More Luang Prabang

For the past 2 weeks we've been staying at the Nama Vong guesthouse. It's just around the corner from the street along the Mekong waterfront. In the 2nd photo (with our guesthouse on the left) you can see the Mekong river through the trees.




Aside from the fact that my sandals were stolen (we think by other guests) on the 2nd day here, it's been very nice. We're paying 70,000 kip (~$8) a night for this lovely room:

Across from our guesthouse is a large Wat, and a little further along the street is this small paper store:


Around the corner from our street is a small one we walk down every day to get to the center of town. On most days, you can see some type of food product being dried on bamboo. We're not totally sure what these are, but we think they're made from pounded taro with sesame seeds.



In many places around the city you can see shallow woven baskets with drying chilies. This one is next to one of the waterfront restaurants, but they're pretty much everywhere. Seeing them reminded me of the first time I tried to make a Thai curry paste at home. The recipe from the internet described the dried red chilis you can buy in the US as "barely fit for human consumption" and recommended buying them fresh and drying them yourself.

There are lots of coconut trees everywhere, but we've also noticed a number of what we think are papaya trees. Here is what they look like, in any case.

Next posts: the many wats of Luang Prabang, followed by our bicycle adventure out of the city!