shirts are 25000 kip, a pound of mangos is 6000 Kip(best mangos since hawaii!)
The town is sooo chill, no hurry at all, nada. There are amazing cafes with awesome coffee, with small tables and comfy chairs under amazing trees covered in fruit! The rivers are on both sides of the peninsula, making the area about 20 blocks long by about 3 blocks wide. We are right in the middle. Everyone is chilling, and there is basically nothing to do, but wander around, eat, drink, sit by the river, drink coffee, rent bicycles, go to the Wat(temples), the small museums, or take a tuk tuk to the waterfalls outside of town.
We did basically nothing on our first full day here. We just sat around and drank coffee, ate bagels(YESSS!), looked at books at the book exchange, walked to the river, and were just happy to not be on a bus! Today, monday, we awoke and ate more bagels(my idea!), drank more coffee(my idea again!), then went to the town market, which is very strange, and then the Royal Palace, which is now turned in to a museum. The Phosy market, is part flea market, part fruit stand, butcher, vegetable market, part fake stuff market, with a lot of cell phones, home items, plastic stuff and other things mixed in. Basically a Lao walmart. Not a whole lot of great stuff was there, but we did get some more great mangos(yes!), some laundry detergent to wash our clothes in the sink, some water buffalo jerky, and a really silly fake Casio watch with a hilarious multicolored light show for a light! The watch was the highlight for me. It is literally the exact watch I wore from when i was 7 to 12 years old, the old school black plastic casio with the day, date and time listed on it, but the light, instead of the normal white or yellow, flashes from green to red to blue.... basically like a Phish concert! So i'm happy! Plus it took the place of my much more hip looking 3dollar Chinese watch that broke in 2 weeks!
After the light show, i mean market, me and Jin hopped the Tuk Tuk back to our hood, and went to the Royal Palace Museum which is right across from our hostel. The palace is amazing, and the perfect example of Lao style. Very subdued, beautiful and chill, but with lots of taste! The first room had amazing murals all over the wall, all the way around the large 10mx6m room and up to the 5m tall ceilings, all pictures of Lao life in the 1930s but in a Van Gogh sorta style... Super cool!
The rest of the museum had a cool throne, a ton of 1000 plus year old buddhas collected by the king, some old buddhist artwork, really chill art deco furniture, and some amazing Japanese Glass mosaics covering the wall of another even more giant room. The Dichromatic glass depicted life in Lao and was really cool, and totally covered the huge throne room walls! We got to see the king and queens seperate bedrooms, and the rest of the palace too, including some more cool crystals, swords, artwork, and gifts given to the king and queens from countries all around the world! The highlight of the gifts for me was a Lao flag that was taken to the moon aboard Apollo 11, and some tiny moon rocks given to the king of Lao by the US govt. Another cool item was the silver box given to Lao by JFK and dated February of 1963. After the palace, we were starving, so we came to a local restaurant with free WiFi and got some awesome Thai soups, and Pad Se Ew(which is totally different than the ones I eat back home.) I've now typed a novel, and if anyone is still reading, Thank You for your stamina and undying interest! Jin also finally got to post all the pics she has been editing from our trip to China, and which I have now buried on page 3! She is great though, and I super appreciate all her tireless picture editing to preserve our trip online through this blog! The net here is very slow, and this cafe(one of the many in town that offers free wifi), totally empty at our 4pm dinner, has the fastest internet of any internet cafe in town....
Ok, i'm off to happy hour with Jin, she has almost finished reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe while I have written this, and we better pay and get out, before this restaurant kicks us out! Love to everyone, and check out the pics on the next few pages!