Luang Prabang

It is quite amazing how much french influence you can still see in Luang Prabang. There are lots of bakeries with nice baguette bread and lots of pastries. Also many signs are still written in French language. Yesterday early morning I went to visit the monch ceremony at 6:00 when the collect their food from local people who donate sticky rice, fruits etc to them. As you can see on the pics they walk along the main road and the locals put the food into the monchs pot. The women are not allowed to look at them. There were also some of the poor street children who were waiting for some food which the monchs gave to them in return. It is a very interesting procedure though the locals already started to comercialize it.
Then I rented a bike as I wanted to explore the small city. It cost me USD 1.00 for an entire day. So off I went with my funny bike. Unfortunately my trip only last approx. 2 hours since the bike was stolen after I returned from a temple back to the pavement. Bad Luck or bad Karma? I do not know, the only thing is that I was talking to an Australian couple this morning and they confirmed me that it is a common scam here. People give bikes for rental and once the tourists are on their way they would follow them and take the bikes back to some place. So they make people pay for the "stolen" bike. As I did not want to give them money, I replaced the bike with a new one for USD 50.00!