Sat 27/12/08 08:08

I’m in Luang Prabang, Laos outside my hotel waiting to get online. The weather is kind rainy… drizzly may be a better word for it, but at least it’s kind of warm. I went out with some of the people on the tour last night to properly celebrate Christmas. Well, we’ve been celebrating for the last 2 or 3 days, but last night we “drank” to Christmas. This town is probably not what I would imagine if I were thinking about Laos. It’s very pretty, and very tourist oriented. The restaurants and shops are kind of what you expect to see if you were in some small tourist town in America, lots of upscale shops, Western style restaurants that serve pizza, spaghetti, and other western foods. I think there’s good reason for it though, just a guess, but I’d say that there are more tourists than locals walking the streets.  The club we went to last night definitely caters to westerners. It wasn’t packed but it was full of people dancing and having fun. The town closes at 11:30… at least that’s what we’d be told so at 11 I started to get a little nervous about getting back to the hotel in time, but everyone was having such a good time that we stayed later, about to 12:15, hopped into a tuc-tuc and got to the hotel. When we showed up the front gate was closed and bolted, the front door was locked and we did what every drunk foreigner would do, we jumped the fence and pushed open the door. :) No worries.

It’s the 27th now of December, and we’re still in Luang Prabang. The weather yesterday was pretty much all rainy, so rainy that we didn’t get to do very much. Not that that is too bad, I find that every few days just stopping to relax is a good thing. It actually got us prepared for today which was full of planned visits to nearby tourist stops.