Started the day with breakfast at the Scandinavian bakery again. We like this little spot on the main drag and the croissants are good. Plus we can get free WiFi from the restaurant across the road. Weird homeless looking guy was also doing his rounds again wandering up and down the road just staring at people or into space.

Next stop was the Royal palace museum. As palaces go it was a really small one, more like jist a really big house built in the early 1900s. Love that we had to take our shoes off to go inside. Was great to wander around with barefeet on polished hardwood floors. We really liked this museum. It wasn’t very big and the descriptions weren’t very detailed but the displays were nicely varied. The kings reception room was painted bright red and the walls and ceilings were covered in depictions of traditional Lao life all made out of little bits of coloured mirror. Lots of goldy bits too as befits a palace. Towards the end we came upon a little treat for a space buff like Simon. Amongst the display cases of gifts given by other countries (including an ugly plate from the Canadians) was a plaque from Richard Nixon with the then Lao flag on it and a tiny bit of moon rock. The flag went to the moon and back apparently on Apollo 11. There was also a little model of the lunar module too. It was just a cool little spacey bit in a most unexpected place.

The royal garage was less interesting. A couple of old fords and a clapped out old Citroën. The palace grounds were pretty run down but they are doing some serious renovation on the wat in the front garden. Fresh coats of paint and a helluva lot of gold leafing going on.

We left the palace and carried on up the road that runs alongside the Mekong eventually coming to Wat Xieng Thong which all the guidebooks describe as ‘Luang Prabangs most magnificent temple’. To be honest we weren’t that enthralled with it apart from the pictures on some of the structures that were made out of colored mirrors just like we had seen at the palace.

We tried walking around the old quarter looking for the french architechture but couldn’t really identify anything strikingly French. It was getting quite hot and Simon was battling with the heat (think he might be coming down with something) so we headed back to our guesthouse for an afternoon siesta.

We joined up with Sarah, Jacob and Arna at Utopia for a lovely dinner. It is likely to be our last meal with Arna who is moving on tomorrow. We are sad to see her go. Happy travels Arna hope to see you again some day. Utopia was a really nice place to have a meal and we will likely go back for another meal just to see it in the daylight – probably the coolest resturant/bar we have ever seen.

[Pictures: Some shots of the main wat at the palace – major restoration work]

– Posted from my iPhone via Wifi