Luang Prabang National Museum

After a good night’s sleep in the Rimvang Hostel we had to start making plans for our first week in Laos. We had seen an obvious place to visit next to the night market: the Luang Prabang National Museum. This seemed to be the focal point for Old Town, so we had to see what it was about.

We wanted breakfast before we went to the museum, so we wandered to the Grasshopper Cafè just down the road from our hotel. We chose it because it was vegan-friendly, which is convenient for my vegetarian wife. This place serves a lot of healthy food, and also has a studio with regular yoga classes.

I got a coffee and a sandwich, while my wife ordered some strange yellow health drink. It literally tasted like curry in a cup. I wasn’t a fan, and neither was she. At least the food was nice, and I was able to wake up with my morning coffee.

It was a short walk around the corner to enter the museum grounds. The night before this had been a place of hustle and bustle, the streets lined with stalls, with punters browsing and bargaining to get a good deal. This morning the streets were empty, clean, and quiet. The Night Market truly only existed at night.

We have to pay to get inside, and purchase an extra ticket in order to visit the museum building. The area is a holy place, so it was lucky we were dressed appropriately: shoulders and legs covered. This rule is always more strictly applied to women both here and in Thailand – I would often see men in shorts enter the temples with no problems.

There are a few key locations within the museum grounds. The first is the Royal Ballet Theatre. Here we discovered that you could watch a traditional Laos ballet, where they would perform a version of the Ramayana using the traditional masks. There weren’t any performances on the day we visited, but we decided to purchase a ticket to see one later in the week.

The second is the Museum itself. You have to take off your shoes to go in here, and unfortunately no photos are allowed inside. The rules say that you cannot take mobile phones or cameras inside, but the guard just told us to keep them in our pockets out of site.

The museum was formally the Royal Family’s Mansion, now preserved as a cultural artefact. It’s laid out to give an idea of how they lived. Each room showed its original function, from the dining hall, to the King’s bedchamber, or the prince’s crib.

Many of the rooms are adorned with gifts from various nations, including family portraits, grandiose Buddha statues, ornate swords, and even a Moon rock from President Nixon! It offers visitors a glimpse into the lives and political intrigue of the Royal Family before the country was liberated.

The final place of interest in the museum grounds was Haw Phra Bang, a Buddhist temple. This was my first time seeing a temple in Laos, and it was different to other temples I had seen. Its stark white walls were decorated with intricate golden carvings that glimmered in the scorching Laos sun. Golden Nagas¹ coiled around the bannisters, keeping watch and providing protection to the temple. They added an air of mystique and awe as we climbed the stairs to see the treasures therein.

Like the museum, we had to remove our shoes to approach and weren’t allowed any pictures inside. The temple itself had several Bhudda statues similar in style to Thai statues, as well as many treasure that had been collected and donated over the years. These treasures were protected by a golden gate with spikes and several intricate patterns carved into it.

People here were encouraged to pray to the Bhudda though, unlike the temples in China, there is no charge if you pray. I’m not a religious person, so I didn’t partake.

After not-praying at the temple there wasn’t much else to see. We made our way through the gardens were we found a merchant manning a stall selling water (and some other snacks). It was a good place for it – people coming out of the museum ground would likely be thirsty in the heat, and I was one of them.

I bought a drink to quench my thirst and we discussed where to go next. We knew there were several more temples in Old Town, so it seemed we would be exploring Luang Prabang one temple at a time.