Oh, the ghetto travel life...

A sleepy town that unbeknownst
To me was quite the tourist trap
UNESCO! us misled -- poor show!
And thus, sights skipped for Western sap

August 10 - 11, 2008

LUANG PRABANG, LAOS

Luang Prabang is overrated. It's a sleepy town with sights that are little more than overly touted tourist traps (and sometimes a lot less so), and is incredibly overpriced. The best thing in the town tough, is getting up early (luckily for us, we arrived in town at 5 am) to watch the almsgiving to the months. This happens every morning. All the monks in LP process through the town while townspeople give each of them offerings of food. It's quite a beautiful ritual which has, quite sadly, been marred by the steady flow of tourists who visit.

When we arrived at our guesthouse in the early morning, we didn't know about this ritual, but were told (luckily) by our guesthouse guy, who recommended that we don't waste time even taking a shower, but that we should get out on the streets right away, so we staked a place on the street corner and waited.


Townspeople are supposed to give freely to the monks, as a Buddhist offering, and a few still do, but unfortunately, a few more opportunistic ones now sell their food to tourist to give to the monks. Happily though, at least most of the tourists were quiet and respectful, declining to buy food from the townspeople, and observing the ritual while taking pictures from a distance back.


Funny enough and completely unexpectedly, I ran into Dan P from med school...and his self-proclaimed best friend, Wodlinger, from engsci. That was odd. And not completely surprising once I thought about it (them being friends, not so much running into them in Laos). Small world in so many respects. Not entirely my first choice for running to in a foreign land...but ah well. And just as an update to the engscis...W's neck is still bent over at a 90 degree angle.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful: a cafe in the morning to try world class Lao coffee (a watered down cup, NOT so good), and then some wandering around this tiny little town.


We decided to skip both the royal palace and the mountain temples, since both seemed small and were charging $3 entry fees, which seemed, or our South Asian-primed senses, an exorbitant amount. It's tough too, having visited Cambodia's temples (Angkor), and Thailand's palaces first, since these were really the pinnacles of their respective lines of structures. Everything else (and especially the run down, tiny stuff of Laos) seems a let down.


A walk along the river, though, was very nice, but since it's the rainy season the river was a little brown. It was kind of cool to see how high the river comes up with respect to the river bank. While I'm not sure what it's like in the dry season, it's right up to the top of the walls separating road from river. Seems high. Apparently the Mekong River is about 2-10 m deeper in the rainy season than the dry, depending on where you are. That's crazy.

Dinner was at a local noodle place and afterward, we went in search of a sports bar to watch Olympics. Luckily, we found a bar with a big screen and divans, on which we reclined for a couple of hours. I finally got to try Beerlao, a national institution -- and the legends are true to life: the lager was smooth, light but full, and not bitter at all, leaving no aftertaste. Def something I would drink back at home.


Day 2 in LP was much more eventful, as we headed out to Pak Ou Caves, about 30 km from town. We found an amazing noodle shop where we decided to have breakfast, and it turned into one of the best noodle meals I'd had: something called Khao Soy, a type of pho with chili sauce and seasoned ground beef on top. There's also a special Lao dipping sauce that's added, in which you can dip your noodles -- it's made of fermented buffalo skin and tastes AMAZING. Taulee even had some, not knowing what it was. Doesn't taste like meat...just goodness...until I said to her "I wonder if this is that buffalo stuff..." and then she decided not to take the chance (she's a vegetarian).

It was raining really hard, and the roads were flooded in a few places on our jumbo drive out to the river. But, hey, we're on a trip, why let the rain stop us? REAL travelers don't mind getting a little soaked. Not like those dry tourists...most people take a boat to the site, which may have been better given the rain, but was more than double the cost.

When we got to a village from which we could charter a "ferry" to the caves, we teamed up with a group consisting of two Brits, an Italian and a German, the only other hardcore travelers like us, who had braved the rain and decided to visit Pak Ou sans tour group. They were nice. And they had Oreos. We got to sample the local moonshine lao lao, the undistilled version which was nice, and the distilled whisky which would blow your socks off and I think made me go bind for a second and a half. The distillery:


We chartered the most rickety boat I've ever seen, which was TINY (and more rickety than the ferry that took us over the Thai-Lao border, if that's even possible), and while it was still pouring, headed up the Mekong; our ineffectual motor putt-putted away as we bared outstriped the current of the fast-flowing Mekong. It was quite the memorable ride. It seemed that the boat would either capsize or run out of steam leaving us to the graces of the Mekong to swiftly carry us away into water oblivion (and life jackets? What are those?).


And in fact, the boat did break down three times en route. However, it was power failure two that was, for me, most memorable, since we stopped at a dock where there lived about five little boys, maybe around 8 years old or so. They jumped into the river when they saw us, and to see them swimming against the strong current without displacement was positively hilarious. A couple of them were holding on to our boat and yellihg and smiling -- one let go of the boat to wave, and was swept away by the current. He just yelled "bye bye!" smiling and laughing. I would have loved a picture, but my camera was ziploc'ed up safe away from the rain.

It was both humbling and wonderful to be on the Mekong. It was really such a huge river, fast flowing, and just the knowledge that it is more than 2 m deeper than in the dry season in this area makes me think how insanely big it is, and how much water it carries. And why it has, for thousands of years, sustained life on its banks.

The caves themselves were uninspiring, overpriced, and, like much else in LP, a bit of a tourist trap. The lower cave was filled with hundreds of Buddha statues (not thousands as advertised), but all in all it was quite small.



The upper cave, built 54 m into the mountian with no light, was more interesting. It too was filled with Buddhas, but also platforms and carvings and paintings and etchings -- all done in a dark cave during a time before electricity was available.


Another funny thing was to see the tourists boats alongside ours at the caves. Our boat was so tiny...silly tourists...their boats even had roofs.


We all agreed that the caves were less than stellar, but the trip itself was incredible, and was probably one of my favourite traveling days in South East Asia thus far. The boat ride was insanely awesome. On the way back to town, more street had been flooded, and the dirt roads had turned to mud.


Our dinner in LP was by far the best food Lao was able to offer us during our brief stay -- we found a small night market and bought food in bags out of bowls -- not sure what I ate, but one was a curry, and the other a vegetable, and both very good. We also met a few other travelers as we ate in the streets.


The night was capped off by a return to our favourite sports bar, lying on divans and sipping Lao coffee (this one was SO much better, and deserving of the reputation for being one of the world's best coffees). I even sweetened my coffee with sugar and full fat milk...which made it into a creamy dessert (though I regretted it afterwards because it killed much of the coffee flavour that way. Don't get me started on how to actually drink coffee...black... I then proceeded to finish the rest of my Oreos.