The Best of Cambodia & Laos

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LUANG PRABANG LUANG PRABANG & NORTHERN LAOS
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Luang Prabang is intact and the feel of the city has remained unaltered over the last 15
years. The massive increase in restaurants and the introduction of a Thailand-style night
market are part of inevitable changes as the city becomes ever more established on the
Indochina tourist circuit. Unlike Siem Reap in Cambodia, Luang Prabang accommodates
the changes without some of the circus like aspects that have become part and
parcel of a visit to Angkor. In Luang Prabang the views remain the same and they are
absolutely superb.
For centuries before Luang Prabang was founded, several Thai-Lao principalities flourished
in the area around it, in the valleys of the Mekong. It used to be called Muang Sua
before it was conquered by a Tai Prince called Khun Lo in a.d. 698. From the 11th to
the 14th centuries, there was a city called Xieng Dong Xieng Thong on this site. From
1185 to 1191, Xieng Dong Xieng Thong came under the rule of the mighty Khmer
god-king Jayavarman VII.
King Fa Ngum created the first truly Lao Kingdom, called Lan Xang, or Kingdom of
One Million Elephants in 1353. At this time, the city was known as Xaxa. In 1357 the
name was changed to Meuang Xieng Thong, or Gold City District. After that, King Fa
Ngum’s successor, King Visoun, received from his Khmer overlords a gift of a Sinhalese
Buddha image called Pha Bang. It is from this image that the name Luang Prabang is
derived.
In 1545 King Phothisarat moved the capital of the kingdom to Vientiane although
Luang Prabang continued to thrive. The kingdom of Lan Xang fractured into three
separate entities in 1694 on the death of the heirless King Vongsa. Luang Prabang
declined under the grandson of the Vongsa. It didn’t get better as time went on. Burmese,
Chinese, and Vietnamese marauders imposed their will at various times. In 1887 Chinese
“Haw” bandits attacked the city and the Luang Prabang administration invited the
French to take the city under its colonial wing. The town developed quite fast under the
French, not least because they, like tourists today, took an immediate fancy to the place.
They allowed the monarchy to continue and knowingly prettified the already very beautiful
city. Through the Japanese ascendancy of World War II and the wars of independence
against the French, Luang Prabang was thankfully spared damage. After the 1975 Pathet
Lao victory the last Luang Prabang monarch, Sisavang Vatthana, and his family were sent
to a remote incarceration where they succumbed to hunger and lack of medical care.
In 1989 after the Vietnamese declared doi moi, or their own form of perestroika,
Luang Prabang began to emerge from the dilapidation visited upon it by the harsh years
of collectivization and a planned economy that drained the city of its entrepreneurs and
educated elite. Over the next decade the city rapidly blossomed as the old French colonial
buildings were restored, flourishing businesses came into being, and tourists enthusiastically
flooded in to enjoy this jewel of Indochina.
LUANG PRABANG ESSENTIALS
Orientation
Luang Prabang is set out on a slightly crooked grid system. Most of the most beautiful
parts of the city are on a narrow finger of land extending to where the Mekong joins the
Nam Khan River. What could be called the center of town extends up from the longdistance
boat pier. Thanon Kitsarat heads southeast, past Phousi hill and the Dara Market
on the left to the crossroads where it meets Thanon Mahapatsaman and Thanon
Wisunarat. Most of the old French municipal buildings cluster around the beginning
of Thanon Kitsarat near the boat pier. To get to both the main cluster of bars and