Advertisement
Published: January 18th 2010
The monks in the morning
Lots of kids and touristsOff to
Luang Prabang! Might be repeating myself a bit from the last post, but what the heck :-)
I also decided to write the price of everything, as it might be nice to know for other travellers doing the same route.
Got on the bus from Luang Nam Tha in the morning, tuk tuk from town at 7.30 for 10000 kip, got a bus ticket for the bus leaving at 9.00 at the station for 80000, no problem, bus wasn't full at all.
It left at 9 sharp, no Laos time here. The bus was rather empty at first, but it stopped along the road at loads of small villages, and people got on with their heavy sacks of stuff. One old lady walked by with a blue sports-bag with strange chirping-sounds coming out of it.. Why not transport your dinner alive in a bag? It was definitely a very colourful crowd on the bus. The driver was totally into Lao music, and we had it blasting out of all the speakers for the full trip. There was some pretty beautiful scenery along the way, and the driver drove pretty slowly.
Half an hour's lunch break in Udoumxai between 13.30
and 14.00 approximately, then didn't stop before Pak Beng at 17-ish, arrived in Luang Prabang at about 19.30. 10½ hours on a bus, yeeeeeeha!
Caught a tuk tuk to town with some people, also 10000 kip. Called up a nice couch surfer in town, he recommended Chansavang guesthouse to the southeast of the Phousi temple hill, very easy to find. The guesthouses straight south of the night market (southwest of Phousi) were all charging 130000 kip, and were full besides. Chansavang had a bungalow for 100000, apparently the last one available, but when I asked for a cheaper place they suddenly had a 50000 kip shared bathroom-one. I quickly grabbed that one, and the whole time I stayed there I didn't see anyone else in my shared bathroom, so that was pretty neat. And the beds were nice too (I had two).
Off to check out the
night market for a little bit - I was expecting the usual Chinese knick knacks seen all over China and even in Malaysia, and although I'm sure most of it was still made in China, the style was totally different and a lot of it really appealed to me. I ended up
buying 2 pretty Lao skirts for 50000 each (so comfortable, and such a simple/clever design!), one blue Lao-shopping bag, 15000(needed one to carry all my fresh galangal), a fridge magnet for 10000-15000, a pair of comfy elephant/bells dress/pants also 50000, a little lantern for 30000, loads of Lao tea in pretty bags for 10000 each. Oh and a necklace and earrings for 50000. They were selling so many bags and scarves and table clothes, it was so colourful. I ended up walking around there a bit most nights, just looking at all the nice things, wishing I wouldn't have a problem carrying it all home :-)
Off to the Mekong, had a nice pizza for dinner, had a Beer Lao at Ikon bar (20000!!! expensive! But the place was cool) and went to bed at about 1.
Got up early the second day to see the
monk-ceremony. Since the monks aren't allowed to work, the villagers traditionally offer up some food for the monks each morning in return for blessings. On special days, the poor children/people in the society will also sit around, and when the monks' baskets are full, they will give some food to the children.
Well,
this fine morning at 6.30 there were more tourists with huge cameras than monks (and that's saying a bit, cause there were quite a few monks). And next to every monk was a kid carrying a huge bucket - and it certainly looked like they were there every day.
The ceremony itself is a nice idea, but most people were photographing it rather than observing it. And I guess I ended up seeing it as more of a show, too - hence the nice photos on the blog ;-)
Oh well, it was pretty with all that orange colour in the morning mist.
After watching the "show" I walked down to the Mekong river. If I didn't know that there was supposed to be another bank I wouldn't have believed there was one, that's how foggy it was. I walked all along the river and found a nice little morning restaurant on the East side (at the other river) where I had a delicious baguette and some egg/bacon/vegetables. At 9 i went back for a snooze, and at 11.30 I met up with a couple of Chinese girls who were surfing with the couch surfer who recommended the guesthouse to
me, and their friend.
The four of us bought some sandwiches for lunch and hopped into a tuk tuk, heading for
Khou Si waterfalls. The guy started at 200000 kip for the tuk tuk, return, but he agreed on 130000 in the end. The tuk tuk ride took about an hour, and we were there at 13.
Then we got into a huge discussion with the driver, he wanted us to come back after just 2 hours, but we didn't know when we were coming back and didn't want a time limit. So after a lot of discussion we agreed on 3 hours. A good thing to bargain time spent at the waterfall with the tuk tuk driver before getting in, so no time is wasted!
Bought a pair of shorts and a t-shirt saying "Laos" so that I could swim in a decent fashion. Think I paid about 20000-30000 for both (had a couple Lao girls to help me bargain). The entrance to the waterfall-area cost 20000 kip.
It was really beautiful! First we walked past a bear-sanctuary, lots of these Asian brown bears get used for Chinese medicine, they are kept alive in tiny cages with an
open wound in their gall bladder, so that poachers can get bile out of their stomachs.. So terrible! But these playful bears had been rescued from poachers - and although their outdoors area was small, they looked better than the would have if they had been caught by poachers.
After that we ascended slowly, next to beautiful ponds of crystal clear blue water. There were lots of swimming and changing areas on the way up, and at one of the areas there even was a rope, so that you could swing yourself into the water! Awesome! I changed into my new swim wear immediately, but the others wanted to walk to the top first, so off we went.
We got to a platform, where a big part of the waterfall was visible. It was quite beautiful. After looking for a bit we decided to go to the top. About halfway there, at the mid point of a wooden staircase, we bumped into some people who were walking out through waterfall-trickles without their shoes on. They told us to go in the way they were coming from, cause "it's more beautiful than the top". So in we went, shoes off, and
a bit of walking through some trickles until we finally got to the waterfall itself. The view was amazing! Had a swim in a pond up there, and the view from the pond was breathtaking.
We continued to the top, then down again, had lunch, had a swim in the rope-pond lower down, and were back at the tuk tuk a little before five (which of course caused another argument with the driver). He still drove us back, though, but purged us for another 10000.
We were back at about 6, had a nice roasted fish opposite the night market for 20000 kip, and then we went to beautiful Utopia bar and had a beer. The bar is hard to find, but well worth it for the views and the atmosphere. Close to Chansavang on the east side of Phousi.
The next day I got up at about 8 and headed down towards the night market-area to meet up with some people I'd met the night before and a guy from the Nam Tha trek who I'd bumped into again in LP. They had arranged to meet with a cultural adviser in the morning, who would then take
them to a
primary school. They invited me to tag along. The primary school wasn't far, and it was a very interesting experience. We first bought a bit of supplies for the school and then walked there. First we sat around a table with the director of the school (a woman, all teachers at the school were female). She told us about the school, how it used to be poor but was helped by a UNICEF project. We could then ask questions about the school, and walk around and peer into the classrooms.
A lot of it reminded me of Chinese schools, all the doors were open, and there was a lot of yelling going on in every class room. I don't know how these kids concentrate! The teaching style was "teacher yells something written on the black board - kids repeat. Then one of the children yells the same thing and the other children repeat". Very much like China, and not exactly efficient (I think... But who am I?)
One thing that freaked me out a bit was a maths lesson, a little girl (I'd say about 8) was doing a maths problem on the blackboard, but had gotten
the result wrong. The teacher then asked the class whether she was right or not, and the whole class yelled "NOOOOOOO" (or something rather like that, in Lao) Everyone then raised their hand to correct her, and a "big boned" girl of about the same age went up to the blackboard, corrected the mistake, and was about to sit down again. And here's the scary part. She was half way back to her seat, the girl who made the mistake was still standing at the black board. The teacher then called back the girl who corrected the mistake, I don't know what the teacher said, but I imagine it was something like "Hey, you forgot her punishment", cause the girl walked back, grabbed the little girl's ear and twisted it!! And then sat down. Everyone looked on like it was expected. I mean, it's wrong on so many levels for a teacher to violently punish a student, but to ask another student to do the deed!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh well, the class moved on and so did I. The kindergarten kids were of course cute and sang a little song for us. At about noon we headed back towards the city, for
some temple-ing :-)
The city is full of beautiful
temples! After walking around a whole afternoon my head was almost spinning, it was almost too much. It was just so quiet and nice. Lots of monks everywhere. The nicest temple was down near the end of the peninsula, so many beautiful glass mosaics. After seeing most of the temples we had Indian lunch, and I booked a Lao cooking class at Tamnak Lao for the next day.
In the afternoon we walked up Phousi hill to see the sunset. The stupa on top of the hill looks a lot less impressive when you're right next ot it :-) But the walk up there was quite nice, and the views were breathtaking.
The sunset, however, was a bit of a stressful experience. Normally, I would consider a sunset a nice relaxed event, you lean back and enjoy the view, and enjoy that another happy day is over. This sunset was more like a frantic pushing-in-front of huge cameras. I mean, I wouldn't mind sharing the sunset with lots of other people, but when everyone is only focused on taking pictures and yelling at each other for taking the best spot,
well, then it gets a little less enjoyable. It was a nice sunset, but hey - it happens every day! Relax!
Dinner was a vegetarian buffet for 10000 south of the night market, very nice, and nice beer Lao too. Had a dark beer Lao before bedtime and went to sleep dreaming of all the nice food I was going to cook the next day.
The
cooking school Meeting time 10.00 at Tamnak Lao Cooking School, just behind the restaurant. The whole thing cost 250000 kip, which seemed expensive at first, but considering what I got for it I'm very happy!
The group consisted of 10 people, 9 women and one man. First stop was the local market, got there by tuk tuk. Our guide was very good and took us to all the interesting parts. He didn't spend too long at the well-known sections, and a woman was shopping around buying all the essential ingredients while we were listening, so our time was focused on getting to know the Lao ingredients like galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves vs. normal lime leaves (kaffir lime/normal lime) and several other interesting things.
Then we went back to the cooking school with
all the fresh produce and had morning tea while our two cooking masters prepared the kitchen.
First off were two local dishes, Luang Prabang salad (with homemade mayonnaise!) and fried egg/noodle salad. The two guys demonstrated the dishes, told us to get into groups of two and then basically left us to do it ourselves. I really liked this concept. This meant that we had the cooking book from the get-go, and got to try the dishes and the measuring out of seasoning ourselves while we still had the instructors nearby. I was paired up with a nice older Norwegian woman, and we had a great time. We then ate the food we'd cooked for lunch!
After we finished these two dishes, the instructors demonstrated 3 more dishes. A laab, a pork casserole and a mushroom stir fry. We could then choose 2 dishes to cook.
They then demonstrated how to cook sticky rice and how to make the jeowbong chilli paste. In the end they cooked a chicken curry using red curry paste and another pork dish, and we could then choose one to cook. Almost everyone chose the chicken curry, it was amazing!
It all ended up with
a great feast of the three dishes we'd cooked, jeowbong and sticky rice. There was way too much food, it was delicious and we all stuffed ourselves! I definitely recommend the Tamnak Lao cooking school, it was worth all the money, I've got a great cooking book with all the essential ingredients in Lao cooking and how to replace them if you can't get it at home, and even a little section on Lao culture and food culture. And dishes we didn't cook as well.
After the cooking school I just had time to ooze the night market one last time (it finished at about 17.00), and then caught a tuk tuk to the bus station to catch my 18.30 night bus to Vientiane. All booked through a travel agency for 130000. Could have been done cheaper, but I liked the convenience.
The bus was a night bus, but not a sleeper bus. I was lucky and got the two back seats, so I could almost lie down! More on the bus ride, the possibility for sleep and the lost things in the next thread!
Advertisement
reidun pia from
Elderly lady
From Norway'' found your blok. And travelled with you. Wonderful.