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Published: November 23rd 2011
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Dear Home,
After leaving the party town on Vang Vien on Sunday, we took an uncomfortable 7 hour bus journey to Luang Prabang which is reknowed for its rich Buddist history.
We sepnt Monday exploring the city and visitng our first Buddist temple. We also went to the National Museum which was the former Royal Palace pre-1975. It certainly was not as grand as any equivalent in Britain but it was interesting to learn a little about the old Royal family and some of their traditions.
We then visited a bookshop which was owned by an elderly local man who used to be an air traffic controller at Heathrow and was very excited when I told him I would be flying to Heathrow in a few weeks! We also stopped at an art gallery before moving up the 190 steps to the highest point in the city to watch the sunset. Just before we did this, Jenny left me sitting on a wall while sh went to find a cashpoint and sadly a very cute little girl pounced on me and persuaded me to buy a bracelet for both Andy and I...which Im sure he will appreciate! She
then asked to play on my phone so (and I hope Andy and Jenni appreciate this!) I introduced her to Harbour Master. She became so addicted that by the time we wanted to climb the steps she was begging to play again when we got back down.
From teh viewpoint we could see across the city and the beautiful temples and two large rivers either side of us. It seemed like everyone who owned the Lonely Planet in Laos had followed its recommendation, and ascended the stairs to wait for sunset. Jenny and I became more interested in watching these tourists taking hundreds of photos of the sun setting and they even applauded when it was finallu out of sight! We found this all so amusing that we started loudly questioning if the rumours were true and sunset happened every night! When we got back down we were greeted by about 6 little Laos girls who all wanted to watch as the original one introduced them to Harbour Master!
On Tuesday, we had a fantastic day trip that involved visiting an Elephant village. Beforehand, we took a motorised canoe to a large Buddist cave on the farside of
the Mekong. This is a hugely significant place for Buddist and is filled with statues that can be brought in but never removed. It is also the place where monks visit every new year in April to be washed by the Holy Water. Our tour guide was particularly interesting and told us all about the different meanings behind the hand positions of Buddha statues (eg. Palms out in front means 'Stop Arguing'😉. He was also able to shed some light for us on the life of a monk as every boy in Laos has to complete 3 months as a monk after the age of 20- his personal story was not very enthusiatstic about this duty as it inclded getting up every day at 0300 to clean the temple!
After this, we finally were allowed to ride an elephant and were glad that we ended up with the one who we could most relate to- mostly because it kept needing to stop for food! After a trek through the jungle, the porters removed the wooden chair and we got on the barebacked elephant and were lead down to the Mekong River. From here the elephant not only went it,
but got fully submerged underwater! Luckily our elephant was less reluctant to throw us into the river, unlike the others on the trip, but we still got soaked and probably swalloed a dangerous amount of water! Afterwards, we rode back to the camp for lunch and played with the rather wild monkey that was tied up under a tree.
The final part of teh trip was to the large waterfll to the south of Luang Prabang where there is also a black bear sanctuary. By the time we arrived it was past 1700 and getting rather cool so we didnt fancy a dip but the long waterfalls were still very impressive.
Today has been a much slower day compared to yesterday but we still managed to go to a photo gallery of monks as well as Luang Prabangs most famous temple. From here we saw the Royal funeral chariot and the Royal urns.
Tomorrow we are flying back down to the capital Vientiene for one night before then flying into Cambodia on Friday morning which we are really looking forward to, particularly due to the ongoing trial of the Kher Rouge leaders that started this week.
We will let you know how we are getting on soon.
I hope all is well at home.Thank you for all your messages, we love getting them.
Lots of love,
Izzie
PS I am being kicked off the computer so I apologise for any bad spelling- there are now letters on the keyboard so it has been a lot of guesswork!
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