Elephant Snot, Not as Sticky as You'd Think!

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So we have finally left Luang Prabang after three weeks, we stayed longer than we had planned but there are worse places to be ‘stuck’ (with visa, transport and Thailand unrest issues although none of them serious for us)! So in between being hot and eating we managed to fit in some more active pastimes although all done very slowly and with regular snacks…


We walked to the top of Mount Phou Si which is in the middle of Luang Prabang and gives you a great 360 degree view of the city. We bumped in to a monk who spoke really good English and wanted to chat so we were able to ask him about Buddhism and the experience of being a monk. On the way down we saw the ‘Buddah footprint” which I must say is very large!

The kids are really attracted to anything related to Buddhism although our understanding is still very limited. They are still obsessed with ‘spot the monk’ and will talk to them at any chance. The girls were a little nervous when we read that women are not supposed to touch them or their robes, (or hand them anything directly) but seem okay with this now. We went to see the monks chanting one evening which was lovely.

Mitchy and I went to Tamarind Restaurant and sent the children across the road (which they thought they were very cool being allowed to do by themselves, there is more risk of them hitting a vehicle than the other way around) to talk to the monks. When they came back we just sent them back with another question! Mitchy and I actually had a whole conversation which is a rarity and the kids and monks seemed to enjoy themselves.

Tamarind Restaurant is a great little place that serves true Laos food where a lot of other places serve a variety of dishes from South East Asia. Traditional Laos food is meant to be eaten with the hands and sticky rice (to which Olivia is addicted) is a staple. Tamarind also has cooking classes and provides information on the monks practices and how to respect the alms procession so it is a great place to visit early on in Luang Prabang. They also have great lime and lemongrass juices!

One of our more energetic outings was to the Pak Ou caves. We tuk tuked (is that a word?) an hour north of the city. I had read about the caves in a book called One Year Off by David Cohen, who packed everything up and took his young family around the world (they had a nanny in tow which I had thought was a bit of a cop out, but now I am just jealous!!).

We took a long boat across the Mekong to the caves which were as we had expected really, lots of Buddah statues, although many broken and lots swiped, but on our first solo cave trip (that is without the Girards) there was no screaming so things continue to progress in the caving department.

The flights of stairs to the caves are lined with mothers and children selling birds in tiny cane baskets to free for good luck (also a puppy for sale ‘puppy two dollar, two dollar’, Finn wondered if he had enough money to buy it!). As we had released birds in Vientiane just prior to Mac and the bicycle incident we declined the offer to do this again although when we saw a huge bird crammed into a tiny cage we thought it was our duty to set it free. We paid the 4USD and all gathered around to watch the release, confident and morally smug that we were making a difference to the life of another living being.

The bird was released, the tension and excitement grew as the bird flapped its wings, fell off the wall, slipped down the hill, bumped into a tree and sat there. I headed down the embankment hoping that a little encouragement might help, however realizing the sharpness of the beak my encouragement consisted of a meek ‘shoo, shoo’ and a depressing realisation that as soon as we disappeared down the steps the bird would be back in the cage… ‘free bird, good luck, free bird, only $4’. Our Steve Irwin moment had passed.

On the way back to town we visited the Lao ‘Whisky Village’ which is very much like other villages we had seen and I don’t think that you can actually see the whisky (lao-lao) process. Mitchy and the kids did however see an old man cleaning a dead snake outside his hut ready for dinner which they were all duly impressed with!

Laos has 49 ethnic groups, the Hmong (of whom there is a community in Tasmania), La Loum and Khmu are three groups that have villages close to Luang Prabang which we visited. There are many tours that offer trecking out to villages which would be great when the children are older but there is also the consideration of whether tourism is always a good thing. Many of the ethnic groups have different languages and customs and even 30minutes out of the city was a village of Hmong people who the tuk tuk driver could not communicate with.

The way of life of many of the people in Laos is so vastly different to that of the Western world it is amazing. An article in the Vientiane newspaper was reporting on initiatives to provide health care to remote villages and used one village as an example. Even in recent years villagers would sacrifice animals when a family member was sick, believing that this would cure them.

We would have liked to be able to gain more of an insight into the minority groups way of life but maybe next visit! Certainly wherever we went we were welcomed and treated with kindness, after they checked that all four children were ours; pointing, nodding and smiling can be a whole conversation!


We had always hoped that Finn and Olivia’s birthdays would be spent elephant riding which was one of the reasons that lengthened the stay in Luang Prabang but it was definitely worth it, even if just to see Mitchy in the ‘double denim‘ mahout uniform! Finn thought that we might fall off the elephants as even they were sure to laugh at Mitchy.

We did the two day mahout course and stayed at the lodge where you realize that you are actually in the Laos jungle .

The mahout course is designed to give you the basics of handling an elephant and we were the only people doing the course which was nice. The first ride through the jungle on the howdah (seat) lets you get to grips with how high up you are and how sure footed these animals are as well as the very odd sensation of being sneezed on by them, luckily not as bad as you would think!

Before the bare back experience you need to learn the basic Laos words used for handling the elephants, some which we have since used with our minivan driver, ‘go left‘, ‘go right’, and ‘stop’ but (especially in a minivan) not to be confused with ‘lay down’. We then practiced these in pairs which was pretty funny but Mitchy, the girls and I managed the crash course while the boys ran around wrestling each other (again!). Mitchy and I are still amazed that after an hour long lesson we have the basics of controlling an elephant but after nine years of parenthood consistently getting the children do what we want is still a challenge!

Finn was a little apprehensive about his first bareback elephant ride, so I rode in the howdah on the back (much more comfortable). I thought that Mitchy must have had the hang of it when I looked back and saw his Mahout stretched out on the howdah smoking a cigarette. When the other mahouts started taking mobile phone calls I thought that we must all be doing okay.

The trip on the elephants down to the river to bath them was fantastic and we loved being in the water with them, the kids thought that it was great to yell ‘boun, boun’ to make them squirt water and I must admit that Mitchy and I might have yelled this a couple of times too. It was then off to bed for the elephants, a quick tube down the river , a visit to the grave of Henri Mouhot (the Frenchman who rediscovered Angkor Wat) and dinner at the lodge, complete with the jungle experience of bugs dive bombing our meals. Olivia’s birthday cake this year was a packet of Oreos (much easier than every previous cake but no doubt won’t be requested in the coming years) and then into bed for us!

The next morning after watching Finn open his presents we bathed the elephants again, so it was a soggy start to the day (Mitchy looks even funnier in a wet double denim mahout uniform). We then had a fabulous morning bamboo rafting down the Nam Khan which I must say rivaled the Nam Song tubing experience, drifting along the river then jumping in to wake ourselves up! The kids loved it and despite asking numerous times ‘are there crocodiles in Laos’ they weren’t mentioned once.

After lunch and Finn’s birthday cake, which consisted of two Mars Bars we noticed a flurry of activity on the river (as flurried as they get here in Laos) as men got out their long boats and nets and began fishing outside the lodge. We thought that maybe this was a daily village ritual but it turned out that it was their Pi Mai (New Year) celebration and the men were fishing for a feast with the village elders. This part of the river was only allowed to be fished on this one day a year. There was great excitement every time a fish was caught or someone fell in! We were so lucky to have seen this and it was such a beautiful spectacle.

Although exhausted we took the opportunity to kayak back to Luang Prabang after lunch as there were some rapids along the way that we thought we would attempt. This sounds quite impressive until you know that the most dangerous part of the trip was running aground as it was so shallow.

Every time you are on a river in Laos you get to see how much the river is a part of the people and the people a part of the river. We became the ‘exhausted, are we there yet’ part of the river but it was definitely worth it. A great end to two fabulous days and hopefully birthdays that will be remembered forever!

So we left Luang Prabang (a few kilos heavier, although maybe the heat bumped one or two off) to head back to Vientiane for our next adventure, a month in China.

ANZAC day was spent traveling the five and a half hours of winding road back to Vang Vieng, unfortunately three of us saw our breakfast return this time although the driver’s CD of Western ‘oldies but goodies‘ sung by ‘who would know’ took our mind off this.

This was the first day on our trip that the heart strings were really tugged. We had heard the night before that a colleague of Mitchy’s had died, aged 26, walking the Kokoda Trail in honour of his grandfather. It was also the first day in ten years that one or all of our family weren’t at the ANZAC dawn service in Launceston. In memory of Chris and to mark ANZAC Day we visited a temple in Vang Vieng to light incense. It was a long and emotional day.

We stayed back at the Thavonsouk Resort and were welcomed back which was lovely, the daughter of the owners had been to university in Melbourne and we had been told very proudly at our last stay that Kylie Minogue had been a guest at the hotel! We went back to Blue Lagoon for Mac as last time he was “Mackie with the bad leg“. In my head I was going to be so at ease with the jumping off the tree but after three goes I think I will have to go back again to achieve this!


So, as we prepare to head in to China we think of how lucky we are and what we have learnt in Laos…
Life is for living. Rivers are definitely for jumping in, trees for swinging off, butterflies for saying ‘aaaah’ around, dragonflies for ‘oooooh‘, people are for chatting to, beer is to drink while floating down a river or when it is a little hot, a lot hot or very, very hot, food is for saying mmmmm about, forests are for walking through, elephants are a huge reminder of the miracle of nature, everyone (especially you) should go tubing at least once in their life, and most importantly, that one day every year everyone in every town and every city should stop what they are doing and give each other a big SPLASH!
Sabadee!

Rest In Peace Chris Frost.

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Comments

[Leonard]

Such rich reports
Your pieces are so great. It is clear that you guys are having an incredible travel experience and an even more incredible family adventure. You've got a book here in the works! It's engaging, inspiring, entertaining and informative (making a lot of notes for my next trip). Happy Trails.