January 1, 2017

Did everyone hate 2016? I saw more posts with some version of “Fuck last year” as 2016 came to an end.  Aaron, Angel and I talked about it during our New Year’s Eve dinner at Coconut Garden, a Laotian restaurant in Luang Prabang.

It was definitely a year of change for me.  In January of 2015, I was only a few months at my new job.  In June, Michael and I split up.  In August, I started living part time in New York.  But all of the change was purposeful movement, in a direction that I chose.  Some of it was accompanied by deep sadness, but it all felt like it was meant to be.  Change sometimes feels like the rug has been pulled out from under your life, like a part of your life that you deserved has been taken away.  None of these changes felt like that to me.  I didn’t feel cheated.  I felt like each change moved me along the path I was supposed to be walking.

Yeah, there were a few just-plain-shitty things that happened in 2016.  My house got broken into, and my identity was stolen.  But money mishaps are classified in my head as relatively unimportant.  That’s how I want to look at the world.  Money is just money.  And if I lose some of it once in a while, oh well.

I arrived in the tiny Luang Prabang airport on the last day of 2016.  Angel was waiting at the hotel when I arrived.

Luang Prabang is one of my new favorite places.  It is easy to fall in love with the former royal capital.  Beautiful French colonial streets are punctuated by stunning Buddhist temples in low slung Lao and Thai styles along Sissavangvong Road.  The isolation of Laos for so many decades kept the city in a time bubble, away from ad-hoc development often called modernization in some South East Asian cities.  Buddhist monks quietly sweep the grounds of pagodas and stupas dating from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries.  Each corner you turn on any of the streets of the narrow peninsula between the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers seems to open up to the sweeping staggered roofline of another Wat (temple).

A Buddhist monk quietly walking around his temple grounds.

The sunset from Phou Si

The Tak Bat in the early morning

Luang Prabang is cradled by mountains covered in the verdant green of jungle.  Across either river, the thatched roofs and bamboo walls of small tribal villages barely interrupt wilderness and farmland.

From the stupa of Phou Si in the middle of the city, the sunset glows off the Mekong, over the hazy mountain skyline.

The night market is low key compared to other famous markets from South East Asia and the middle East.  The vendors wait for you to show interest.  They give you prices when you ask for them.

Boutique hotels and guesthouses are everywhere.  Renovation of buildings is occurring at a fast clip as tourism finally comes to the poor country.  If other areas imitate the growth of Luang Prabang, Laos could become a more nuanced tourist destination than the wealthier neighbors of Vietnam or Thailand.  That’s a big if.  If money encourages breakneck development or attracts the quick cash of down-market tourism, a Laotian version of Phuket or Sapa Town could quickly take over.

This trip was the first time that Angel and I have gone away together.  We had really only been dating for a little over a month before he left on his 2 month trip to South East Asia.

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Travelling with someone for more than a long weekend is like drinking fruit concentrate without much water.  You get an intense version of that person, not the watered down version that he or she shares with the world.

When I told friends that I was going on a trip with Angel this soon in our relationship, I could see a few eyebrows rise.  And I understood.  When you travel with someone you don’t know well, you either want to kill each other or you learn that you’re compatible in a way that you would never understand after months of Saturday dates or movie nights.

Weirdly, I wasn’t worried.  And only a few days into the trip, I could tell that I liked his rough edges.  He could handle my moments of gruffness.  I woke up in the mornings excited about not only wherever we were going that day, but that I was going there with him.

French colonial mansions along the Nam Khan river glow with upscale French-Laotian restaurants.  We haven’t had a bad meal here.  Tamarind is a pioneer, almost the creator, of mod-Laotian cuisine.  Coconut Garden makes up with intense flavors what it lacks in name creativity.  The coconut cakes, a coconut custard served piping hot from a street stall, are addictive.

The food market on a side street

Kuang Si Falls

Though prices have gone up in recent years, it was still difficult to spend more than $30 on dinner.  L’Elephant is the grande dame of Luang Prabang cuisine, serving a French-Laotian fusion that melds French technique with Laotian ingredients and flavors.

A hike through tribal villages and the jungles outside of Kaung Si falls is an amazing introduction to the jungle vistas of trees, wrapped in vines, clinging to the steep karst-like cliffs around Luang Prabang.  Small mud trails meander through thick jungles, rubber tree and teak plantations and into small villages of Hmong and Khmer people.

A large Buddha image watches over the entrance to a small cave, protecting multiple small idols in the crevices.  Though the crowds of picture-snapping tourists at the waterfalls of Kuang Si is a shock after the jungle trek, the falls are dramatic enough to make it worth it.

Each morning, the monks of Luang Prabang come out for Tak Bat, the receiving of alms from devotees.  The monks walk in silence, meditating as they receive the food, and the lay people generate karma towards their future lives.

There is a tiny, ancient image of two guys holding hands on the temple wall between our heads.  When you find a gay-adjacent image on a temple, you recreate it.  Duh.