{"id":2557,"date":"2010-09-23T20:10:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T13:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2010-09-26T22:32:45","modified_gmt":"2010-09-26T15:32:45","slug":"snagons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/?p=2557","title":{"rendered":"Snagons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_400_300_B432F97F-3BC7-4D14-B100-63CFF5DAD320.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignleft size-full\" \/>Not much to report today. Our main mission was to get our visa for Vietnam arranged. Our guest-house obligingly pointed out the consulate on the map and instead of paying the $5 commission we decided to take a walk (tak-tak was recommended &#8211; but we like to walk).  <\/p>\n<p>Luang Prabang is a wonderful little spot. You can walk around the entire town in two hours (and it&#8217;s the second largest city in Laos !). Full of western coffee shops, restaurants, galleries, curio shops, guest-houses and wats it is an easy, quiet and inviting place. Another thing is the 23h30 city curfew which, strictly enforced, guarantees a good nights sleep.<\/p>\n<p>We stopped at a little coffee shop (Saffron) on the Mekong river bank for a quick breakfast and fantastic local coffee before heading around the back of the town&#8217;s koppie in search of the consulate. $45 each for the visa (3 day processing time) meant that the price has gone up and that we would be here until Monday. On the way back we explored a couple of wats, perused some &#8216;for sale&#8217; buildings and skimmed the restaurants.<\/p>\n<p>We returned to the main side of town via the wat on top of the koppie. Seems walking at altitude in Tibet hasn&#8217;t improved our stair climbing abilities \ud83d\ude42 The wat encompasses outdoor shrines and stupas with lots of gold (mostly paint) along with a grotto containing &#8216;The footprint of Buddha&#8217;. Depending on where his other extremities are he may be good at twister ! We particularly liked the &#8216;snagon&#8217; (snake like dragon) handrails.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/p_400_300_A8811AFA-6155-450D-B8F7-9E829F44EBFC.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignright size-full\" \/>You can&#8217;t go long here before bumping into someone you know and by lunch we had arranged a 1\/2 day MTB, 1\/2 day kayak trip with Arna and Nick. The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing around town and our guest-house. The plan was to waddle through the night market on the way to dinner but just as we arrived the clouds opened sending all the tourists (and a lot of the stall owners) running. It was not a successful outing &#8211; V managed to get a really tasty smoothie, but that was it ! We squelched to a halt at a randomly chosen restaurant and enjoyed yet another acceptably good dinner with Arna (who was in a lot of pain &#8211; recovering from a 2 hour massage marathon). Tomorrow should be more our speed &#8211; bikes, waterfalls and kayaks !<\/p>\n<p>[Pictures: Saffron &#8211; love their logo &#038; coffee. One of the Wats &#8211; there are so many !]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><small>&#8211; Posted from my iPhone via Wifi<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not much to report today. Our main mission was to get our visa for Vietnam arranged. Our guest-house obligingly pointed out the consulate on the map and instead of paying the $5 commission we decided to take a walk (tak-tak was recommended &#8211; but we like to walk). Luang Prabang is a wonderful little spot. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,4],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2563,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wanderlust.simid.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}