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Published: April 19th 2009
Luang Prabang
Happy Laos New Year from Luang Prabang which at the moment is a real experience in contrasts! An amazingly laid back, picture perfect city that is completely crazy with Laos New Year celebrations. We are here for Bun Pi Ma which is the Laos New Year (April 14-16) and part of the celebrations is Songkran the water festival, where water is tipped, thrown or squirted on people as a cleansing ritual. Apart from running out of dry clothes we are having a great time!
We hired a minibus with the family from Quebec for the trip from Vang Vieng as we had heard a lot about how windy and steep the trip was. We heard of a minivan trip where everyone but one of the passengers were sick so we weren’t looking forward to it. For Tasmanians, it was like going up the St Mary’s pass about twenty four times, or for six hours.
The trip was quite scenic in parts and we saw some amazing villages alongside the road. We stopped for lunch after two hours on the road at a café at the top of one of the mountains which was pretty spectacular.
To Luang Prabang
Thanks Benoit For the PhotoAs the farmers here still burn their land to clear it many of the views were really hazy , (we had read that at this time of the year the air is very smoky in Luang Prabang and not good for eyes or lungs although it has not been a problem for us so far). Lunch only came back up for one in our van and it wasn’t a Mitchell!
We saw some interesting sights including some sort of dried animal (for eating) at a roadside café that despite several animal impersonations by Mitchy we weren’t able to identify. We also made a toilet stop (where you generally take your life in your hands) and walked through someone’s house to find two monkeys chained close by. I think they were pets but poor things did not look happy. There were a few kids on the way practicing for the water festival and I received a great shot in the face by some little tacker even though I was in the back corner of the van. Little did we know that this was nothing compared to what we were to experience here.
We had a pretty relaxed time for
the first few days, all tired from the adventures in Vang Vieng and carrying Mac around the countryside as he took over a week to be able to walk on his foot. Grace also had a brief tummy bug not long after we arrived. Luckily the city (when not Laos New Year) is about the most relaxed place we have ever been so there is no hustle and definitely no bustle!
Luang Prabang is the old capital city of Laos and the French influence is obvious, the buildings are divine, the streets are small and the townsfolk are very laid back. The city is a UNESCO world heritage area and so efforts are being made to protect the charm and history. Large buses are not allowed in the centre of the town, there is a curfew time for restaurants to close (no bars as such here) and there is a very noticeable smoke free push.
We are staying at Croissant D’or a four roomed guesthouse above the Croissant D’or café. Our room is huge and makes you feel like you are in a palace, not bad for $25US a night with a delicious breakfast for all of us
included . We are on the main tourist street with lots of guesthouses, masseurs, beautiful craft, clothes and jewellery shops and restaurants, two blocks back from the Mekong.
The food in Laos is great and Luang Prabang is no exception, we also have some international options when we feel like a change, (in breaking news Mitchy has even eaten Indian twice). We haven’t tried the intestine salad that we have seen on some menus or dishes with buffalo skin (another delicacy) but did have some fried Mekong seaweed which was actually pretty good.
The night market here is gorgeous, the most organized and relaxing market we have ever been to. The stalls sell Laos craft, the area is well known for silk and paper (some made of elephant dung!) but there is a variety of Laos made craftwork. Nights are a great time to have a walk about and we wandered past a Muay Laos boxing match one night, Mitchy took the boys to watch and they thought it was great and spent intermission practicing some of the techniques!!
The scenery around Luang Prabang is spectacular and there are lots of caves and waterfalls to visit. We
spent a couple of afternoons at Tat Kuang Si waterfall which was stunning, although the water was more refreshing than we had experienced. The kids all jumped in at one of the smaller falls, even Mac jumped holding my hand which was great as it was the first time he had been in the water since the bicycle calamity. There is also a sun bear sanctuary at the falls that has bears which have been confiscated from poachers, they are gorgeous and look healthy and well looked after. The ride out was beautiful and some of the local kids were throwing water at the tuk tuk which was great fun! We also experienced some Laos entrepreneurial talent when the tuk tuk was stopped by a string across the road and a crowd who promptly pinned homemade paper flowers on us for a ‘donation’ for their temple!
We have ventured across the Mekong to walk through the village and visit some temples and a cave, our Buddist prayers must be paying off as miraculously this time there were no screaming Mitchells!! We had an impromptu guide (a ten year old) who arranged keys, torches, offered to watch Finn while I
went further into the cave then picked green mangoes for the kids to eat (which we all snack on now), I thought of taking him home with me!
One of the main attractions of Luang Prabang is watching Tak Bat, the monks procession for alms early in the morning. The procession is beautiful with well over one hundred monks in their vivid robes coming out of their wats at about 6am where kneeled people offer food to them as they walk along the street. Our children loved watching, even with the 5.30 am start. The girls have been twice and Mitchy four times. Unfortunately tourism has really impacted on this tradition, despite guidelines (such as observing in silence, sitting if you are near the procession, not using camera flashes, dressing appropriately) in travel books and on posters in shops and on lamp posts we were amazed that people could be so disrespectful. On the day that we all went together we saw people right up in the monks faces with flashing cameras, blocking the path so the monks have to go around them and being generally more concerned with getting a good photo than experiencing a beautiful tradition. Our
children were really able to see the negative impact of people’s actions on a community and learnt a lot in this regard but I think they still really have a beautiful image of the procession in their minds.
We weren’t sure what to expect from the Laos New Year but thought that it sounded like a great opportunity to see the way another culture celebrate and it sounded like fun and a good way to cool down in the hottest month of the year. Pi Mai is a religious based festival with several traditions including the one day of the year that monks and lay people wash their Buddah statues in their wat‘s and homes. We were lucky enough to see the girls at the guest house wash the Buddah’s here and they let the kids join in and then sprinkled the perfumed water on them to encourage them to be strong! We also went to wash the Pha Bang which is a famous Buddah statue that stays in the Palace Museum except at Pi Mai when in a solemn procession it is carried to Wat Mai for cleansing with perfumed water sprinkled with flower petals. Laos people, often
dressed in traditional clothes, make the water in their homes and go to the Wat to cleanse the Buddah and then make offerings of flowers, candles and prayers.
To see the New Year in, Laos people clean their houses and then as a symbol of cleansing throw water on their friends and neighbours although no-one it seems is off limits. At our guesthouse the staff set up umbrellas and buckets to ‘practice’ for Songkran three days before it started! We thought that there would be some lively action but when we saw the older, stern looking noodle soup lady from outside the hotel wearing Elton John-like glasses, dancing with two pots on her head we thought it might be more lively than we had first thought!! The police turned up on one of the practice days and as he got out of the car Finn gave him a squirt! Mac made use of the opportunity while the policeman was talking to sneak up behind a Laos girl and squirt her bottom! As it turned out police, soldiers and monks are all fair game, whether they have a machine gun or not!
Some of the snooty tourists think they
are off limits but that just makes them targets and Mitchy and one of the Laos guys used the 'sneak and splash' technique on them, one of the tourists had the audacity to tell one of the Laos guys off for giving her a splash only to walk past us and get our thoughts on the matter as well as a few extra splashes!
The whole week here is public holidays for New Year and various celebrations are planned. We read up on the celebrations in Luang Prabang and two events really appealed to us, one was the afternoon at the ‘beach’ and the other the parade through the streets. We tried out the beach with our friends from Quebec, and what an experience! What we had read and heard led us to believe that it was a relaxed family time on the banks of the Mekong building sand stupas. So we took a ‘boat’, that promptly motored out a few metres from shore then ran out of power but after much yelling to the riverbank and pulling on the cord it started again and made it to the other side. After wading knee high through Mekong mud,
stopping to retrieve several shoes we made it to the festivities to find one sand stupa guarded by five policemen, a tent with three very distinguished looking monks and associates and very loud Laos rock music all surrounded by complete mayhem!! It is difficult to describe the experience but if you can imagine a few thousand Laos people mixed with water, mud and cornflour in the middle of the Mekong River you have probably been here at Laos New Year. Mitchy described it at as Glastonbury meets the Mekong.
We made it through the initial onslaught to buy our own cornflour and continue on! We did find the sand stupa making and some of them were very decorative and obviously had lots of time spent on them but after about half an hour we thought that it was best to retreat to the relative (and we use the term lightly) sanity of the township and took an equally dubious looking ‘boat’ back across the river only to be laughed at by locals and tourists alike! Luckily there was lots of water hurled at us to wash the mud and flour off!
The three main days of the celebration
saw the town in full swing. There was a parade through the streets which was great (the parade is not immune from splashing either!), the next day the parade comes back the other way. After the parade the splashing is on in full force. Businesses have t-shirts made (some have different colours for different days) and all congregate together, families get out their trusty truck and fill tubs and eskies with water, and drive through the town splashing other trucks and people on the street. Loud rock music is played for hours and the odd beer laos is consumed.
Cornflour, colored water and black ‘grease’ (applied to the face of unsuspecting people) is also spread about with abandon. There is pretty much not a dry person in town every afternoon for about five days. It is very difficult to describe the atmosphere but loads of fun, and not a cross word to be heard for the whole festival!!
The kids had a great time and now have a fatal aim with a water pistol or a handful of cornflour! So now its time to dry off and plan for the next adventure, elephant riding for Finn and Olivia’s
birthday and then it is off to China!
The Girards caught the slow boat to Thailand yesterday which was very sad for all of us. It was a great surprise to meet such a fabulous family and spend time with them in a great country, Quebec has been added to our growing list of places to visit!
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The Bate's
non-member comment
Happy birthday, Olivia!
Hello again! Laos sounds absolutely amazing. And with Zoe's birthday tomorrow it means only one thing...Olivia's birthday! What a wonderful and enlightening way to spend an 8th birthday. A little more exciting than the tenpin bowling we have planned! We can't wait to catch up when you get back next month. Ness, Glenn, Zoe and Liam Bate xx