Where’d all the water go?!

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Kamneauan likes bananas

Goodmorning Kamneuan

I was staying at the Viradesa GH in Luang Prabang in the only dorm in the city for $2 a night! However the room was a little like a dungeon though so when I arrived I headed straight out again to explore the town. It was evening so the night market was in full swing. All the items for sale are laid out down the road and they varied from t-shirts, to art work to light shades and really nice duvet sets - but I refrained from buying the duvet sets - they looked a little too heavy!

The next day I set out to explore the sights of Luang Prabang, which started very nicely with a trip to the Joma Bakery and a chocolate croissant for breakfast. Luang Prabang is a really nice town and it reminded me of Antigua in Guatemala because it is not the capital city but has the tourists and the sights of one. It is not a very big place and I was able to walk around to see all of the sights - most of which are different temples. I went into a few but you do find that one temple can look very much like any other after a while! I did have a little sit in one of them though and I had a monk - sorry ‘novice’ as he corrected me - come up and chat. A lot of boys become monks because they get an education that way and this one wanted to practice his English by talking to me. I find the monks quite funny because they aren’t supposed to have any personal possessions - yet a lot of them have mobile phones and mp3 players and they aren’t supposed to talk to women either yet they are more than happy to chat with you and I have met a few girls who have been propositioned by them!

In the afternoon I went to visit the old Royal Palace (no royalty left now that the country is communist) where there is now a museum and a new temple is still in the process of being built. It was quite a nice museum but quite quick, the size of the royal palace is actually quite small and not where you would expect royalty to be living! For sunset I went up to Wat Phousi which is on the top of a hill (190 steps) which seems to be in the centre of the main city. Up here I met some more people from the boat and was invited to join them to watch the England rugby match that evening - which wasn’t on, we were very disappointed.

Day two in Luang Prabang I joined three Irish girls who I had met on the boat. We got on another boat to go back up the river to the Pak Ou caves where there are lots of Buddha images. It was quite interesting and there was a bit of information about the different positions of the buddhas but it seemed to be a long way on the boat - not sure I would recommend other people to do it if they had already come down the river because you do pass it. In the afternoon we headed to the Kuang Si waterfall and finally got there after a mad rush to find some lunch and two mini-buses later (the drive shaft fell off the first one!).

At the waterfall they have a tiger called Phet that had been rescued when it was a cub - the photos of when they received were awful but it was very beautiful and posed nicely for us. They also had a bear sanctuary where they had lots of very cute bears like the one we had been chased by in the jungle. There were baby ones that were playing and I wanted to take them home because they are so fluffy. Unfortunately they are in quite a small enclosure but they are apparently building a larger one (I hope so).
The waterfall itself is really beautiful, the pools were a gorgeous turquoise colour and there were lots of pools running into each other. We climbed up to the top of the first waterfall and the view was very idyllic, it was as if someone had created it purposefully to look so nice! We were quite hot at this point and had heard that there were some pools where it was safe to swim so we headed back down - however the water was sooo cold- I felt like you jumped into an icehole. Maybe a slight exaggeration but needless to say we didn’t hang around long in the water!

That evening I perused the travel agencies and saw that there was a Mahout (elephant driver) Experience that you could go on for two days - so I decided to do it.
The next day we travelled about 30minutes from the centre of Luang Prabang to the All Lao Elephant Camp. There were three elephants and I went on an elephant with Brad (the other guy doing the 2 day trip with me). To start with we were on the chair but then the mahout let us have a go sitting on the elephants neck - they make it look so easy but it really isn’t. There is nothing to hold onto and nothing to wrap your legs around and it is fine when you are going along the flat but going steeply downhill or when they stop to break a tree in half it is a bit more scary. We headed towards the river and as soon as the elephant saw it she started making really loud noises which was a bit disconcerted but I was assured that it was only because she was happy! We proceeded towards the river where the ellies had a drink - again very scary because she had to lean so far down to it and I was still sitting on the neck! This ride was about an hour and a half and we then had the afternoon to relax. I did feel quite bad though because the elephants were constantly going out again when a new group arrived. I had also thought that we would have more contact with the elephants so that was slightly disappointing. When all of the daytrippers had gone home though we got back up on their necks (with the mahouts on too this time) and headed out to the jungle where they stay for the night. This was quite good fun but we had to keep ducking because the branches were so low. At one point my elephant (Kamneuan) had to pull down a bit of bamboo that was in our way!

When we found a nice place for them to sleep I had to get off! Not as easy as I had thought. I got off like I would off a horse but it was a lot further down that it is on Archie! We headed back to the elephant camp and had a well deserved BeerLao. Brad and I heard some noises coming from the village so we headed up there where there were lots of children playing football at the school. As soon as we arrived even more children appeared and we had a full blown football match going on - I even scored a couple of goals and can’t even play football! I think the fact that I was twice the size of most of the opponents and had shoes had something to do with it.

The evening was spent playing cards with our English speaking guide - we taught him to play trumps. We had to get up early the next day so we had an early night. The next morning we had to go and get the elephants back from the jungle - and I thought getting off wasn’t easy! I had to climb onto a big rock and then Kamneuan dipped here head so I could climb on but then I had to turn around so I was facing forwards - I honestly thought that I was going to be falling off! It was a nice journey back to the camp where we then headed down to the river to give the elephants a wash. It was a lot of fun and quite funny because they need to lie down to get under the water but they keep getting up when you aren’t expecting it so you are nearly falling off again! This was the last of the elephants for us and we then headed further along the river to start our kayaking. I was in a kayak with our guide and Brad had one on his own - it was supposed to be a nice easy float down the river with a few rapids, however because the water level was so low we had to do a lot of paddling and the rapids weren’t very big (perhaps just as well for me though). We stopped for lunch at the Tad Sae waterfall - we had been warned that there wasn’t any water - but there really wasn’t any - it looked very weird and a bit of a shame because it would have been really beautiful.

This was my last day in my Luang Prabang - next stop was Vang Vieng the next morning.

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