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LAOS
It doesn’t take long to settle into the languid lifestyle of Luang Prubang. The contrast with the bustling streets of Bangkok was stark as we boarded our large tuk-tuk and headed through the lush streets towards our hotel along the Mekong River. I immediately loved this town. There was of course a steady stream of two-wheeled traffic - mopeds, bicycles, motorcycles - one of the first scenes that struck me en route from the airport was a line of 6 or 7 women aboard mopeds, each carrying a bright pink parasol as a shield from the mid-afternoon sun. Like many other women in Asia, they carry umbrellas and wear masks (and sometimes long gloves) to maintain the revered light complexion. Meanwhile, we stream into tanning beds to acquire a darker one. But Luang Prubang isn’t the kind of place to induce a great deal of self-consciousness, or concern of any type for that matter. It has the lazy feel of an isolated beach town in the Caribbean. No one seems to be in a hurry; expressing a sense of urgency is simply declasse. The slow, indolent current of the Mekong River paralleling town is perfectly symbolic.
We checked
into our room at the Sala Prabang overlooking the river, then walked around town and grabbed lunch at a restaurant on the main strip. I tried the famed Beer Lao, which became my staple beverage during our stay. Around dusk we wandered through the fascinating night market which lines the main street. We could see the vendors arriving by 5 p.m., often on mopeds or motorcycles loaded with linens, paintings, and various other products for sale. The market offers everything from Beer Lao t-shirts to silk scarves to giant slabs of pork and certain other unrecognizable meats. We weren’t brave enough to sample the market fare, but we walked down to the main drag by the river and had dinner and a couple more drinks at a restaurant overlooking the Mekong. We watched the faint flicker of the flashlights of fisherman in their small boats in the middle of the waster and discussed rising early the following morning to see the resident Buddhist monks of Luang Prubang make their daily round to receive alms.
We got up around 6 a.m and walked towards the main road that hosts the night market. The young monks, most dressed in bright orange
robes, emerge from several temples around the city with their empty containers and slowly stream down the narrow paths of Luang Prubang to receive rice from the local people. People take up a place on the street with their freshly cooked rice and ladle it into each pail as the monks pass by. The whole process, a common practice of Theravada Buddhism, lasts only about 30 minutes, but they cover most of the main streets of the town. I got up early a couple of days later to watch them make their rounds one more time. It was a drizzly morning, and most of the monks carried black umbrellas - the dark umbrellas provide a nice contrast with the bright robes and are a prominent feature in art and photographs in shops around the city.
We quickly settled into the rhythms of the city. We found a particular cafe that we would stroll to around 10 am and sit and have coffee and breakfast, then remain for a few hours reading and waiting out the most intense heat of the day. Coffee would give way to Beer Lao around noon, and it was usually cool enough to walk around
by 4 or 4:30. On one evening we climbed up the steep steps to a wat overlooking the town and surrounding hills. This point provides a bird’s eye view of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers, and we stayed to watch the sun slowly disappear into the haze of the nearby hills. As we walked back down to town, the local vendors were already streaming in for the night market.
The rest of our stay followed a similar pattern, spending the bulk of the day in a local cafe, then walking around in the cooler hours in the evening and at night. We also took a boat ride down the Mekong River to the Pak Ou caves. Since we began planning the trip, I have been looking forward to getting on this river that originates in the highlands of Tibet and winds through southwestern China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam before spilling in five major threads of the Mekong Delta into the South China Sea. From our longboat we observed people carrying out their morning routines on this muddy swath of the river. A group of men were standing in the edge of the water brushing their teeth and having
their morning bath. We saw multiple boats with fathers and sons coursing through their daily fishing route, checking old lines and baiting and depositing new ones. The caves were a bit touristy, though the thousands of small Buddha statues filling it were interesting. We also stopped at a local Lao village, mainly catering to tourists, where I tried a couple of shots of the local rice wine (“lao lao”) and we watched an old woman weaving on a large loom. We passed by another village known for its seaweed production. There was an assembly line of sorts, consisting of two wooden rails crossing the slope from the village down to the river. We watched as a large cart of seaweed that had been loaded in the edge of the river was wheeled up the line to be dried and processed above.
On our last afternoon Helaine and I climbed into one of the large tuk-tuks for a cruise around town. We bought some art from a local street vendor that night and returned to pack up for our departure the following day. After one more early morning viewing of the monks going for alms, we made a last visit
to our cafe and then headed to the airport to make our flight to Hanoi, where we will meet up with Mom and Phyllis for a few weeks in Vietnam. In three weeks we will return to the Mekong River, along the flatlands of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.
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