Luang Phabang

I hardly know where to begin. I hardly know where I ended last time!

This trip has felt like a series of starts. I start doing something, and then change direction. Start doing something else, and then change direction, again. It's a bit frustrating at times. And I feel like a skipping stone: bouncing from one thing to the next without really getting deeper than the surface. Until I suddenly sink.

After leaving Ban Na, Angela and I traveled together toward Luang Phabang (a small, very restful town in the center of the northern part of Laos). We took a bus to Vang Vien, then hoped onto another bus to the tiny town of Kasi. Vang Vien is famous for the adventure experience: caving, hiking, swimming, kayaking, etc. And is in the middle of Karst topography, so is incredibly beautiful! But off we went in search of a less touristy experience. And we got it. Sort of.

Kais is basically a wide spot in the road where the buses stop for meals on the way north and south. So there are a plethora of places to eat, though they all sell the same food with only minor variations. We found a room (a bit of a dive, but what do you expect for $5 per night for two people) and spent the night recovering from our journey. One thing I have learned here it that it takes at least a day to get anywhere by public trans.

The next day, we got up and started exploring. The guide book mentions "rumored caves" and we started searching for them. Asking, in our meager Lao, "Where are the caves?" We were pointed south, along the road we had traveled the previous day and so started walking. Stopping periodically to ask again, "Are the caves this way?" Yes, yes! with a wave south, was always the answer, until we met an old woman working on a sticky rice basket. "Are the caves this way?" we ask. "Oyi!" she says, and calls her son. "Are the caves this way?" we ask, again. "No! They are the other way," the way we had just come from! What can you do but laugh! The wonderful perk though, was that we found, by pure chance, the only fluent English teacher in the town!

He and his friend acted as tour guides taking us to two caves and a waterfall. These two natural wonders mean something slightly different in Thai/Lao than in English I think. "Caves" are almost always shallow and almost always have Buddha's in them -- I think they have some sort of religious significance, though I am not sure what. "Waterfalls" are sometimes what we think of as a waterfall, but can also be what we call a "rapids" where the water falls only a foot or even a few inches. They were all beautiful though! Angela and I spent the day, just resting in the quiet and the green! Beautiful!

Next day it was on to the big city of Luang Phabang. It has become a tourist haven. It is always a shock to me to see Farang after spending weeks surrounded by Laos people, I forget that I am one too. So, as usual, in my 6-year old way, I started pointing out all the Farang I saw ("Oh, look! there is a Farang!"). This lasted until Angela dared me to point them all out! I quickly realized that I would be saying nothing but "Farang!" for days, and stopped.

Luang Phabang is a very restful city. I can't quite figure out why. Some of is the presence of all the Farang (Black, White, and Asian -- technically "Nippon" I was told by a Thai person). Some of it is the presence of the blend of Western and Eastern architecture. Some of it is the fact that during the day, all the Farang head out on tours, and those that stay in the city are very quite and slow and peaceful. Not running frantically from site to sight to see it all as quickly as possible.

Most of our days we spent being lazy, but on my last day, I did the "frantic tourist" thing and went on not one, but two "treks!" One was a lazy boat trip (2.5 hours round trip) to see the "Buddha Caves," "Whiskey Village," and "Paper Village." The latter two are villages that specialize in making whiskey and paper to sell to tourists. Cool to see the whole process, but I was more than happy to skip sampling the whiskey. The Buddha Caves are two caves on the river full of, you guessed it, Buddha statues. People take their old, damaged Buddha's to the caves as a good place to let them sink back into the Universe. It is surprisingly restful, and Romantically beautiful, to visit all the dust covered statues.

That afternoon I took a second trek to the "Waterfall." An hour by tuk-tuk to one of the most spectacular sites I've seen here. The waterfall is very tall and falls first down the cliff, and then from rich turquoise pool to rich turquoise pool. It reminded me of postcards of a tropical island, somewhere no one ever goes. Or a tiny bit of Yellowstone National Park. Awesome in the literal sense of the word.

Next day I flew (going way over budget!) down to Pakxe where I made the trek out to Wat Phou. A Khmer ruin that was one of the first World Heritage Sites in Laos. It is Huge! and, again, very beautiful. It is one of the largest ruins outside of Cambodia. Again, very Romantic climb up steep-steep stairs to two "palaces" and a temple where wonderful carvings of ancient figures are still crisp and new looking!

I had a bit of an adventure getting there. And a bit of a whirl-wind visit. Up in the morning early in LP for one last tourist moment: a fantastic view of the Monks collecting alms in the morning. This is a tradition that occurs all over Thailand and Laos. The monks go out in the morning around 5 or 6am and walk the streets with big silvery bowls (and bags). The people line the streets, kneeling, with their offerings in hand. As the monks pass by, food from the people is placed in the bowl that the monks carry. (For those who remember, Jacob got to go with the monks on the morning we spent in the Forest Temple (I didn't get to go, being a woman) -- I think I posted that story, maybe not) The corner outside my hotel was one of the most amazing places to see this event. At about 6:20am, literally hundreds of Orange clad monks filed past, one at a time, walking down the hill and around the corner. Each collecting a small handful of food from each of the 10 or so people kneeling on the corner. The sight was only marred by the presence of other Farang running around photographing the event.

Tuk-tuk to the airport and a domestic flight from the north of Laos to the south of Laos -- not really that different from domestic flights anywhere, except that the announcements were all in Lao. And the x-ray machine was at the very entrance to the airport.

In Pakxe I shared a tuk-tuk to a hotel, but changed my mind at the last minute and caught a bus to Champasake -- once the capital of one of the three kingdoms in Laos when the French colonised it, now a wide spot on the road. The most exciting part of the trip, other than the old man who spoke very good English and told me about the history of this part of the country, was the fact that the bus I was on, took a ferry ride across the river! A bus on a ferry! A ferry, mind you, that is only big enough for about 6 cars. At my hotel, I rented a motorcycle and drove like a lunatic (sans helmet) the 15km to the ruins. There I payed my 3,000kip ($3.00 US) to enter the grounds and spent the next 3 hours wandering around in the blazing sun climbing many long sets of stairs to the rather small temple on the side of the hill. It was beautiful though. And worth it. And it was very cool to explore along the cliff wall behind the temple to see all the carvings and whatnot, made in the thousand or so years since the temple was built. (As an art-historian, I have to admit a shocking lack of knowledge about this part of the world, so I can't say much more than this about it).

Going down again, I had a wonderful bowl of soup (no meat!) and as a result, got locked in! Imagine me riding my scooter around the grounds, going from closed gate to closed gate, trying to talk to people and figure out how to get home! Very comic. I eventually made it out, only to get stopped on the road by some sort of procession! Girls with "money trees" and crazy women blocking traffic on the road, offering shots of Lao-Lao to drivers, and then demanding donations for getting the drivers drunk! The often quoted excuse, "It makes me a better driver..." may actually have been true in my case.