Day 7 of ABD –
After breakfast, we did the electric cart tour of the Old Quarter. It was a new perspective on the city. We went down streets that we couldn’t have gone in the bus and you are sitting at scooter level. It was a lot of fun. When I saw it on the itinerary, it didn’t look like anything great, but we really enjoyed it and wished it was longer – and I’d guess it was 30-45 minutes long already.
Then it was off to the airport to leave Vietnam and go to Laos.
After landing in Luang Prabang, we went to the museum and a temple. It was very hot. It started to rain just as we were entering the temple – that was the first rain we had seen since our pre-trip day in Hanoi. We got very lucky with the rain the entire trip.
Many in the group commented on how clean Laos was. Very green and pretty. We didn’t see garbage anywhere.
We stayed at the Belmond La Residence and it was, once again, a beautiful resort. The pool area was stunning.
The rooms were nice, but the wood floors were slick (even when not wet, if they were wet, they were like ice) and very, very creaky. We were worried the people below us would hear every footstep. My parents were below us and said the couldn’t hear us at all. It looked like many of the rooms had great views. We had an okay view, my parents had no view at all.
That night, we were taken to the night market and dinner was on our own. The market was the least ‘pressure’ market we’ve been to. For many of the stalls, you had to stop and ask them about pricing rather than people thrusting things in your hands like we encountered in Vietnam and other markets around the world.
We had picked out a place for dinner and asked our local guide, Ken, for directions. He said if we really wanted local food, that he would recommend we go to Manda De Laos instead. It was about a 10-minute walk from the night market and it was fantastic. We saw others from our group there and everyone loved the meals that they got. Highly recommend this place. The place was stunning - there is a lotus pond in the middle of the restaurant.
The food and service were top notch! I got the laap and it was prepared tableside. The would explain each ingredient and ask if you wanted that or not.
I didn't realize it would tableside prep - I wouldn't have ordered it if I knew that, I don't like a tabelside show. I'm glad I didn't know that ahead of time because I would have missed out on this fantastic dish.
I was doing mental money conversions and thought the meal was maybe a bit pricey, but still totally worth it. When the bill came, I pulled out my phone and realized I was using the wrong conversion factor. I had estimated almost double what the meal actually cost. So it was definitely worth it!