Luang Prabang - Lao now brown cow. Or, er, is it a water buffalo?


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Asia » Laos » West » Luang Prabang
August 10th 2010
Published: March 3rd 2011
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Tuesday, 10th August
The mystery of wet season - last night it rained so hard that the rat population all drowned. Lucky, because I didn't have my injection this time. Anyway now it's baking hot and there's absolutely no sign of the water that crashed against the window all night. If it stays like that wet season is welcome.

So today we figured first day in the town we might as well explore. Luang Prabang is surrounded by both the Mekong and the Nam Khong so we took a stroll to check it out. Here is quite a religious town and the temples are abundant. It's been circa 15 minutes since we last saw some so why not. Fortunately these ones are slightly different to Ayutthaya and Sukothai in the same way I am different to someone on the dole. I work. The buildings are not falling down and the monks walk around, not completely obvious how they serve their belief - it's a shame there isn't more information.

As always there are a thousand buddha statues. I was told the fat one means 'happy buddha' but what is that if not the greed and gluttony of what they
She's a WaterfallShe's a WaterfallShe's a Waterfall

Damn it with the Stone Roses references...
should be leaving behind on the road to meet Kurt Cobain.

Luang Prabang is small in size and super sleepy. It's the town equivalent of a kitten. The laid back nature of it has brought Hayley back to life after the 'everyone is out to screw you' of Thailand. It has just one main street predominantly lined with restaurants and travel operators. I have a suspicion that the place might not be such a haven in the busy season. Every commercial enterprise in town has an identical sign, the town's signmaker drives around in a chauffeured limo with gold plated hubcaps.

Laos used to be a French colony and the influence is obvious to see, mostly in the street signs which are second language in French and not English just as in Thailand. The place kind of smells like incense, not sure if that means French or just fruity. I don't think I've seen as many hammer and sickles since I worked on the farms all those years ago. We're not really sure what they all mean. Well, we know communism but not how that should impact our daily lives. Will we be arrested for exhibiting overly imperialist tendencies? My clothes are shabby enough to avoid any detection fortunately.

Since the afternoon followed suit of the morning and the sun shone down we decided to hit the waterfalls on the "outskirts" of town. Those brackets well-deserved since it took an hour by tuk-tuk, possibly the least comfortable of all the ways to sit down. Our dodging of water buffalo helped. The views were as spectacular as we've seen over this side of the World, great green mountains and luscious fields distracted me momentarily from looking at my watch counting the hour down.

The waterfalls were...er...I'm running out of superlatives. Slightly away from the larger fall deeper into the forest is a group of smaller falls to swim in. It was cold enough for my nuts to pack up and head back to South America and Hayley passed on a long dip too. My feet were getting bitten by fish as I stood and shivered though it felt more like a massage than Jaws II. In the murkiness it was still pretty unsettling. I decided to jump off one of the waterfalls. Hayley whipped the video out quick enough to see me shamedly bottle out mid-jump. And then walk away with my head in my hands. The less said the better.

Wednesday, 11th August
Today we booked ourselves onto a kayaking trip. Thanks to that fact that there's 8 of us on the trip it cost about as much as a Mars bar. That saving usually comes through the flippancy of our own lives. No waivers to sign though. Not that that little bit of paper is much use when the fish at the bottom of the Nam Khong river have massaged my floating corpse so much that they're just picking at bone.

We got our instructions in how to paddle and safety jackets that smelled like a 15 year old football kit that hasn't been washed and zipped tightly into a bag. No Hayley no hugs with that on. The river level was unusually high due to the torrential rain of the last few days which meant we barely needed to paddle to get down the river. It was only 15 or so minutes before we reached our first stop - a village of combined Khmu and Hmong tribes (forgive my dyslexia). The place was deserted of men since they were toiling in the fields, an absolute adulterers paradise. The children of the village nakedly frolicked (as always) in the river. No-one knows where the 15% of our trip fee went. That was until we saw the huge satellite dish sticking out of the ground.

Our next trip took us dwon to another incredible set of waterfalls and paddling pools, this time much warmer and enough to drag Hayley in for me to wind her up by pretending to push her in. The weather started to turn whilst some of the group headed for an elephant ride. Getting back to the kayaks Hayley fell in and got covered in cr*p. She didn't find it funny.

I did.

Towards the final leg onwards to Luang Prabang the river took a whole new turn. Rapids level 3. Our instructions - follow the guide. Easier said than done. The old Aussie couple in front of us flipped over at a particularly big wave, we missed it by centimetres. As we headed into the next set I screamed at Hayley to paddle right. She paddled left. Then backwards. The water splashed, we teetered on the brink. We ended up backwards. The Aussies still floated in panic. Eventually all was resolved.

We had the most amazing Indian for dinner, the possibly the worst crepes. Every silver lining.


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