Luang Prabang, Laos – Feb. 12-15

(Sorry for the long lag time in posting this entry.  We were really busy after we left Laos….)

Luang Prabang, ancient capital of the kingdom of Laos and UNESCO World Heritage Site (to protect the numerous wats, or Buddhist monestaries) has become a tourist mecca.  LP is a definite “must” on the backpacker tour of Southeast Asia.  As a result, Westerners almost outnumber Laotians on the streets.  There are discos, lots of cheap places to eat, and a pizza parlor that was thronged with young Americans, Brits, Germans, and Australians at 10 p.m. Saturday night.  Unfortunately, this is our only stop here and, as a result, I fear we haven’t seen the “real” Laos.    Nonetheless, we’ve seen some interesting and beautiful things and, all in all, I’m glad we came.

It looked for a while like we weren’t going to make it.  When we tried to check in at the Hanoi airport, the agent asked for the credit card we had used to buy the ticket.  Credit cards are still pretty rare here and, I think there is a high incidence of fraud so people are very strict.  Unfortunately, the card we used to pay for the ticket was one we decided to leave at home.  After a few minutes of communication difficulty, the solution presented itself.  We bought our tickets with American dollars and will get a refund from the credit card company when we get home.

Ralph had warned me that, from what he had read, Laos was much less developed than Vietnam.  I was prepared for that but I was still surprised when about half of our ride from the airport to our hotel was on an unpaved road.  (Or maybe the road was last paved in the 60’s some time.)

Outside the arrival gate, once again, were a couple of young men with a “Ralph Elder” sign.  They took us to Le Bel Air Resort.  We deliberately chose a place to stay that was outside Luang Prabang proper and I’m glad we did.   It was a great place to retreat to in the heat of the day.  The old bridge across the Nan Ouhm River was literally steps from the hotel.  (You can see the shadow of the bridge in the picture at the right.)  The old bridge is now used just for motorbikes and pedestrians so it was pretty quiet (compared to what it would have been if there were car traffic.)

It was about a 15 minute walk into town.  The staff at the hotel that first night were quite concerned when we said we were going to walk to town for dinner.  I assumed they were concerned about street crime but, again after a few minutes of fractured communication, their real concern became clear.  They thought it was too dark!  I guess they aren’t used to old geezers like me being able to make my way on a dimly-lit street.

The hotel is new and still has a few bugs to work out (like getting our hot water to work) but the staff were very friendly and helpful.  The one exception is that they failed to tell us that the locks provided for their bicycles were too flimsy for the local bike thieves.  We took bikes into town the second day of our visit, locked them up and went to lunch.  When we came back, I was just looking at the street scene and I heard Ralph say “Uh oh”.  The bikes were gone and we were on the hook to replace them.   We later found out that ours were the 3rd and 4th bikes to be stolen within the last week.  New locks are on order but won’t arrive until next week.  Petty theft rears its ugly head in Luang Prabang.  Other than this we heard nothing about any other crime. 

You can definitely go into “wat overload” in Luang Prabang.  A “wat” is much like a monastery, with barracks for the monks, temples, shrines and assorted other buildings.  There must be 2 dozen wats in and around LP.  I visited 3 of them; Ralph went to a couple more.  The art on and in the temple is always interesting and sometimes just jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Here’s a sample from one of the largest wats in LP, built in the 18th century.  (The fact that the wats in LP are so modern was a surprise.  I assumed they were ancient but not so.)

This blue tile mosaic lotus flower is about a foot tall.  It was one of about 10 or 12 that were outside the front door of the temple.

 

 

 

 

There was a conduit, sort of like a roof gutter,  in the temple that is used in special ceremonies.  Water is poured in at one end.  At the other end of the gutter the water pours out onto a statue of Buddha.  The water drains out the floor of the temple in a special drain pipe and comes out the mouth of this elephant.  Having passed over the Buddha, this water is holy water and is used for all sorts of other ceremonies.

Mosaic (one of many) on the outside of the temple.

 

 

 

 

The seven-headed Naga at the entrance to the wat.  These Nagas were everywhere in Laos and Cambodia.  Almost every bridge we saw in towns, including the modern ones, had Nagas on either side.

 

 

There were a couple of the wats that deserve special mention, just because they made me smile – Wat Phot Phai (pronounced “watt pot pie”) and Wat Wassop (say it out loud if you can’t figure out why it made me laugh).

Monasteries, of course, imply that there are monks.  They were pretty much everywhere but they weren’t what I expected.  I thought that they would be mostly shriveled-up old men (like Ben Kingsley in the movie “Ghandi”).  But the fact was that there were men and boys (we saw no nuns) of all ages, from 8 to 80, walking around in their saffron robes.  Later we found out that, unlike Catholic monks, Buddhist monks do not take a lifelong vow.  They have the option to leave at any time.  The boy monks go to school and the older monks meditate and pray.  The village or town supports them all.  One of Ralph’s most memorable moments of Luang Prabang was seeing a group of monks who were all under 12 years old who had gone to the river to cool off.  They had piled up their saffron robes on the bank and were cavorting in the river in their skivvies, doing back flips into the river, sliding down the muddy bank into the river, throwing mud at each other and generally behaving as you would expect pre-adolescent boys to behave.  On another occasion, one of the monks (who looked to be in his 20’s)  had to interrupt his Internet surfing on his cell phone in order to say “hello”.  And of course, the monks rode around on motorbikes (only as passengers, though) just like everybody else.

Speaking of motorbikes, the last day we were in Luang Prabang we decided we’d had enough wat-hopping and were ready for something else.  25 km out of town there is a national park with a really beautiful waterfall.  Of course “waterfall” translates to “swimming” in Ralphese, so we had to go.  We decided to brave the Laotian traffic and rented a motorbike to make the trip.  I was the first to drive, with Ralph shouting instructions over my right shoulder.  Basically it didn’t matter what he said at first – I just turned right at every major intersection.  The prospect of going across the road or turning left was just too intimidating.  Eventually I got the hang of it and we made our way out of town.  Ralph took over the driving after a bit and I got to just sit and look at the scenery.  We switched on the way back, with me enjoying the scenery and Ralph dealing with the Luang Prabang traffic.  I was useless, as usual, as a navigator, but Ralph found our way back to the rental agency.

 

 

Ralph on one of the ill-fated bicycles.  Most of the street signs were in both English and Laotian.  This one wasn’t, but I figured it out anyway.

 

 

 

The waterfall and swimming hole was every bit as beautiful as was advertised.

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most amazing things we saw in Luang Prabang had nothing to do with wats or waterfalls.  It was the man in the red shirt and cap (above).  He kept turning up at every temple, palace, etc. that we visited.  We noticed him because we both estimated he was about 90 years old.  He moved very, very slowly but he went everywhere.  No distance was too far, it seemed, and no steps were too steep.  I held my breath as I watched him slowly and carefully descend the uneven stone steps at one of the temples.  Finally, at the waterfall, he happened to sit next to us in the shade and we started chatting.  I was too embarrassed to ask his exact age but I became even more convinced that he was 90, if not older.  He is Polish and he’s traveling around Southeast Asia on his own.  We asked how he had gotten to the waterfall and he said he had taken the bus!  We were both really moved by the spirit of this man who, even at his age, was unwilling to sit still.  It was an inspiration.

Finally, a note about Laotian food, at least our limited experience with it.  We had dinner the first night in a little non-descript cafe on the road into town.  I think the owner had eaten too much of her own cooking, ‘cause she was the only overweight Laotian we saw.  But her food!  I ordered an eggplant curry that had coconut milk in it and it was memorable.  Ralph liked his dish, too, but he really liked mine.  So we went back the second night.  Madame chef was delighted to have our repeat business.  Ralph had the eggplant curry and I had something else.  The bill each night was about $10, including our beers.  The following two nights we tried two different more “upscale” restaurants, paid twice as much, and got much inferior food.  Our guidebook has provided us with some good advice, but these two restaurants were pretty much a bust.

The last morning in Laos the hotel car made the 10-minute trip to the Luang Prabang airport.  It’s so small that after 9/11 they had to put the security check at the only door into the terminal.  There was no room inside!  If you aren’t a passenger, you can’t even enter the building.  Checking in, as you can imagine, was a piece of cake, and we’re on our way to the next stop of our lightning tour of Southeast Asia, Cambodia.