New Year's Eve in Laos

As you may know from the article recently published in Le Devoir (merci Agnes!), Luang Prabang is an absolutely beautiful, former capital city, in the north of Laos. It is a peninsula, at the junction of the Mekong and the Nam Kam rivers, and our "Christmas" breakfast, after getting off the boat, was in a lovely riverside restaurant, and included pancakes, fruitshakes, delicious real Lao coffee, and exotic fruit salad. A real treat after our night on the beach! Classified a Unesco heritage site in 2001, the architecture is a combination of traditional Lao and French colonial, all freshly renovated over the past few years. Although it is quite small, Luang Prabang has art galleries, museums, bookstores, many little boutiques, the most amazing handcraft market I have ever seen (I know, I say that every time), food markets, and delicious, inexpensive street food. I would even go so far as to say it might be "hipper" than the Plateau Mont Royal! It has a very French feel to it, many signs are in French (and Laos, but not English), some of the older people still speak a bit of French, and you can find baguettes, La vache qui rit, nutella and pastis! And the men still play Petang (petanque).
It also has dozens of beautiful temples, and lots of monks walking around the town, which gives it a very serene atmosphere: one morning I got up at six o'clock, believe it or not, to see them receiving alms (food) from locals sitting on the sidewalk with baskets of fruit and sticky rice. They do this every morning, but I only witnessed it once! (Just too early for me)
Despite the numerous tourists, I was amazed at how "untouristy" it felt, not a plastic temple keyring to be found anwhere! One day we rented bicycles and cycled out to a small village on the edge of the Mekong, where we had a picnic and spent the entire afternoon swimming and playing (mostly Julien) with a group of local boys. Even though we only know about fifteen words in Laos, we managed to communicate by drawing in the sand and using hand gestures. It was a lovely experience, the kind you just can't plan in advance.
From there we took a bus over the mountains (very windy and slow but stunning scenery, sharp mountain peaks covered in vegetation) down to Vientiane, the current capital, arriving at eight o'clock on New Year's eve, with, as usual, no reservation. As we started wandering around, only to discover that everything was full, I was starting to think that our last minute planning was perhaps not the best way to do things after all. And then we heard a friendly fellow who said : "Are you from Canada, you are a walking advertisement for Mountain Equipment Coop!" We had a good laugh, a nice little chat, (thanks Trevor and Erin, from Alberta) and he recommended we head away from the city center: ten minutes later we had a room. Twenty minutes later we had supper in the main square, where a Lao rock band was doing a New Year's countdown concert, and fifty minutes later we hooked up with our new Canadian friend and his gang, (including an English fellow we had done a trek with in Thailand!) and, voila, we had an instant bunch of friends for New Years. We headed off to a bar where we did the countdown, and watched the fireworks from the terrasse (yes, the kids were all with us, not a problem whatsoever, Julien even bought the beer, but only drank coke, of course - just in case any of you Villa girls are reading this!) I suppose you could say it was a pretty universal way to spend New Years Eve. And the next morning, like most people, we slept in!