Luang Prabang

Ah! back in Laos! Back to the laid back attitudes and rhythms of life that give Laotion towns their unique character, quite different from those in Vietnam. Luang Prabang is rather an architype of this general atmosphere that pervades the country and is lovely for it. Saying that, I have taken quite the opposite approach during the 3 days that I have been here, and have packed in as much as possible to my time here in order to make the most of it. For this reason, I’m going to keep this post rather brief, or else we could be here for a while…

I arrived in Luang Prabang around 10 am on Monday, after a short 20ish mile cycle down the road from where I had stopped the previous night. After checking into the hostel and taking a quick shower, I set off around the town centre to visit the many temples and buddist monuments, including the one on top of Phousi Hill, which has spectacular views over the town, and the national museum, which as well as a temple includes the former royal palace. It was lovely too just to wander the streets as I ambled from one temple to the next. The peaceful Mekong River runs through the centre of Luang Prabang, it is also a very green and leafy town, and it also has a large french influence to much of is architecture, giving it a charmingly quirky feel. Late in the afternoon, I was wandering down a pretty side street when I noticed an interesting billboard outside of a building asking for English speaking tourists to volunteer for drop in english conversation practice sessions for school students. In fact, the session was just beginning, so I went inside and spent a really uplifting couple of hours talking with really enthusiastic and driven Laotion teenagers about myself, my life and my travels, their lives growing up in Laos and their hopes and dreams for the future. The English school which was running the session is volunteer lead by a group of expats and funded by donations. Education in also is not free in Laos and most of the teenagers that I was talking to came from quite poor backgrounds, so they were all really positive about the impact that being able to learn English would have for their future prospects. Also, their English was really good!

On Tuesday morning I got up on early and set out on my bike to Kuang Si waterfalls, which are about 20miles outside of town. This decision was largely based on the advice of the teenagers the night before, who had all agreed that it was one of the best things to visit near the town, and that I should go and visit. It was good advice. As well as the waterfalls, which were beautiful, the waterfall complex also includes a bear sanctuary for Asiatic or moon bears who have been rescued from poachers who hunt them for their paws, claws, gallbladder and bile, which are all used in traditional medicine. A few hundred metres back down the road their is also a butterfly park, opened by a couple of Dutch expats, and home to a host of local butterfly species. While I was there I was lucky enough to see a caterpillar building it’s cocoon around itself right infront of my eyes, and also see several butterflies unwinding and rewinding their ‘probiscus’ (spiral tongue) as they fed on fruit at the feeding stations. A little further back towards town, I visited Laos buffalo dairy, a new project set up by a group of expats to develop the dairy industry in Laos, whilst helping local farmers along the way. My next stop was to exhibition of Hmong culture. The Hmong are the same ethnic group as the people in the village that I visited in Sapa, and make up a large proportion of the Laos population. Infact, only 53% of the Laos population are ethnic Laos, and the rest come from other ethnic minorities, of which Hmong is one. This means that for the other 47% percent of the population Laos is usually their second language, and if they speak English it is their third! This included most of the teenagers that I was speaking to the night before, which makes their level of English even more impressive! I made it back to town on Tuesday with just enough time to grab a bite to eat before making my way to a little place that I had heard about for an evening of story-telling of Laos folk tales accompanied by traditional music. It was enchanting!

Today (Wednesday), I got up even earlier than the previous day, and went out into the streets to watch the buddist alms giving ceremony, which begins around sunrise. Local people sit out along the street with offerings of food (usually sticky rice) and processions of monks come out from the temples and walk along the streets, carrying baskets or bowls for the faithful to put their offerings into. In buddism, this is seen not as an act of charity but as an opportunity for the faithful to earn merit and enlightenment. It is believed that as a layperson empties their cup of rice into the monk’s bowl, they receive a spiritual blessing from the monk. The community believes that it is their duty to care for the physical needs of the monks, since the monks are working for the spiritual well-being of the community. In this way, everyone benefits. Poor families who don’t have enough food will also sometimes send out children with a bowl or basket, and the monks will share out some of their food to the children, so that everyone gets enough.

After watching the Alms giving ceremony, I went to walk around the morning food market, which unlike touristy night markets full of souvenirs, is a functioning grocery market where locals go to do their shopping. I looked on cheerfully at the arrays of colourful fresh fruits and vegetables, and with a mixture of horror, morbid curiosity, and queeziness at the selection of things that passed for meat: live chickens and fish, dead wild birds such as finches and pigeons, frogs, squirrels, beetles, maggots, hollow sticks of bamboo slit open to reveal wriggling larvae, and all manner of other creatures, big and small. It seemed to me that in Laos, if it moves, it’s fair game.

In the afternoon, I visited the museum of unexploded ordnance (UXO), which documents the ‘secret’ bombing campaigns in Laos during the Vietnam war and it’s far reaching consequences. Laos holds the unfortunate accolade of being the most bombed country in the world – more bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war than were dropped during the whole of the Second World War. Additionally, because at the time the bombing campaigns were not officially declared or admitted to, the armed forces were not obliged to follow the usual ‘codes of engagement’ that are usually adhered to, such as only focusing on confirmed targets, limiting damage to less military significant areas, etc. After UXO, I visited the museum of traditional arts and Ethnology, a collection of information about the cultures of the ethnic minority groups in Laos, such as the Hmong, as well as others.

As I mentioned already, I feel that I have managed to pack rather a lot into my three days in Luang Prabang – I certainly don’t think I could have fit in much more! Tomorrow morning I will go down to the docks to catch another riverboat. The journey down the river will take two days, with a stop off in a village tomorrow night, before catching another boat the next day to carry on down the river. By Friday night, I will have reached the Thai border. However before crossing over the border I have one more adventure in Laos planned, and this one is in the jungle!