Adventures in Luang Prabang, Laos

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Adventures in Luang Prabang, Laos
Village in the Mist (cont.)


	AFTER DARK: Sifting through stacks of local silk at the night market (Martin Westlake)

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, we decide to trace another river, the Nam Khan, this time by 21-speed mountain bikes. Just beyond town, the pavement cedes to a dirt road to Ban Phanom, a renowned weaving center where spirited bargaining yields several silk scarves for 60,000 kip apiece. (Relax: That brick of currency is only $6.) From the village, the unpaved road gets hilly and rockier, and Martin's rear tire blows out.

As we change the tube, I check a digital thermometer on Martin's handlebars: 40 degrees Celsius. I don't even want to know the Fahrenheit equivalent. Repair complete, we crank in low gears for three miles through open forest to the overgrown tomb of the naturalist Henri Mouhot, Luang Prabang's first Western visitor, who died here in 1861. Before succumbing to fever, the Frenchman faced unbelievable hardships in Southeast Asia; he certainly wouldn't be able to comprehend my luxe Pansea digs, with their infinity pool and terrace restaurant. A group of scooter-riding Lao teens picnics tomb-side by a stretch of rapids, playing cards while grilling a fish over an open fire. It is a forlorn fate for a famed explorer whose posthumously published journal, containing the first detailed descriptions of Angkor Wat, created a sensation in Europe.

Just a few miles upstream from his tomb, the riverside Lao Spirit Resort offers five luxury wooden bungalows set among a collection of restored 19th-century French-Lao homes beneath trees teeming with flycatchers, bee-eaters, and ioras. Here, the world Mouhot encountered endures. In the morning, mahouts still bathe their elephants in the Nam Khan. Beyond the river, beneath mountains too formidable to clear, Hmong and Khmu hill-tribe villagers eke out a living as subsistence farmers.

A few days later, we travel nearly 40 miles through these mountains to put our kayaks in at Ban Nam Ming, a cluster of split-bamboo and thatch huts along a swift, chai-brown Nam Khan tributary. It is the planting season, and the rains have washed away topsoil from ski-jump-steep slopes torched to cultivate maize, sesame, and upland rice. The current quickly carries our troupe of inflatables away from the village and into the relative cool of a narrow, wooded valley. For several hours we tackle small rapids, dodge fish traps, and duck deadfall before working down the broader Nam Khan.



	ASIAN GRACE: Left, traditional service with modern style; a tranquil suite at Maison Souvannaphoum (Martin Westlake)

In the late afternoon, we take out at Ban Khonvay, an isolated Khmu hamlet approximately 20 miles and centuries of amenities removed from Luang Prabang. We are the first visitors in months, and it seems half the village has shown up to greet us. Young boys leap into the kayaks and organize an impromptu regatta, paddling with far more energy than we ever managed.

The parents are as hospitable as their offspring are curious. They lead us up a sandy bank to the headman's two-story house, a concrete construction with wood walls and a corrugated tin roof. The rest of the village gathers to watch through the open windows as their chief lavishes hospitality upon his honored guests. In a candlelit ceremony rooted in animist tradition, the old man prays loudly over steaming platters of boiled chicken and sticky rice, then ties strings around our wrists. The baci, says the chief, will bring Martin and me good luck, big money, many children. Then, to the onlookers' approval, we all toss back ceremonial shots of searing lao-lao moonshine, which tastes like it was distilled through the radiator of a '54 Citroën.

Now, what can we wish for the headman? Martin knots a string around the chief's wrist as he solemnly offers a sci-fi sacrament: "May you live long and prosper." Everyone nods— yes, the Vulcan ways are good and wise. More lao-lao, more baci, more good wishes. On this humid night, I'll have no problem crashing on a thin mattress beneath a mosquito net, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow I can retreat to Maison Souvannaphoum, crank the A/C, and crawl between clean, three-digit-thread-count sheets.

Access & Resources
Thai Airways International flies nonstop from New York to Bangkok for $1,000 round-trip (800-426-5204, www.thaiairways.com). From there, Bangkok Airways flies direct to Luang Prabang ($278 round-trip; 866-226-4565, www.bangkokair.com). October through March is the most temperate, though crowded, time. WHERE TO STAY: Perched on a hill a mile south of the old town, Pansea's 34-room La Résidence Phou Vao (doubles from $126; 011-856-71-212530, www.pansea.com) offers luxuriously appointed rooms. In town, enjoy princely spa treatment at the 22-room Maison Souvannaphoum (doubles from $170; 011-856-71-254609, www.coloursofangsana.com/souvannaphoum). Or go more rustic at the Lao Spirit Resort bungalows (doubles from $59; 011-856-20-557-0221, www.tigertrail-laos.com), ten miles east of town. WHERE TO EAT: Dinner for two runs $25 at Villa Santi's Princess Restaurant and $30 at Pansea's Phou Vao Restaurant. An ice-cold Beer Lao costs 80 cents at the riverside Boungnasouk Guesthouse and Restaurant. EXPLORING: Green Discovery Laos (011-856-71-212093, www.greendiscoverylaos.com) organizes kayak trips; our two days cost $62. Tiger Trail Outdoor Adventures (011-856-20-557-0221, www.tigertrail-laos.com) offers a range of mountain-biking and trekking trips. To visit the Pak Ou caves, hire a boat (about $20–$25) along the Mekong.