Mekong Traipsing

---

Our second day in L.Prabang and it was activity day,

A slow boat up the Mekong to visit the Pak Ou caves and its 1000's of unwanted buddhas. It took us about an hour and a half or so to motor upstream, stopping at the so called whisky village. Here they makes 3 types of rice whisky that range from crazily 50 odd proof and taste like lighter fluid, to the more sedate 15% or so that taste a lot more flavoursome and drinkable. The red rice one Shabana liked as it was a little like Port. For the crazy people there was a range of the hard stuff with scorpions and snakes entombed in the bottles.

The Mekong is a great rive to putter along, it was nice seeing people fishing, farming, washing and playing up and down the river, it is just a bit of a shame the boat made a racket so there was no sense of peace.

We pulled into the cave area with a whole bunch of other boats, as for some reason they wait until all the people that are going on the trip from all the different tour operators are gathered together and then they send them up the river 6 or so to a boat. Why they don't send a boat as soon as 6 people are gathered I don't know.

The cave is a classic pagan meets new religion, it was reverred as a place of the river spirits for hundreds of years, then the Buddhists come along as put a few Buddhas inside and it continues its holyness but for the new guys from then on.

We visit 2 caves, the upper caves up a fairly steep set of stairs that takes the puff out of everybody i saw climbing up. The laxadasical Israeli that was in our boat and a little cheesed of with Lao after a week for some reason didn't even bother to attempt it.

Back to Luang Prabang and not even enough time for a quick lunch and it's into a minivan for a 30km drive to the Kouang Si waterfalls. We were a little late getting back from the caves so we have less than the scheduled 2 hours at the falls once we arrive. We trek up to the top via the Asiatic Bear sanctuary that has about 15 or so rescued bears, we watch them wrestling and playing about with each other before we resume the walk up.

The falls are cool, I am forced to scare Shabana (and probably my mum now) but taking an additional side track that leads right up to the plunge pool. Once you are there you can feel the awesome power of gravity as the water crashed down a few meters away. The spray is deceptive and in the few minutes i was there i get pretty soaked.

We didn't really have time for a swim, but the water was damn cold so that was probably for the best.

Again we head back to Prabang and the last activity which was to climb up Phu Si Hill which is right in the middle of the town. There is another temple at the top and it is pretty busy with tourists and a few locals who want to watch the sun set. It's a great view from up there and i am glad we made it. Unfortunately the camera is out of batteries so i only got a single shot from the top before it died.

All in all Luang Prabang is a great place, but in the spirit of travelling we are moving on to Vang Vieng tomorrow.

---

Photos

The Nam Khan
View from Thongbay Guesthouse

Waterfalls and me
Click the photo to be able to see me, i'm too ickle