Chill Days in Luang Prabang
There is something joyful about cycling through tough conditions to arrive at a place where you can meet other westerners, speak English, get laundry done, stay in posh guesthouses, eat banana pancakes and tourist food, play pool, and generally chill out. That's pretty much how those days went.
A bit of research on the nightlife scene showed three basic options: Utopia, Daofa club, and bowling. Utopia was the highlight where I met some people from the Netherlands. Basically at that bar it's chill out by day and the music gets amped up at night. The food is cheap and the person running it from Australia is nice and supplies great information for the customers. She basically said forget about river tubing down the line in Vang Vieng, the whole place is flooded out. Also on that note, the roads were washed out from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng. What was the purpose in telling this? Probably to get me to stay. It worked.
One of the nights we went bowling. If that's what the "nightlife" consists of in Luang Prabang, then so be it. This place is more of a heritage site for chilling out and taking in culture, and it shuts down at 11:30 due to the curfew. Yes, curfew. However, the bowling alley stays open much later. You basically get hammered and try to knock down pins. I'm guessing that similar to Chiang Mai's "Spicy" bar that is run by the military government, there must be some government official here who gets paid off to allow the bowling to continue past curfew time.
Then the next day more of the same, this time pool with some whizzes both local and from France who live here. The guy basically explained, "There is nothing to do in this town, so when you live here day after day you play pool at the bars and get really fuckin good at it." He wasn't kidding, and it was awesome to have him on my team.
The day I was supposed to leave I of course lingered and decided why not skip the mountains and take the bus. There were several biking options but both highly subject to rain so I thought better to shave off a couple of days of wet misery and just bus it. Thanks to the suggestion of a cycling friend, he said take the bus to Phou Kkoun then bike the rest.
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