Saturday March 16, 2012 Luang Prabang, Laos

We had a wonderful omelet with tomatoes and herbs, baguette, fresh orange juice, fruit salad and wonderful coffee on the hotel breakfast area over looking the Khan river. While at breakfast we used the iPad to look up reviews of restaurants in the city as Laos is known to have interesting food. We learned that last nights Rosella Fusion is ranked number 8 on trip advisor. We switched rooms to one closer to the wireless so that we can receive a signal in our room and then headed out on the Lonely Planet walking tour.

The first stop was Big Brother Mouse, a publishing house and book store for Laos children's books. Few children's books are published in Lao language, so BBM is trying to make literacy fun and at the same time is giving writing, editing, drawing experience to elementary to high school students and recent college graduates. We bought 17 books to take with us for the hill tribe Schools in the north around Muang Sing and Phongsali and gave a donation for books that will be going with one of the staff to her hometown in Luang Nam Tha, again in the northern hill tribe area. We then proceeded down the road browsing in the shop stores and studying the cafes. Leslie signed up for Hmong Batik class tomorrow afternoon at Ock Pop Tok's Living Crafts Center. Ock Pop Tok has as part of its philosophy to empower women through their traditional skills, and has created various weaving projects in Laos. Their shops have lovely unique items. We kept on going down the street and as the heat picked up to 94F we decided that we had missed the walking tour route. So we stopped for lunch at the Blue Lagoon restaurant, which is rated number one on TripAdvisor. We had an excellent cold fresh papaya soup, and a sampler of the Lao specialties of chicken Lara, fish mok, and lam beef. The fresh warm baguette and herb butter were delicious too! Cost was $34 for the two of us.

We took care of a travel administrative chore and booked 2 seats on a mini van to go to Phonsavan on the 21st. Cost was $33for two. The trip should take 7 hours including a lunch break. After a nap as it was not worth sightseeing in the heat, we went to exchange David's book at a book exchange we saw earlier. The night market starts at 5 pm so we cruised through that. By comparison with Chiang Mai's Sunday street market, this was very small and extremely quiet and low-key. Some interesting items that we will go back and check out in more detail tomorrow.

Dinner was at the highly rated Tamarind restaurant. We ate the lemongrass stuffed chicken, a 5 sampler plate, and pumpkin ginger soup which was very good. Our lunch though was better in terms of the food; the price almost double but we did get that unbelievable bread and butter! We then walked to the main street and stopped at a wine bar and had a glass of French wine before having a lemon and sugar crepe from a street vendor.

We really did enjoy the food of Luang Prabang today! Tomorrow we are out the door early, before 6 am to catch the monks starting their alms procession.