Beautiful Luang Prabang
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
36
79
Trip End
Ongoing
Luang Prabang,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, October 23, 2008
ok... i now understand... Luang Prabang was our first real taste of Laos... located on a riverfront surrounded by incredible mountains, Luang Prabang is, according to Lonely Planet, a "photographer's dream"... i am only an amateur's amateur at photography, but i have to agree.... first off, there is the main old town area where all the guesthouses, massage places and restaurants are. there's a reason why UNESCO has added Luang Prabang to their list. then, the old town is surrounded by a shabbier, yet character filled communities where the locals live. finally, the city is bordered on two sides by the river... there are many riverside restaurants, wonderful waterfalls nearby (which we did not have a chance to see), elephant sanctuaries, handicraft making villages, kayaking, rafting and trekking available... oh and the daily night market where i purchased a new shirt... :)...
here is what eunice and i took advantage of..
1. Lao style massage - similar to thai style but with less twisting and stretching.. more pressing with smaller points... we had two hour long massages... one with oil and one without... very cheap... just like thai style
2. night market - around 5pm, about a hundred different vendors set up their areas to sell hand made everything... t-shirts, linen pants, lanterns, cards, cotton books, clothes of all kinds, etc, etc, etc... my favorite part of any night market is the food... we had whole river fish grilled on a stick... twice.. it was SO GOOD... stuffed with ginger and lemongrass... and suprisingly, great cookies... yumm... we've had a bit of a sweet tooth lately...
3. bicycles - we rented bikes one day and only road for a couple of hours... we got caught in the downpour of rain and ended up SOAKED.. but tis ok because i got to eat BBQ'd pig intestines and pork chops at a street vendor... the locals eating there even gave me a taste of their lao lao... (not the same as hawaiian lao lao)
4. Mahout Training - this has to be one of our highlights... a mahout is an elephant trainer... so we got to be trainers for a day... they pick us up in the morning, take us to their camp, give us these baggy yet strangely fashionable blue outfits, feed us and let us do the elephant thing.. first was an hour and a half elephant ride through the jungle with the trainer sitting on the elephants neck while we sat in a basket behind him... apparently, this was so we could watch the trainers and see how they handled the elephants... eunice and i both got a bit queesy as the jungle paths were really jungle like... sometimes the elephants would even climb up and down stair like surfaces.... after about 30 mins of sitting there, my elephants trainer offered me the seat on the elephants neck.. BAREBACK! sweet... let me first tell you that it is not as easy as it looks.. you sit right on the elephants shoulder blades... so when they step it pushes you one way then back and forth back and forth along semi-rough terrain... all in good fun.. but definitely sore on the buttocks... next, they let us feed the elephants some bananas... the elephants went nuts!... the elephants that got the most attention were the 6 month old, the one year old and the five year olds... adorable... the baby was still at the stage where it had to be with mama or dada all day... so it would follow the whole way and would rub up against them the whole time... it needed some physical attention... then they fed us... i was starving by this point.... as we ate, they gave us a study sheet of elephant commands... turn commands, lay down, stand up, spray water... stuff like that.... we memorized these in thai before they put all of us on bareback on our own elephants for a one hour ride through the jungle... of course the guides were behind us to make sure we were safe, but we had control throughout! amazing how people can control just gigantic creatures! we ended the training by taking the elephants to the river and bathing them... this had to have been everyone's favorite part (there were six of use in the group.. each with our own elephants)... basically, we rode the elephants into the river where they would lie down... then we would splash water and scrub their head, neck and backs... and this of course was the time to use the "splash water" command... needless to say, we were soaking wet with water and an wonderful experience by that point. i want an elephant for christmas...
5. Morning Alms - Luang Prabang has many buddhist temples... appropriately, they have many monks. every morning, hundreds of people line the streets of Luang Prabang's old town to give their "alms". what these are, are a donation of food and money to the monks. they do this everyday and each day's alm is what the monks live off of for that day... well, there is always a surplus of food so a lot is wasted. but, people feel good giving an offering and it makes for a pretty good photo op and tourist attraction. so eunice and i woke up before six one morning to witness this event.. pretty cool.. nothing overly spectacular.. i think it would be cooler if i were buddhist...
anyways, that's Luang Prabang in a nutshell ... of course much more happened here... met new people everywhere we went, heard many more stories, and ate wonderful things... i would not be opposed to coming back here one day...
