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Published: March 16th 2010
lessons
walking round and round, having a history lesson.This was ... hmmmmmmm... I'm not quite sure what word to use to discribe this day. Ermmm long prehaps. It started early because we had to get to go to one of the remote monastery on the other side of the river. Can you feel the joy that I was! Let me give a rather unenthusiastic woo hoo so that you can feel that joy of today.
The start was rather funny, we had to get into the boat that we did the sunset cruise in and the trip across the river only took about 10 mins. Here is the funny part. We went to the wrong monastery HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. How funny is that? We turned up at the other side where some monks were working on the garden. The hotel rep didn't look very happy and got onto the phone to someone. Turned out that we were meant to swap boats in the middle of the river so that we could navigate the rocks to the monastary and well because we didn't meet up with these other boats, it kind of made him a bit suspisious that we were at the wrong place. So back we went to find these
Looking at a bell
having a lesson on why things fall apart if you don't look after it. boats.
Ah there it is. Oh no that is not it. Fine, we have no problem waiting. So we waited and we waited, then we waited some more. That can’t be them, oh wait it is. Joy. Two logs that have been hollowed out. My favourite way to travel. Okay, so they were better than a hollowed out log, but only just. I mean come on, what type of boat carries buckets to get the water out. There was no room for me in the 1st hollowed out log so I went in the second. Good less weight to sink us. The guy at the front had a big pole. Oooooo, it was a gondola type ride! Wrong, that was just to push us off the rocks so we didn’t break the log.
Finally we got there and we were ushered up the banks and half made stairs to the dilapidated temple. I will go into reasons why it is falling down later - you lucky people you. Now, as I have said in past posts (or maybe I just think I have), I totally respect other people’s cultures and religions. I find it fascinating to see how
telling mummy
obviously we had to report to mummy about what we had learned. their societies work and their histories. It all adds up to why the people are why they are like they are. For example in England we don’t like the Scots or the French (sorry my lovely cousins). That is collectively as a society we don’t like them. Why? Look at our history. They have always tried to invade us and we have always been at war. Again, why are the English arrogant and not worried about people invading us? Because we haven’t been invaded since 1066, unless you count all the illegal immigrants that are slowly taking over our country. So my point to that brief insight into the English is that what makes us who we are can be discovered from our pasts, and not just our personal pasts but our countries histories. However, there is a point in here somewhere you may just need to keep digging to find cause I sure as hell have no idea what I am trying to say, what I don’t like is being made to take part in religious events. I will sit quietly on the side and observe but I do not like being made to take part. It would be
like making a Hindu go into a church and make them take Holy Communion. It won’t mean anything to that person and, personally, I find it rather disrespectful.
You must all be thinking ‘what did they make her do? Did they make her sacrifice some small child...I mean animal?’ No, you would be wrong again. They are Buddhists and so don’t sacrifice anything. I had to sit in this temple for over an hour taking part in a blessing ceremony. We had to sit there and bow and pray and take up bits of string, then bow and pray some more while listening to 5 monks chat at us, asking for good health and fortune. I felt like a really fraud sitting in there and having to take part. Buddha is not my God so I don’t believe in praying to him and even doing the motions and not believing, is as I said above, disrespectful. ‘So why didn’t you leave?’ Well that would have been rude. I did the next thing and stopped joining in. I was quite happy just sitting there.
Now as everyone who has small children and goes to church or anyone that went to church as a small child knows. It is very difficult to sit and listening to the sermon for more than a few minutes. Now imagine what the attention span would be like if you or your child had to listen to it in a different language. Are you picturing it? Now place yourself on the floor in a room no bigger than a hut, and that is what HB was like. She lost interest the moment we woke up, BUT she was so well behaved. I could not have been prouder of her. You could tell that she was bored out of her mind. She spent most of it lying across her Dad’s lap. Then she tried to move onto her mother. Mrs G took no notice of her because well this was her moment and she was deep in meditation. Eventually Mrs G did get rather annoyed and picked her up and passed her to me. HB sat in front of me like a statue for next 30 mins! Hand on my heart I didn’t say anything to her other than ‘sit still’ and that was only once. It was hotter than hot in there and I really didn’t want her hanging off me. So she sat between my knees and didn’t move a muscle. She was such a good girl.
Eventually it ended and we could go outside. We had a look at some of the other structures that made up the Monastery. We had with us a man from UNESCO, who told us that to restore this place it would cost $300,000! And that is only for the outside of the buildings, not the inside murals. Can you guess how much of that $300,000 would actually go to the cost of the restoration? I don’t either, but you can be sure that most of that money would go on the 1st class airfares and 5 star accommodations of the agents. In fact very little of that money would go to the rebuild. Shocking!
Back we went into the temple to finish of the blessings! No enough. Please. Thankfully we were only there for a few minutes while they emptied water into pots for us, which we then had to pour onto a tree. It is meant to represent how we are all connected to nature and by pouring the water onto the trees we are giving back to nature what we have taken. See, how interesting is that (I know some of you are thinking ‘err not very Anita’ but I think it is). HB asked me why I didn’t have a pot; my response was ‘Sweetheart, there aren’t enough pots’.
Lunch looked a little iffy, and HB had ants in her pants, so we went for a walk to look at all the buildings that had fallen down. There wasn’t actually that far that we could go, so we walked round and round in circles. While we walked we had a little history lesson. It went something like this:
Monks are beggars. They have no money. They get all their food, clothes, books etc from the community (why then do they all have mobile phones?). The Monks don’t build the temples or monasteries, the communities do and then invite the Monks to live there to pray for them. So monasteries are always surrounded by towns or villages. Without them, there is no source of food so the Monks move away. Now this place was special. It got all its money and things from the King! Now when the King ‘disappeared’ in 1975 there was no more money or food, so the Monks left. This monastery has been abandoned since then, and has only had Monks living there for the past 6 months. So as there was no one around to take care of the buildings they have either fallen down or are about to.
This history lesson was so good; HB still remembers all the details over a month later! You may not think that is impressive, but seeing as if I ask her what did we do this morning she won’t remember, I am impressed that she remembers this.
By the time we left it was only 12:15! Time certainly goes slowly when you are bored. So what did we do for the rest of the day? Well, I am not sure. It says in my diary that we just relaxed, which probably means HB watched a movie on my laptop and I packed the bags. The evening was fun. They had a group of dancers come and perform the local dancing. It may not be ballet, but it is still just as mesmerising. While in ballet we may work at increasing the flexibility in our legs so that we can lift them higher, they must work at bending their fingers back! Their fingers bend way back, it is incredible to see. If I try and do it, it makes all my muscles in my arms tight. But when they do it, it is elegant and flowing. HB was more interested in doing her own dance than watching. That was until Mrs G gave her the ultimatum of watching or going to bed. She chose to watch. She is a smart girl really.
So here endeth our trip to Laos. My views on the country. Well we only went to Luang Prabang, so I can’t comment on the rest of the country. But the part we went to was certainly lovely. The atmosphere is so completely different than any of the other countries in that region. It seemed peaceful and contented. Would I go back? Maybe to a different part, but not for a while yet.
So where are we off to next? Stay tuned.
To be continued...
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Ru
non-member comment
I don't know.
I didn't want to laugh at you for being made to ride in a log, which is by the way the purest form of Riva you can travel in, but obviously not the coolest, but for showing your disgust at us illegal immegrants I shall. Actually, today I sat next to an actual asylum seekeres at the national insurance office thingy. The man asked her her birthday and when she replied 1st of January and four number I don't recall, he asked her if that was her real date of birth or if the home office gave her that date. I always suspected the home office is god. Here I suspect is our evidence. Now if they would just give me the question to the ultimate answer. But I suspect that will involve £400 and a very long wait. Ah, yet another clue of it's true status?!