Wat Sop Sickharam and Wat Xiengthong, Luang Prabang

---

After a couple of days out and about we spent today exploring Luang Prabang a bit more. We thought that we should explore a couple of the wats because the considerable number of Buddhist temples is one of the things for which Luang Prabang is famous.

We started early, getting up at 6.15am so that we could observe the monk’s morning alms taking. The monks come past the Lotus Villa each morning as part of the devotional ceremony where the local villagers give rice to the monks. There was advice in our room about how to observe this ritual appropriately. That advice told us that we should be respectfully dressed, as for visiting any of the wats, and we should endeavour to keep ourselves lower than the monks and ensure that we did not touch the monks or their robes. As a woman I should not make eye contact with the monks.

So, covered from neck to ankle, I sat in the gutter out the front of the Lotus Villa and really only looked at the backs of the monks after they had passed by!! I took photographs (no flash) of the monk’s backs and still worried about whether I might be causing any offence. Bernie crouched by the roadside a few doors further along and took photographs (without flash) of the monks approaching. Despite our efforts to be as unobtrusive as possible as we observed this religious ritual, there were tourists taking flash photographs from the middle of the road with their cameras almost in the monk’s faces!! And then there were tourists who were inadequately dressed, walking up and down the road basically just ogling at the procession of monks as they passed by. It was very disturbing to see such a blatant disregard for the sensibilities of the locals.

After breakfast we stopped briefly at Wat Sop Sickharam on our way to Wat Xiengthong. Wat Xiengthong is located near the tip of the peninsula that is formed by the Mekong River and the Nam Khan. This was one of only two wats in Luang Prabang that was spared when the Black Flag Haw sacked the city in 1887. Apparently the leader of the Black Flag, Deo Van Tri, studied at this wat earlier in his life so used it as his headquarters during the invasion rather than destroy it.

The main ordination hall (sim) at Wat Xiengthong is an excellent example of classic Luang Prabang temple architecture, with the roof sweeping low to the ground. The sin and the red chapel that houses the very old and very rare reclining Buddha image is covered are covered in very colourful glass mosaic tiles.

From Wat Xiengthong we walked the rest of the way around the peninsula and then back towards the centre of town along the Nam Khan. We decided to lunch again at the Luang Prabang Bakery as the food that we have had there has been nice (and it hasn’t made us sick again). After sharing a small sandwich, because even their small sandwiches are pretty big, we walked around the corner to the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre. The centre does a very good job of explaining the complexities of the many ethnic groups that make up the very diverse Laotian population.

Just before 3.00pm we wandered back to Dhammada for our last cheap massage for some time!! We enjoyed our massage at Dhammada much more than the one that we had at Aroma Spa. The oil that they used was much lighter than the one that they used last week which left us both feeling something like chickens that had been liberally coated in olive oil ready to go into the oven!!!

We wandered back along the Mekong and bought drinks at a riverside restaurant trying one more time for a stunning sunset over the Mekong River. It was not to be! The sun was very red, but as it dropped lower and lower it became completely obscured by the smoke haze that is persistently hanging over Luang Prabang at the moment.

We ate dinner tonight at one of Asia’s premier restaurants, the Restaurant Brasserie L’Elephant. As the name might suggest, it was quite posh! But you can eat at a really posh restaurant in Luang Prabang for just US$35.00 for two, including drinks! It’s going to be hard on the wallet the next time that we eat out in Melbourne.

---