Luang Prabang

Monday, March 23rd

Our hotel room is on the street quite close to where we ate one of our better breakfasts, also near the street. Unfortunately, this street, between the hotel and the Mekong is quite busy, including very early in the morning when people take boats across the river. And please don't mention the roosters!

Directly across the road the "good old boys" load and unload vans, when they're needed, otherwise they just pass the time.

First stop on today's itinerary - a visit to the charity bookshop where it's "customary" to buy books to take to a village school - next stop on our list. However, our guise tells us that many schools already have too many books, and we don't have the ready cash today anyway. We resolved to return tomorrow and buy a small pack of books ($75!) to go in the distribution box for later deliver.

Next stop, a drive into the country to visit a H'Mong village - along the way we saw the local market place, closed today it seems.

There's also a school nearby, with an ad-hoc bicycle "parking lot".

The village is clearly poor given the materials used for housing. Apparently the locals don't know how to measure (accurately), but what does that matter? Here they have pegged out the area of a new house and will construct the "footings" tomorrow.

The use wood for cooking, and during the dry season (now) they collect enough to get them through the wet season (June, July, August).

Prue didn't trust this bridge, but it had metal supports and our guide said he'd seen as many as ten people on it.

This girl was sitting with her mother, who was making roofing from palm leaves, and her grandmother.

The nearby river is a source of water for washing and drinking, but it contains a lot of calcium, and is also used by other villages upstream. They construct small "wells" beside the river to filter the water before using it. They also boil before drinking (we hope).

This is a newly constructed bamboo and thatch house - metal or fibro cement roofs are too expensive for many.

Another cute girl sat patiently on her own.

We heard chanting inside a nearby house and our guide said we could take a look. Inside a Shaman was conducting some kind of ritual. Balanced on a plank on which he rocked up and down, he chanted towards a kind of altar. His face was masked so he could concentrate on the spirits, rather than the people in the room. We were invited in, given chairs to sit on, and allowed to take pictures - however, we never felt comfortable, and it was actually hotter inside than outside.

60% of Lao is Buddhist, 30% Anamist (like the Shaman) and the other 10% a mixture of other religions.

We headed to the Mekong upstream to take a boat trip to some nearby caves - this restaurant was appealing, but we only used their Happy Rooms.

The caves are just across the river, and our boat (one for just us) was waiting at the "dock". In the wet season, the river rises as high as the restaurant.

A typical Mekong boat design - once used by locals to travel to town, they have been usurped by cars and buses and are now mainly used by tourists. The boatman, with or without family, usually lives aboard.

The Mekong is quite wide, flows quickly, and is full of debris, as well as submerged and exposed rocks!

Our driver was clearly very skilled, managing to steer a very long and narrow boat across a reasonably fast flowing river, and bringing into the "mooring" with pin-point accuracy.

There are two caves - one low down on the right, and another higher up to the left. Once used as pre-historic dwellings, and more recently to escape the war, they now have religious (Buddhist) significance

The dock was getting  bit crowded when we arrived, although each boat was probably only carrying a small group of tourists.

The lower cave is the smallest, but also the more interesting - it's filled with Buddha statues brought for all kinds of reasons, not all religious.

The cave is not very deep, but nowadays people are not allowed to climb into the cave (probably because it's covered in moss, rather than because further damage will be done).

This particular contribution to the Buddha collection is a piece of wood with numerous Buddhas carved into its surface.

Back at the dock, a quite interesting "luxury" boat pulled in - meanwhile, our boat has moved down the queue - it's kind of a "first in, first out" system.

The climb to the higher cave was up some 250 steps - while it wasn't exceptionally hot, it was enough to get very hot at the top. The second cave is more cavernous (!) than the first, and has a flatter floor.

I found it less interesting, but the carving over the entrance was very nice.

Back on the boat we headed back to Luang Prabang, almost an hour away - we reckon we're doing about 10km/hour, current assisted. It would take twice as long going the other way.

Passing traffic...

I got interested in the idea of going down the Mekong from the Thai border (two days upstream) to Vientiane (three days downstream).

Coming into Luang Prabang - the hill in the background is in the centre of town.

Before lunch, we dropped into our hotel to change rooms - we're down on the upper floor which proves to be a bit quiter, and a bit more secure (if you worry about those kinds of things).

After a light lunch (me a delicious sandwich, and Prue a bowl of fruit salad), we got bck aboard and headed for the pottery village - just across the river, and slightly downstream.

There's a dragon boat in the village, used by the local team in the annual August boat racing carnival. Having seen one dragon boat, we started to see them everywhere - the boat racing carnival would be something to see, especially with the Mekong in flood.

Once a very busy potter making village, production has declined because of commercial competition. We saw many disused kilns in the village, and this is the only one still in used. It's built underground, takes days to heat up, a week to cool down, and only then can someone get inside to remove the pots - now there's a job I wouldn't want.

I guess this is one batch of pots - they are sold in the local markets, and occasionally to hotels which use them for decoration. Given they can only make pots in the dry season, pottery no longer contributes much income to the village.

The chimney is used to help cool down the kiln once the firing is complete.

The ticket collector - another source of income for the village.

We showered (I needed cooling down) and looked for our evening drink - no G&T's here, so I get a large Lao Beer and Prue a coconut "juice". Unfortunately, the juice was off, and got replaced by a lemon and mint drink - much better for Prue's still sensitive stomach.

This place was nice, so we decided to stay for dinner - Thai soup for Prue, Mekong fish soup for me. Too bad about the lack of fish in my soup, but at least the flavour was good.