Advertisement
Published: November 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
We started in Luang Prabang & spent some time exploring the many Wats in the small city. As we went from Wat to Wat, we noticed that many of the monks were busy building bamboo paper mache boats. We asked several people what was going on & got many different answers. Eventually we found out that they were getting ready for the End of the Rains Festival. There was going to be a huge alms giving ceremony (monks walk along the streets lined with locals & receive food offerings) one morning, followed by a big parade of the bamboo boats all lit with candles the next night. At the end of the parade line, the boats were then set afloat on the Mekong River. It was an exciting time to be in the city because everyone in town was getting into the preparations & the celebration. We actually extended our stay to see the ceremonies. The only down side was all the firecrackers that the locals & tourists so readily lit all through the evening. They were deafening if you were anywhere close by.
To pass some time between Wat exploration & waiting for the festivities, we enrolled in a
Luang Prabang, Laos
Monks working on their bamboo boats half day Laos cooking class. We got to select some dishes that we were interested in learning, went to the local market to see all the different ingredients used in Laos cooking and spent time cooking the dishes before we ate what we cooked up. Ashley was in charge of the veggie noodle stir fry & I got to try my hand at the pumpkin with coconut milk dessert. Yum! It was a fun way to spend the morning.
Food in Laos is so cheap & really delicious. We ate at the local night market pretty much every night that we were in Luang Prabang for about $3 total for the two of us. Breakfast was our biggest expense since we like our traditional American breakfast fare.
After the Festival, we headed to Vientiane, by bus. This was our most interesting bus ride ever! It started at 8:30 AM, when we left the bus station. By 8:35 AM, we had our first half hour stop to change a flat tire. At around 9:15 AM, we stopped for gas, which was hand cranked out of an oil drum by an attendant - 5 litres at a time. It took
Luang Prabang, Laos
Laura cooking some pumpkin in sweet coconut milk dessert about 20 min to fill the tank, so within the first hour of our trip we only made it about 10 km outside of town.
We made another couple of stops along the way to pick people up & stop for a passenger to buy some green leafy veggies of some sort. We finally got to our lunch stop at 2 PM and had about 20 min to slurp down some noodles & barely make it to the bathroom before the bus driver was pulling out of the lot. Right after lunch, an SUV tried to pass us near a curve on the road & an oncoming bus hit the SUV head on. Luckily, it didn't seem very serious as both drivers had slowed down significantly.
Some time later, we were hailed to a stop by a police officer & for some reason they unloaded 4 boxes that were tied to the top of the bus and left them by the side of the road. Not sure what was going on there... After a few moments of no excitement, we were driving through a herd of cattle, when the bus hit a cow! The cow got up fairly
Luang Prabang, Laos
Alms giving ceremony quickly and seemed to "walk it off", so after a brief stop, we again went along on our way.
As we got into Vientiane, there were a few other stops to let people off before we finally rolled into the bus station about 2 hours behind our scheduled arrival time. We were on the bus for about 11 hours in all... So painful!
We were in Vientiane only as a stopover on our way to southern Laos, so we spent our one day taking in a couple of sights & getting one of the best massages we've ever had. It was a traditional Laos massage & it felt heavenly!
After a flight to Pakse, we rode a large local tuk-tuk (a pick up truck with three benches lining the length of the bed & covered by some metal sheeting & open on the sides) to Champasak. We wanted to ride a bus, but somehow we ended up crammed in the back of this tuk-tuk with at least 15 other people & a bunch of bags as well. At first it seemed like it could turn out very badly, but it was actually a great experience to see
Luang Prabang, Laos
Bamboo boat lit up with candles & paraded down the main road to be set adrift on the Mekong River how the locals travel. It was amazingly cheap as well! Once we arrived at the pier across the Mekong River from Champasak, the tuk-tuk drove onto a barge along with 5 other trucks (one was a huge dump truck full of sand) & we were ferried over to the other side of the river. Quite an experience.
We didn't spend too much time in Champasak either, but our purpose of the visit was to see Wat Phu. We rented bicycles & biked the 8 km to the Wat from our guesthouse. The Wat is set on a hill, so we were able to enjoy great views of the countryside as we explored the grounds of the Wat.
We then headed south to Si Phan Don (the 4,000 Islands). We went to the southern most inhabited island, Don Khon, where we rented a nice bungalow overlooking the Mekong River. It is a small & relatively quiet island (when the stupid roosters aren't crowing all night long) which still does not have electricity. Everyone is self sufficient & has their own generator which they run for a few hours at night.
We spent most of the time relaxing, reading
Vientiane, Laos
Patuxai, Vientiane's Arc de Triomphe replica. & enjoying the views (especially the amazing sunsets). We did sight see a bit by riding rented bikes around the island as well as a neighboring island, Don Det. We saw a couple of huge waterfalls - not in height, but massive water volume and took a boat to the Cambodian side of the Mekong river to try & spot the rare Irrawaddy dolphins. We only got a small glimpse as we were on the boat heading back to our guest house.
We wished we had a bit more time to explore other parts of Laos (such as the Bolaven Plateau with it's banana, coffee & rubber plantations), but our time is running out & we have other countries to see. Our next stop is Cambodia & we are looking forward to seeing Angkor...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.114s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0456s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Amelia
non-member comment
Happy Thanksgiving ladies! What I wouldn't give to be dining on Laotian food tomorrow :)