Ask anyone who's traveled with me if I'm a lazy traveler. Ask my dad, who I just spent an hour skyping with, bemoaning the fact that we didn't stop at the Oakland Colliseum in those "extra" six hours we had between Napa and Reno last summer. Ask Debbie, who I unceremoniously propelled at breakneck speed through Southern California and Arizona this past April, covering approximately 1200 miles over five days. Ask George and Kasia, who I once forced to march directly up the side of an 1000 foot hill off the side of the road in Sligo, Ireland just because I'd heard Queen Maebe was buried there*. So I think the facts are on my side: lazy traveler I am not.
*If she was there, we did not find her. We did find, though, that Kasia does NOT appreciate being made to hike straight up a hill in the noontime sun for nothing.
But, there is just something about Luang Prabang, Laos that turned even me into such a loaf. Every day, I woke up thinking I would do something, and every day ended up with me fat and lazy and spent on Beerlaos, French pastries, and Lao massages. On day two of being in town, my biggest accomplishment was that I walked up some steps to see the panorama of the city from the hilltop. On day five, it was that I got up to see the monks receive alms at 6am and then proceeded directly back to bed. On day six, I tried every mulberry scone in every bakery on the main street. I spent seven days this way, folks. And it might have been one of the best weeks of my trip so far.
So, of course, now it's my job to figure out for all you my nearest and dearest (that's you!) what made it so easy to slide into the Luang Prabang lifestyle of lacksidasical leisure. Part of it was the weather. The heat around midday made sitting from noon till late afternoon with a cup of tea and a book so easy. Part of it was the people. There were certainly tour companies set up to sell you this or that, but none seemed especially concerned whether you bought their services or not. Part of it was the massages. When you can spend five dollars and walk away an hour later feeling like a million bucks, it's hard to not go back every day. But most of it was just some innate charm, built into the French Indochine architecture and radiating out from the confluence of the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers, that completely seaps into your veins. Luang Prabang, I miss you already!
Okay, I now that I'm done waxing poetic (not really a trait that suits me, I'll be the first to admit!), I present for your viewing pleasure some of those lazy scenes I spent a week enjoying.