{"id":2761,"date":"2026-03-05T00:24:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=2761"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:19:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:19:42","slug":"wed-4th-mar-luang-prabang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=2761","title":{"rendered":"Wed 4th Mar – Luang Prabang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CR: It’s our final full day in Luang Prabang. We’ve had one too many days here. It’s the second biggest city in Laos but Laos itself is a pretty small country. There’s not tonnes to do and because it is a tourist destination (it even has a small international airport) there’s a bit of a ‘sameness’ about the shops where anything successful is copied by other vendors. Ideally would have spent an extra day in Chiang Mai in Thailand. But it has been really nice not having to pack and unpack constantly. We’ve also had a few afternoon naps to avoid the heat. It’s been good, though it feels right to head out tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you to mum and dad for helping sponsor today’s bear post. \ud83d\udc3b<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
DW: Our morning activity is bear sanctuary visit. This is a charity run by a woman from Perth dedicated to rescuing bears in South East Asia. They are commonly used as pets, entertainment and for extracting bear bile.
CR: These bears were in one holding pen while the others are cleaned. The 15 bears were all caught together when they were very young. They were found in an apartment all in individual cages after one of the neighbours made a noise complaint. A lot of the stories behind the animals’ rescue are like this. There’s a bear called Facebook who was rescued after a video was posted showing him wandering confused around a highway. There’s an unsettling truth that these bears have just gone from a small cage to a big cage but at the moment there’s nowhere in Laos that they can be released into. They tried to release one bear in recent times but days later it had been poached. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Our one and only activity at bear sanctuary (apart from looking at bears) is preparing enrichment grenades for the bears. This consists of stuffing a piece of bamboo with seeds, strawberry jam and some lettuce and lobbing it over the fence towards them.
CR: They were a hit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Such a clever and enriched bear!
CR: There are 127 bears here. That is a LOT of bears. Only last year did Laos make bear bile farms illegal (sole buyer is the Chinese market). They are still currently legal in Vietnam.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Bear onsen looks very relaxing and tempting on a hot day. If I was a moon bear, I would always be hanging out at the springs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: The to-do list at Bear HQ. ‘Test effectiveness’ is a little bit of a worry in the context of bear sanctuary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: Typical of Laos, getting to the bear sanctuary was stressful. The tuk-tuk drivers know international airport, Buddah cave and the waterfalls. To understand how to get here we have to find the driver’s son and show him on a map while the two converse in Laotian. Then we get into the car and the driver’s wife is in the passenger seat. She stays for the whole four and half hour trip. She has a good time on Drive, quietly pointing out and chatting to driver in Laotian about new building developments on the way. These two are actually quite friendly but we can’t relax on the way there – we’re stressed at best he doesn’t know where to go and at worst we’ll get scammed. But it all works out fine. The road quality is atrocious as usual.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Luang Prabang has an obsession with Khao Soi, but it’s a bit off from the Northern Thai one. The flavours aren’t as subtle and sometimes it seems to have tomato paste in it.
CR: DW you ordered Tom Yum here.
DW: Maybe that explains it… I was hoping for Khao Soi. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: The homemade coconut icecream (no milk) lunch desert is nice and refreshing. The flavours are coconut, pandan and almond. All flavours Pauline would attempt before trying anything normal in the ice cream maker (if she had a new one…).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: After an afternoon snooze and a few YouTube vids at the hotel to avoid the hottest part of the day, we’re back out again for dinner and a show.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: Declan is mad at me because I am dawdling. If that’s not the picture of a man happy with his holiday…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: We attend a Laotian ballet performance. Given this is at the Royal Palace (now the museum we walked around yesterday) I assumed that this would be an official-ish performance. It’s not. There’s a 10 year old on the drums. The dancing is not in sync. At the back of the hall behind a partition someone is watching a tiktok video on loud. The hour run time slips closer to an hour and a half. It’s not an issue though, we were happy to have something to do.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n