Starting at dusk each night, the main street of Luang Prabang is set up for business with fruit stands like this one.

We found ourselves trying a few fruits that we'd never had before as well as a few regular favorites.

It's not every day that you come across a few buddhist monks shopping for bootleg cds, but there really is something for everyone at the Luang Prabang night market.

Steve even found the copy of "Open Rock No. 1: In Your Hard" that he had been looking for all over Asia.

The artisans of Luang Prabang spread out their items for sale on the clean sidewalk. Steve picked up a handmade shirt and I bought a pair of Hobbit pants from this lady.

Rice paper lamps are another popular item for sale from the night market and surrounding stores. They also give the city streets a nice warm glow at night.

These lamps look almost glowing hot air balloons primed to float off into the night sky.

This man was playing (and also selling) the Erhu, a traditional Chinese instrument. An Erhu has a range of about three octaves and sounds sort of like a violin to me, but the tone is much thinner because the Erhu has a much smaller resonating chamber that's shaped like a drum and covered in snakeskin.

Since I play the fiddle back home in Virginia, I wanted to take a turn sawing on the strings of the Erhu. Photo by Steve Iams.

Although it took some practice and some patient coaxing from the local expert, I was able to get a few clean notes from the Erhu. Photo by Steve Iams.

My new musician friend even taught me a simple traditional song on the Erhu, and by the time we stopped playing a few passing travelers were tossing some change to us. Photo by Steve Iams.

These umbrellas were lit from underneath by a few light bulbs giving them a warm glow.

Steve and I named the local currency "Trabongs" in honor of my "Wong Trabong" gaffe at the airport. Just so you know, 10,000 kip equals one trabong (a trabong is also conveniently pegged one to one to the dollar). With so much good stuff on sale in Luang Prabang, we both dropped more trabongs than we had planned.

I think this lamp ran about 20 trabongs, quite a good price!

Once we had our fill of the night market, we headed over to food stall lane for some excellent cheap eats.

I thought that maybe I would get the smoked pig face some other time though.

This woman made the best chicken on a bamboo stick, so we went back to her stall several times to have her excellent grilled and marinated chicken wrapped in a banana leaf. Sure beats KFC!

Our chicken on a stick was roasted over the glowing hot coals right in front of us.

One night there was even a birthday party at the chicken on a stick stand.

When I asked for a drink from a nearby stand, they poured it into a bag and dropped a few chunks of ice inside so I had to hold on to it even when I was eating. Photo by Steve Iams.

Steve made friends with this fellow sitting next to him at the communal table at food stall alley and learned a little bit about how the local people eat their dinners in Laos.