We Didn’t Know This About Laos - FIRST IMPRESSIONS of Luang Prabang
this video is brought to you by Squarespace this is a lovely market it feels like we walked back in time right it's a very very local really down to earth kind of market the vendor's selling everything on the floor it's also very seasonal vegetables as well you see the fresh bamboo shoots so so so good I think those are uh dry rats and squirrels over there oh my God I can see the tail oh my goodness this is a super local market alright is that eel yeah eel and turtle mhm oh my God eels freak me out and I think that looks like is that a comb like a wasp comb or honeycomb or something well I've never seen this before how much this one 20,000 Kip we bought some oranges from the market the other day and they're so sweet I'm sure this will be sweet too nice very yummy oh wow we should get another bottle it tastes exactly like he just squeezed it into the bottle yeah and they didn't add salt in Thailand they would add salt but this tastes very natural so we are now at the morning market here in Luang Prabang we got here like a week ago we took a train straight from Kunming and Flora is finally feeling back to normal again a little bit yeah so when I first got here I was still quite sick and not from the altitude sickness anymore that I had in Shangri-la but I still had breathing problems so I went to the clinic and I have acute bronchitis a cute one a cute one though yeah yeah but you're still recovering still recovering and to be honest the pollution here isn't really helping yeah it's quite polluted it's like burning season in Luang Prabang just like how it is in Northern Thailand yeah oh this looks good I was going to say I love your outfit today thank you I got this at the night market yesterday for 60,000 Kip and I see this everywhere and it looks so simple but elegant you look like you're from here you fit right in yeah you have to say "sabai dee" so this market has kind of a mix between fresh produce some meats some cooked food stalls but mostly I find that there's quite a lot of little snack stalls and dried fruit dried vegetable herbs but there's a lot of restaurants like sit down restaurants serving local breakfast food like rice soup and different types of noodles as well it's a very calm morning market maybe we missed the rush maybe it was way busier earlier in the day when they started at was it 5:30am that they start yeah yeah 5am to 11am we're already around like 8am something so maybe this is the end of it oh maybe one of this for your hair babe it would fit your outfit so you can pay in Thai Baht or LaKip how does this one work so I go like this no that one doesn't look good yeah how do I say I have too much hair she said she cannot do it for other people but when she does it it for herself it works see so you wrap oh oh so you have to like turn it you have to wrap it around it it's too hard for me I have really thick hair wow the way that she just did it it was really nice but I'lI have trouble doing that I use my lazy claw clip instead let's go find a spot so we can eat all the stuff that we bought okay yeah she said we can eat here oh okay cool we can order coffee you see all these pastries like croissant chocolate croissant almond croissant we see them all over Luang Prabang but it's because it used to be a French colony for a while right so there's some of that influence still around and it's delicious yeah the bread the baguette too it's so good I feel like we other than the meat we basically bought desserts that was quick isn't it kind of funny how when we first got here and then when we started saying thank you you felt awkward mhm cuz if you said "khop jai" in Thai it means like thanks like not a real thanks yeah not genuine cuz in Thai we say "khop khun krap" but here you say "khop jai" or "khop jai lai" yeah that's thank you very much or "khop jai der" mhm this coffee shop is not the popular one majority of the people go to the other the other coffee shop cuz next door I think people go there to eat batonggo like deep fried donuts we'll try it another day we already have too many snacks going on but this coffee is really nice okay let's try this I'm curious about this one try it this is a tapioca with coconut flakes it's probably sweet too it's not too sweet it's nice and chewy not as much taste as I was expecting it's a very mild taste maybe it will go well with the pork it goes well with the coffee that's good really mhm how yummy that's delicious those are birds so you release them for good luck and stuff yeah so you release the birds and then they go catch them and then they sell them again yeah not my thing is it good I think it's fermented pork is it oh my this is fermented pork right the herbs tastes really nice but I don't like fermented pork that's strong that's so sour sour and salty and so fermented oh I cannot do that one I have to chase it um well the good thing is this place also sells really delicious looking food so maybe we can pick something okay look what we got our "khai luak" which is half boiled egg and we always love this for breakfast I think we fell in love with it in Malaysia yeah oh so good you put like a little bit of pepper a little bit of Maggi in there mix it up drink it but in Malaysia we would have kaya toast so we can dip it that really makes me miss Malaysian breakfast that's good that's delicious and yummy real quick once again thank you to our longtime partner Squarespace for supporting our travels and for being the most user-friendly and intuitive platform out there for building websites whether you plan on selling physical products digital content or services Squarespace has all the tools you need to start selling online they have really simplified the design tools so it's easy for you to customize your website to suit your brand what's also handy is the Squarespace app where you can manage your business on the go just head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com/floraandnote to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain now let's get back to the video ready to explore Luang Prabang yeah let's go so we're just driving through the main part of town now where are you taking us I'm taking you to one of the most beautiful temples here called Wat Xieng Thong there are a few temples around town maybe about 30 but this one is special it's the oldest and it's also the most important one right at the gate he said okay do you call those tuktuks as well yeah I think so it looks like the old school tuktuk yeah it looks really cool actually we're here one more thing that local people have been telling me about motorbikes here is that you always have to lock it when you park on the street like not just lock this yeah not just lock the handle but also lock the wheel because there's a lot of bike theft in town because we're bordering two countries Thailand and China so there's a lot of stolen vehicles around here like every night when we go back we actually put the bike at the rental shop and then they close the gates and put the bikes away cuz they were like don't put it in front of your hotel if it's on the side of the road wow I like how open it is and it's not that busy that's such a typical Laos temple isn't it you see how it's sloped like that the roof yeah is different from Thai temples yeah does it mean something what was it Wat Xieng Thong Xieng Thong used to be the name of Luang Prabang in the old days they call this town Xieng Thong they changed the name because they got this "prabang" which is the Buddha statue and they put it somewhere in this Temple and then they change the name to Luang Prabang wow actually very beautiful yeah I've never gone into this before you know what's interesting he's holding a sticky rice oh he is you think it's like like the alms giving in the morning like the offering the yeah the people offer the sticky rice to the monks I've never seen that me too so Wat Xieng Thong has a very long history in Luang Prabang it was built in the 16th century and it is one of the most important temples in this area even kings were coronated at this temple many years ago all the like special events were held at the temple for Luang Prabang and I think it's the location because people who used to come from the river almost like enter Luang Prabang through this Temple I was just thinking that we've been to so many temples especially in Thailand and some are so grand you know the ones in Bangkok that when you walk in you're like oh my goodness all this shiny stuff you know the gold the Buddha everything but there's something about this Temple here and the temples in Laos that feel very humble and it's feels very used and respected by local people and even the the decor here you see it's just gold painted on this black and red wall but it's depicting stories of the local people people walking around doing their work so it's quite an interesting temple that feels like the temple of the people I have a challenge for you mhm can you read a full name of this Temple I can't even read it it sounds like a chant can you read this is this is this Thai or Lao or it's Lao I can't read it I can read this is oh I guess I can and that was exactly not what I said I surprised myself so we're now at the main street here in Luang Prabang and it's kind of what makes this place a UNESCO heritage site is because of these buildings you can tell that it's traditional Laos architecture mixed with the colonial era like the French architecture and they doing a good job preserving them mhm there's lots of little cafes little restaurants the only thing that really sticks out that feels like it doesn't belong is this Mini-So here but everything else is like a ones shop thing a restaurant not like a franchise small shops selling clothes and souvenirs and at night this street uh part of it is closed for the night market mhm and you can get a lot of local souvenirs um shirts like mine or elephant pants that I just got they do kind of sell similar things though like we walked down the whole night market and it's a lot of fruit shakes a lot of the clothing and a lot of elephant pants and elephant bags and stuff still a nice way to spend the evening because it is a quiet town and there's not too much going on other than enjoy the night market and grab a drink at one of these nice restaurants I think that's the charm of Luang Prabang mhm living the slow life yeah just go cafe hopping trying different local food it's just a chill place I think we should go to one of the cafes and just uh soak up the AC and maybe get some nice baguette or something I'm excited even though it's just a simple ham baguette sandwich but it's so delicious it is the bread is nice and warm and fresh oh what this yeah I ordered um yogurt bowl Farmers yogurt with fruits and muesli because I'm on antibiotics right now I need to replenish my probiotics oh you need to get local bacteria mhm to make you stronger it's nice to be able to find some of these comforts but if you were looking for local food then you also have a lot of choices as well that are even cheaper yeah that's why I like Luang Prabang cuz you have options so where should we going next there is a place I wanted to check out have you heard of UXO internationally used term to represent explosive devices that have not detonated as intended so they were dropped but they never exploded so it's a threat for the country see I never knew that Laos was part of the Vietnam War never heard of it they called it the Secret War and yeah we should go there to learn about it okay wow so they found all of these probably detonated them and then now store them all here mhm it's hard to imagine that there are still thousands of these unexploded thousands or millions millions really maybe look this one oh that is couple days ago that they found crazy that's insane I read this article where there's like a 9-year-old that found something in the field he was playing and it was a bomb and then it detonated so he has a huge scar on his stomach so it's everywhere it's in the countryside places farmers spread around Laos yeah and most of the people in Laos are farmers in like the countryside so that's quite a dangerous thing isn't it so are these American bombs yeah that's why the biggest donor is American so these are the number of bombs and mines and other UXO that they found thousands of them each year it says total 44,000 items were removed and destroyed 51,000 people benefited from them and they cleared total land cleared here 39 million square meters it says here that this UXO Lao Visitor Center opened in 2009 to educate people about the unexploded ordinance and what the organization UXO Lao is doing to help with the problem it's crazy because it's saying that like families and communities are not just devastated but there's huge social economic impact development that is like restricted which is really hard in Laos because the country they can't develop the land yeah they still have to be finding all these dangerous bombs instead of focusing on development of this nation and that's probably why Laos is one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia this is all new to me and I find it so interesting yeah I didn't know about this before I mean we always knew that Laos was like a poorer country in Southeast Asia but we didn't know the hardship that they were facing oh so it's not in the thousands it's in the millions it said 80 million failed to detonate and so far in like 10 years they only found 1.4 million this is why there are millions of bombs left in Laos because each what you call each shell mhm can hold up to 400 bombs oh they dropped this whole thing yeah and it exploded and these are the tiny bombs inside the shell that was heavy mhm but an eye opening experience yeah I'm glad we came because it gives me perspective as to why out of all these Southeast Asian countries Laos seems to be stuck in the old days I think what I wanted to say is like they're haunted by their their past and my understanding of what I read in there was that they kind of were caught in between the war yeah the second uh IndoChina War the Vietnam War they were kind of caught between the US and Vietnam and because Vietnamese used part of this like Ho Chi Minh Trail they called so they were transporting equipment and supplies between like the North and the South but kind of through Eastern Laos and Cambodia so of course when the US tried to stop this transport of goods they were bombing that trail and bombing through Laos and that's why it was such a heavily the most heavily bombed place in the world in the world it's crazy to think that after all of this impact that you see from the past that war is still happening in our world now and that impact is going to show up years years to come I'm so happy it rained last night look at how clear the sky is I know it actually looks blue today yeah and we can breathe we're heading to the one of the most beautiful waterfalls here Kuang Si Waterfall and how long is the drive um 45 minutes I was worried that because it's not rainy season now the waterfall might be a bit dry oh but the rain will help nice so the rain helped not only for us the drive there to be more clear but also maybe it will be more beautiful at the waterfall what you got in your hand a baguette good thing I brought a baguette I'm hungry now but they have a restaurant here good just in case a baguette is not enough we can come and eat here there's tons like there's uh little stalls on that side as well I mean it's this is like the biggest attraction in Luang Prabang so of course there's going to be tons of stuff here but I would say that if you're not confident driving a scooter don't drive here by yourself like there's so many potholes yeah it was uh quite rough yeah it was actually kind of scary I mean you can easily hire one of these Vans or taxis to come and I think it might be like $20 to $30 for like a tour but it might be worth it because if you hit one of those potholes you won't make it to the waterfall what does it mean by including electric transport you can either walk there or take the electric car that they have let ask yeah 60,000 Kip per person for foreigners this includes the electric car to go up to the waterfall I think we should get some water and some snacks first okay and then maybe just take our time because we'll wait for the big group of Chinese tourists to go first oh yeah this one's good you want anything else let's get mango we can put it in the same bag sweet and sour off we go it's so fast actually yeah I didn't know about this electric car thing mhm I guess they don't want people to walk they get a lot of tours but it's kind of interesting because that big parking lot was over there but I feel like we could have driven up there right I think so seems like we're here I'm a bit confused I'm confused too because is there a ticket booth here can you buy your ticket directly here or that was that was it we bought our proper tickets okay can you ask her how much is the ticket to enter okay it makes sense now it's good to ask though think we're getting close I can hear the water already mhm oh wow that's a beautiful waterfall wow you can actually feel the mist from here this is like a mini Kuang Si Waterfall the water looks so clear I can't wait to get in it's actually pretty chill like everyone is there if you are not focused on trying to take the perfect photo on the bridge then actually it's a very enjoyable area and if you look follow the trail kind of all the way up all the way in the tree at the top you can still see part of the waterfall yeah that's so cool it's quite high actually as we keep walking down the path then you'll see a swimming section this is where everyone is swimming this side is more calm yeah but let's walk now a bit further okay find a more privacy spot but this is beautiful though yeah I think we found a spot there's a bench here and the water here looks so nice did you bring towels yes I brought two towels oh nice is it cold I knew it I think this is as far as I will go just by the rocks here with like knee length submerge cuz it's quite cold I can already feel it I'm going in you're going to go in yeah you go in oh I just felt a fish bite my leg I'm going in okay go go please is it refreshing it's not cold anymore
2024-06-12 19:15
