on to Laos part II!
Luang Prabang is known as one of the most picturesque cities in Laos - surrounded by 2 rivers and decked out with buddhist temples full of young monks dressed in saffron robes (often chatting with curious foreigners). LP reveals a confluence of Laos and French culture - streets are lined not only with Laos restaurants serving Laap (minced buffalo meat with mint and other leafy veggies), but with french bakeries and crepe stands (with REAL french style crepes - Erik had at least one nutella and peanutbutter crepe every evening as a little midnight snack before bed). YUM.
While the surrounding areas are really beautiful, a lot of it is covered up this time of year by an ashy haze that comes from destructive slash and burn agriculture (not the best way to sustain your environment). You'd be sitting their at a restaurant in town, enjoying your delicious nutella crepe, and literally have to "brush ya shoulders off" (as Jay-Z would say) every 5 minutes to get rid of the ash that drifts down out of the sky. blah.
But the area really does have some gorgeous spots to check out...pic time!!
Kuang Si Waterfall - a giant waterfall that leads into 5 pools of cool turquoise water. We spent a whole afternoon there with Ben and Emma playing around:
They also have a bear rescue center just before the entrance of Kuang Si Waterfall where they keep bears that they have rescued from poachers in the bear bile business. Bear bile is extremely valuable because it is used in a lot of chinese medicines. Inhumane pieces of scum capture the furry little guys and keep them in small cages and surgically insert a latex catheter into their gall bladders to obtain their bile. It's just so terrible - but luckily there are now several organizations, such as this one, that are looking to protect these bears. The ones located in the rehabilitiation center near Kuang Si were all sun bears, and looked to be doing really well. They had a huge jungle gym to play on with lots of comfy hammocks to laze in and balls to play with.
look at the furry baby:
Here's us making friends with one of the cutie bear statues outside of the rescue center:
We also took a 2 hour long tail boat out of Luang Prabang to see the Pak Ou caves along the shores of the Mekong River. Even though you had to pay 20,000 kip to get in, 5,000 kip to rent a flashlight, and 5,000 kip to take a piss (oh and they encourage you to donate money to the restoration of the site), it was totally worth it to see the hundreds of buddha statues kept inside the cave.
Here's a pic taken from the boat of the outside of the cave:
View from inside:
Sunset during the boatride home:
And then there's Selok. We met this dude while erik was getting his daily chocolate/peanut butter crepe. He hangs out there every night because he has a thing for the cute girl that makes the crepes. He's actually from the countryside but is living and working temporarily at a restaurant along the Mekong river so that he can go to school and learn English in Luang Prabang. And he really does literally LIVE at the restaurant - he works there all day (6am-9pm) with a few hours of class in the afternoon, goes to sleep on one of the restaurant tables at the end of the night, and wakes up and does it again the next day. When we met him, he had only been studying English for 2 months, and so only knew a few words, but he was really excited to be able to practice with us. He gave us the business card for the restaurant and we went and visited him again the next day so that we could help him with his english some more. He was so happy to have met us, and did his best to show his gratification and express his affection for us. The funny thing is, because of his lack of understanding of the English language and of American culture, the way that he went about it made him seem entirely homosexual. Examples: He told Erik that he was "very handsome" and looked like a "superhero". After telling me that he "loved" me, he looked at erik and said "and maybe I love YOU". To top it off, when he went to say goodbye, he gave me a a big hug and then threw his arms open to erik with a huge smile, looking to give him a huge interlocked affectionate hug. Erik quickly dodged his advance and demonstrated a proper western-style "bro hug" (hips apart, with one hand clasped, the other giving a man-pat on the back). Too funny. We gave him our mailing adress so that we can be penpals :) (let's just hope he doesn't draw little hearts and flowers on his letter to erik).
Here's a pic of me with Selok at the restaurant he works at:
Luang Prabang actually has a curfew - everyone has to be home by 11:30pm because most people get up at 6:00am to cook rice and buy bananas to give as offerings (alms) to the monks when they walk around the city at 6:30am. The food offerings are an important ritual not only because the monks' diet is made up almost entirely of what is donated by the laymen, but also because these offerings supposedly give good karma to the people (usually women) who donate. It was damn early, but we were so glad we got up to see it:
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After a few days in Luang Prabang, we took a windy 7 hour bus through the mountains to Luang Nam Tha. The main thing thing that draws visitors here are the opportunities for trekking through its protected rainforest and visiting with hill tribes in the surrounding areas. We signed up to do a 2 day trek with a couple other travelers (these awesome brits named Jake and Kathy as well as a couple from Belgium). Our local guide, Noi (in the black hat with shades), was caught somewhere between the traditions of his tribe and city life - sporting his traditional shirt with a baseball hat, designer shades, and a cell phone. And he, like every other guide, somehow managed to hike the entire way in flip flops...
Lunchtime: Sticky rice, buffalo Laap, stirfried morning glory, and cooked bamboo. After we made bowls out of banana leaves, everyone ate with their hands.
In the late afternoon, we came to a village of hilltribe people known as the Lantan (172 people - but some were away studying school in the city). All over North Vietnam, Laos, and Chiang Mai travel agencies tout the opportunity to visit with a hilltribe village - but a lot of these tribes have become used to vanloads of falangs coming through with their huge SLR's and fannypacks. They get so over run that the visit ends up being something more of a day at the zoo. The cool thing is that we were the 4th group of foreigners ever to come through and visit the Lantan people - they were so genuinely welcoming. Jake and Kathy brought a ball and a jump rope - the kids were ECSTATIC and so we played with them for probably 4 hours. Then we had dinner with the village chief in his hut (rice, tomato curry, buffalo meat) and Noi facilitated discussion between us and the rest of the tribe so we could get to know eachother better. We learned more about things like - how the chief is selected (by vote), at what age women get married (16), where they work (in a field about a 2 hour walk away), where their group is originally from (China), how they feel about having foreigners coming to visit (excited). They asked us questions like - what is the weather like in your country? How many times a day do you eat rice (they eat it 3 times a day!)? Do your parents feed the chickens in the morning? Do you grow your own food? It was really great getting to really know the people - it felt like a really genuine experience - as opposed to the awkwardness of feeling like you are looking at monkeys in a cage. We ended the night sitting around a fire (there's no electricity), while they chatted and we played cards. They loved watching us shuffle because they've never seen a deck of cards before. The village chief's son came out with a small bottle of "lao lao" whisky, and shared a round of shots with us, followed by a round of half shots (it was so sweet, they wanted to give us as much as they could, but it was obviously precious stuff to them). When the other 2 couples went to bed, erik and i stayed up and played one more round of cards around the fire. Our translator had gone to bed, and so the 10 remaining villlagers literally just sat there and stared at us while we played, talking amongst themselves. The only word erik and i could understand was "Falang" which literally means "French" but is used as a general word to refer to white foreigners. And it popped up in nearly every sentence. They were so curious - about our skin, our eyes, our language, our clothes, our height, our straight white smiles, our crazy cameras that record images, etc. Each couple spent the night in a different village hut - Erik and I were in the chief's hut, sleeping next the translator under a mosquito net. We went to bed around 830pm with the rest of the village because everyone gets up around 6am to make breakfast and feed the pigs and chickens. When we left the next morning, the entire village followed us as we headed out to finish our trekk - a bunch of the kids even climbed up into the trees to get a better look at us as we made our way into up the path into the jungle. SO cool. HUGE highlight of this trip. Check out the pics:
Really cute: one of the older girls used one of the hackey sacks that Jake and Kathy brought to entice one of the babies into learning how to walk:
Erik, Kathy, Jake:
Our two favorites: LOVED to kick the ball around. Whenever they got really excited, they'd stamp their feet and wave their arms around really fast like they were dancing and couldn't contain themselves. They were as close as brothers - totally attached at the hip and always posing together for pictures:
Dinner in the chief's hut:
Saying goodbye:
:-) That's about it guys. So overall, Laos was friggin incredible - it offers a good variety of experiences - from complete touristic indulgence floating the Nam Song in Vang Vieng to more cultural experiences in the North. So get there! Erik and I are definitely planning on going back some day...
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