Our flight to Luang Prabang is very pleasant, especially the view we have of the town itself, nestled between the rivers and mountains, as the plane comes in to land. We arrive in the afternoon, take a truck to the Koun Sahan Guest House where we find a nice, cheap room (we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 a night, people) and feed ourselves some tasty curry and noodles.
The locals are setting up for the famous night market, starting as early as about 4pm, so we take a look at some of their stalls and then walk around and take stock of our surroundings. There are some interesting-looking temples around and we decide that we'll catch an evening performance of traditional Lao dance and song. The performance is good, though my undiscerning eye and lack of knowledge have me unable to see too much in it that is very different from what we saw in Cambodia. Afterwards we walk back through the night market, which is alive now and packed with such beautiful wares! I commission a wall-hanging as a gift for Mom and Dad (the challenge will be finding the same people tomorrow so that I can pick it up) and then we retire to the guest house.
The next morning we decide to take the Lonely Planet-recommended walking tour which would allow us to get the lay of the land, see both rivers and a slew of temples.
We take it slow, taking our time to admire things like the plant above, which Dr. Seuss would undoubtedly call a "shmantalove." We also take LOTS of photos.
We explore the beautiful royal palace and outside are witness to the folks above who are clearly having some sort of photo shoot. Are they the newest, hottest Lao pop stars? Are they shooting a catalog ad for "Reds R Us?" Who knows?
We make our way around the town center, weaving about and sometimes crossing back over the main streets where the night marketers again set up shop.
On our way through the vegetable market we encounter this cuddly coven of kitties. Mew.
We make our way around to the Mekong River just as the sun is starting to get heavy and Uncle Chava gets this awesome silhouette-style shot.As dusk starts to settle, we find ourselves wandering around more of the many temples and suddenly gongs are ringing, summoning the monks to evening prayer.
The monks gather quickly and begin to bow and chant.
The chanting makes for a wonderful sound-track to the beautiful mosaics and peaceful courtyards. As we leave one temple and approach the next, we begin to hear more chanting with different rhythms and tones. The chanting of the monks from each temple slowly blends with the next and then eventually the chanting of the first monks fades away. This goes on as we walk for blocks and blocks and is simply magical.Eventually we make it back into the central part of town where we have a nice, authentic meal and then book an elephant tour for the following day.
The next morning we are picked up at our guest house by the folks from the elephant camp where we booked our tour. We take a dusty, bumpy 45 minute ride through the countryside in the back of a pickup truck (it has built-in benches). An elephant camp is a place where sick elephants, and elephants who have been captured by poachers (but subsequently rescued) work and are cared for. When we arrive, we are introduced to our guide and a sick, but friendly old female elephant called Ma-Oh. We learn that only female elephants live at the camp since this is the way elephants prefer things. Generally the babies live with their mother and then when they grow up the lady elephants stick together and the elephant dudes take off and go it alone.
We get to watch the elephants return from their first ride out...
before taking a ride of our own on the back of Mae-Houn, who is friendly, but much more interested in eating vegetation than staying on the trail. After riding around on Mae-Houn and feeding her a few bunches of bananas (which she ate whole with the peals still on), we take a small boat a short way down the Nam Khan river to visit the Tad Sae waterfall...
Which is beautiful with its many cascades. We do some swimming and exploring and soon it is time to get back on the truck and head to town.We decide to finish our walking tour where we left off the previous evening. We buy some books for Lao kids at a shop called Big Brother Mouse and then we walk along the Nam Khan river...
Where we come upon these folks in the midst of building a bridge. We run into a bunch of roosters living in woven cages and some kids playing soccer at a local, very modest temple. We distribute our books to some grateful youngsters, stop at a foreign bookstore where I sell a book that I've finished, and then head up to Wat Phu Si, the temple at the top of a large hill in between Luang Prabang's two main streets.
This proves a wonderful location for watching the sunset.
And also a very popular one. We get some photos and then head into town to buy plane tickets to Bangkok for the following day (we had flirted with the idea of taking a slow boat, but in the end determined that such a route would end up cutting too much into the time we'd allotted for loitering in Thailand).I take one last look around the calm, colorful night market (my only regret from the whole trip is not having bought more of the beautiful, well-crafted items available there), have one more tasty Lao sandwich, and call it an early night since our flight leaves at 6:00am.
Goodbye to lovely, languorous Luang Prabang.
