ell, we’re still in Luang Prabang and are back in the same internet cafe after an attempt to try one that’s just 200 kip per minute. This one is 300 kip per minute, but worth the extra money since we can actually load a page here. That always helps. 100 kip = 1 cent.
Luang Prabang is a very nice town. Anyone making a Southeast Asia trip should definitely include it on their itinerary. It’s laid back, pretty, has lots of good food, lots of shopping and good sights to see.
We’ve spent the last two days doing standard tourist things. Yesterday, we hired a jumbo for the day. Picture a pick-up truck with benches along the sides of the bed and with a little roof. That’s a jumbo. We found a guy on the main street who would take us to both the Pak Ou caves and the big waterfall for $15. We took him up on it.
He drove us to the caves by way of some Hmong villages that are big on crafts. I can’t say specifically what type of crafts because Santa came with us and brought his wallet.
The second village was the ferry point for going across the river to the Pak Ou caves, which are big caves in a cliff face that have been used for centuries as an aging Buddha dumping ground. Basically, people take their old crappy Buddhas from temples and their homes and ditch them there. There are thousands of Buddhas. We had to climb a bunch of stairs. It’s hot here.
The guy who took us across the river charged us 50 cents each and waited while we looked around. We got our own boat. This seemed odd to me. I wonder why they guy doesn’t charge a one-way fare and go back and forth all day. There are plenty of boats so no one would get stranded on the wrong side.
We had lunch in the village once we got back and Ian made friends with a Lao guy who was acting as a tour guide for a bunch of Thais. This guy’s mother and sister live in San Diego and he was eager to talk about America.
Next, our driver took us back south past Luang Prabang and to this big waterfall, I’m sure Ian will provide the name. It was very pretty and very big. We climbed about half way up, which required stepping in a bunch of water and mud. We have one picture (staged) of me almost falling from a precipice into the roaring water. This is for my dad. He loves heights, especially slippery heights.
This whole trip took about 8 hours. All that for 15 bucks. Good deal. Incidentally, they’re way more into dollars here than they are in Bangkok. Nothing was quoted in dollars in Bangkok. Virtually everything of any significant value is quoted in dollars here.
Last night: hot shower, air conditioned room. Aaaahhhh.
Today, we did the walking tour in our book, which took us to about a gazillion temples. Look forward to many many pictures of glinty gold things and Buddhas in all three sanctioned positions. One of the wats (that’s temple, to you) is up on the very top of a hill. Thanks to Ian, we climbed the stairs to this hill three times. I was overjoyed. A monk made friends with us and offered to take us to see the relining Buddha and Buddha’s footprint. I have to admit that I suspected a scam, even from a monk. I don’t know why, but he just seemed too eager, and the monks are generally rather aloof. When we got to the reclining Buddha, he asked us how seeing Buddha made us feel. We both hemmed and hawed a bit over that one. Ian said “sleepy,” since it was a reclining Buddha. Clearly this monk wanted us to say how deeply spiritual we felt or something. Then he asked what religion we were. Ian said “I don’t really have religion” and the monk was clearly quite horrified. He was 28, I think. Either that or he was repeating back my age. No scam was forthcoming, but we did leave him before we got to the footprint since we’d seen that on the first of our three trips up the giant hill in the scorching heat.
We tried to go get a massage this evening from the Lao Red Cross, which, according to our book, gives the best massages in town, but it was booked solid so I’m going to go back in the morning. Ian claims that he’s going to skip it. We’ll see.
Anyway, we’re on to Vientiane tomorrow. After a bit more shopping with Santa in tow, we’ll head to the airport for our 5:00 flight.