UNESCO Heritage
Luang Prabang — Big Brother Mouse
Mekong sunsets, green papaya salad, and an hour spent practising English with three students who walked two days to get here.
Golden Hour
Sunsets on the Mekong
Luang Prabang sits at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan, a UNESCO World Heritage town where saffron-robed monks collect alms at dawn and the whole riverfront turns amber by five o’clock. The best seat in the house is any wooden terrace facing west — order a Beerlao, watch the slow boats drift, and let the sky do the rest.
The town itself is a living museum: French colonial shophouses alongside gilded wats, night markets spilling down every lane, and the unmistakable scent of tam mak hoong — Lao green papaya salad, pounded fresh in a clay mortar with padaek (fermented fish paste), lime, chilli, and cherry tomatoes. It’s sharper and funkier than its Thai cousin som tam, and once you’ve tried the Lao version you won’t go back.
The River at Dusk
Three Views, One Sunset
Big Brother Mouse
Books, English, and Two Days Walking
Big Brother Mouse was founded by Sasha Alyson in 2006 as a literacy project for rural Laos, a country where most villages had never seen a children’s book in their own language. The organisation publishes Lao-language books, distributes them to village schools, and runs a reading room in Luang Prabang where travellers can drop in to practise English with young Lao students.
The format is simple: you sit across a table from a student and talk. No lesson plan, no curriculum — just conversation. The students are there because they want to be. Some of them have walked for two days from hill-tribe villages to reach the city.
The Students
Down, Sing & Ying
