What the hell just happened?

Laos, supposedly the poorest country in this part of Asia, astounded me when it comes at least to Luang Prabang, where I am now writing this using the Wi-Fi offered by a hostel called Spicy Laos Backpackers. The boy who is running the show here most of the time does not understand English that much, so receiving any kind of information from him is more or less a lost cause. But the hostel itself seems to offer magnificent services: a decent breakfast (comparing it is free), very good information about Luang Prabang's must-sees and the few most relevant trips to place X, very home-like atmosphere with chill-out porch along with the tv, Internet, wi-fi, laundry service. All built in a French-style.

Along with seeing actually very decent Royal Palace museum and the Xieng Thong massively decorated temple area, having seen Mekong's beautiful landscape and a beautiful sunset fading behind the mountains that are far away over Mekong, having eaten very decent French-style baguettes, street food and Luang Prabang salad, the best thing today was definitely the chilllllllllllllllest-ever Lao-style herbal sauna and massage. For a bit over 4 euros we could: sit along with the Lao people in the chillout room with only a sarong on us, sweating like pigs after the sauna, watching there soccer from TV (Spain's league, Valencia - Villadolid) with the Lao men, getting weird but friendly smiles from the Lao women in their sarongs, sipping amazingly good herbal tea to quench the thirst resulted from a lot of sweating. The saunas were small and intense: two aromatical fumes were rising from the ground, giving the herbal sauna its name. The herbs were very relaxing and you could just inhale deeply to them, feel their medicating effect. Some words as well exchanged with the Lao men, because some of them amazingly seem to be able to talk English in some level, some of them very well. The ones that could not speak English I just mumbled my hello's like "Sa bai dee". And the massage - GOD - what an experience after the sauna. Already in heaven, the Lao guy started to massage me slowly but firmly with his 18 years of experience (so he told me). I was all the time in some kind of half-awake half-sleep state as the sauna had been so relaxing. The guy did it all, with superb skill: back, shoulders, neck, legs and arms from both sides with a very good stroke, even hands, ankles and feet were taken care of very well. And head from the sides. With Silja after this we were so utterly relaxed we hardly could walk. After this lovely experience we grabbed some good salad food from a restaurant the massager recommended us.

The streets and the stuff in general in Luang Prabang seem to be more organized than in Hanoi. For example, in Hanoi stuff was here and there, people trying to make you buy their stuff, too much everything, no real stores just stuff everywhere. And kinda dirty. In LP on the other hand it seems people are quite a lot more laid back and don't try to sell everything instantly. There are only 30000 people in LP so it is quite laid back town and it feels good after all the big cities in the past 5 months or so. One can just chillax and have a relaxing time there. Action can be found though if one wants. It's just waiting for us, today we did not want to do anything late stuff, as we would tomorrow go for a trip to Kuangsi falls, some 30 km south from LP. There we would swim and see some nature in very cool surroundings.