On the way to Luang Prabang

Transition day. We boarded the "Belle Isle", sort of gunboat Yangtze, with a new Steve McQueen as a captain. Seven hours of descents through a landscape as grand but still today no Viet Khong to the horizon. Just this little bucolic touch just appease us ... because it is not the bench where we sit Zen makes us! Landscapes parade, impenetrable jungle ... I saw an eagle perched with binoculars atop a huge tree. At the bend of a meander and an eddy spectacular, a dead pig floating between two puffed tree stumps .. Looks like a bagpipe.

Short! You get used to all too soon this magnificent spectacle (not the pig bagpipes, of course) and you have to keep repeating that navigates in an exceptional place. Laotian Mekong have a God, that's saying something.

To 4:00, Luang Prabang finally appears. We discover a city from another time, but that seems to modernize every day. Should we say unfortunately? The progress here is also running.

A long central street of low houses made of wood or cement whitewashed, bougainvillea, small shops and lots of cafes, restaurants and guesthouses. We did spoiled for choice. Martine meets an old Laotian, Mr. Pouthen, who offers us a quiet room ... just a little better arranged than Pakben. It suits us perfectly for the few days that we are here. Mr. Pouthen speak French properly. He and his wife were in "school of the French" before the war. We wash our clothes and leave to discover the city at the end of the world. Than tourists!

We checkons for our future flight to Hanoi for 105 euros per person. The tour operator told us that the visa fee is $ 60, or 52 €. When I think I paid my visa for Vietnam Visa from Action in France for € 156, I tell myself that I fucked the mug: You do not win every time. So, dear readers, the day you will be tempted to make the same journey, I shall give you good advice. Anyway: do not listen to what you say in France!

Here, the culinary specialty is the pancake. Just like home. Y 'Annaïck Duliscouët everywhere! We even had trouble finding a small local souplette!

Go! Sabadee! Meat in the towel! And good night!