Forced to go on a Honeymoon to Luang Prabang!

People who know us will understand! We have not gone on a holiday trip by ourselves in years!

Tara had first planned to go to Bangalore during the week long break at school, then she dropped the idea! We thought we should make good use of the break with a trip to Luang Prabhang. This trip has been on the anvil since last year. In fact, Rama and Prasad tired of waiting for us made the trip on their own last year and said they had a good time!

Tara made umpteen phone calls to see if she could tempt others to join us! While many were keen, they finally did not join for one reason or the other. This meant a delay in booking a hotel and some of the recommended hotels were full by the time I spoke to them.

It seemed that we were destined to go on a honeymoon! Imagine this, the first hotel that said they had vacant rooms offered us this room (See below)!

"Water lily rooms: Lotus Villa's largest rooms at a minimum of 24 square meters; feature the decadence of an open style bath in the bedroom, as well as a separate shower, air conditioning and fan, and wi fi access. Waterlily rooms are large enough to accommodate a third person on request.


We immediately had a palaver with our extended family about this room. As you can guess, no one really gave us a sensible advice. They were either aghast at such an arrangement, Gayathri said it was reminiscent of the decadent Louis the XIV days, while Madhu and Sethu were just making inane jokes. Only Aditi made a sensible suggestion! She said 'Aunty can probably hang a towel from somewhere to cover the view of the bathtub'.

I also voiced my concern: 'I may be in trouble in case we have an argument, I would probably be asked to sleep in the bath tub!' Luckily for me Rama and Prasad came to my rescue by giving us the name of the guest house they had stayed at. They said it should work even if the plumbing needed some work! (It still needed work!)

I was very happy to book a room at this guest house and when we reached the guest house we paid up after a cursory inspection of the room. Triple occupancy seems to be the rule in this town as the bed room had a double and a single bed in it. Anyway it was way better than getting sent off to a bathtub to sleep!

Later while we were getting ready to go out for lunch, we had reached around afternoon, I saw this notice stuck prominently on a wall of the room. It was an "Accommodation Regulation" created by the Police department, Luang Prabhang Provincial, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Peace Independent Democracy Prosperity.

(I am totally in love with this publication and will try to quote as much as I can from it. It is authentic as it has a chop of the director of the police department)

"Accommodating in hotels, guesthouses and resorts for domestic and international tourists is to make sure that safety and security procedures in place to response in emergency cases for both domestic and international tourists who have accommodated and promote the Lao PDR tourism policy.

The Tourism police office has issued accommodation regulation for tourists and accommodation provider to implement and follow as below:
1. Tourists have to your own accommodation at 2400 hrs (mid night).
( I had no issues with this mid night curfew, as I am the 'early to bed' type of fellow! You can see me nodding at 2200 hrs!)
2.( Says show passport!)
3. Every time, when you are check in hotels, guesthouses and resorts you must register your belonging. If there are value things you have to give to receptionist to look after for you and both party have to sign for acknowledgement. If not, in case something lost it will be your own responsible.
4. (Something about ammunition's!)
5. Do not any drugs, crambling or bring both women and men which is not your own husband or wife into the room for making love.
6. Do not allow domestic or international tourist bring prostitute and others into your accommodation to make sex movies in our room, it is a restriction.
(and so on)
11. If you do not follow this accommodation regulation, you will be fight based on Lao PDR law.
12. This regulation take effect with official signature and stamp."



The regulation no. 5 had me worried. It is still very fresh in my memory that Thailand consulate in Vancouver could not issue me a dependent visa. One of the reasons was that I did not produce a marriage certificate with my application. My pointing out to them that both our passports mentioned us as husband and wife did not work.

Here again we were in a predicament as we had not carried our marriage certificate with us. I was considering sleeping on the other bed, just in case there was a raid, but was fortunately vetoed!
I was also tremendously relieved that I did not carry a video camera. Luckily mine is an ancient model and I have stopped using it.

( By the way, I did take some pictures and I plan to write another blog highlighting some of the sight seeing trips we made and post a few pictures. Bye for now!)

Comments

Unknown said…
I think the subliminal hints that cutting-edge marketing techniques allow must have helped the Laotian authorities figure out from the nature of your request, that it was a "forced honeymoon"- the humour was likely introduced to make the trip memorable!
Anonymous said…
I told you to just take the Bathtub-in-the-room accommodation - would have been interesting to see what kind of regulations they had!
jogesh said…
"Waterlily rooms are large enough to accommodate a third person on request."
That's so considerate - you can even ask for a person to sleep in the extra bed.
Anonymous said…
For any honeymoon even a forced one you should have taken the 'Waterlily' room with the Bathtub-in-the-room accomodation.

Prakash
Arunabha Ghosh said…
This was hilarious. Why didn't the Water Lily room have a water bed instead - it would have solved two problems at once!!!

I have heard about Luang Prabhang's beauty, so look forward to the next blog and photos.
Anonymous said…
A hilarious one. GREAT WRITING INDEED
Anonymous said…
I will have to tell you the story of our "honeymoon" later!


( Eagerly waiting for Sriram's contribution to my blog!---- Nidhi)
Anonymous said…
HHHHAAAA HAAAA I'll send you one of this type of trips on our 30 th ann...when i get back. presently i am in blore at ayurveda detoxing..both body and mind and away from bhupi...

dolly

(I am loving the fact that my blog has triggered nostalgia! Looking forward to more such stories---NIdhi)
Unknown said…
This was totally hilarious! You should have taken the water lily room and relived your honeymoon.
haa haa. Loved the laotian regulations on drugs, movies and cramblings- more an entertainment than a deterrent!

Nice pics of the monks Nidhi uncle.

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