Temples and Waterfalls

  Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Monday, June 23, 2008

Laos luxury hotel

It's a long bumpy ride to Luang Prabang. We watch the green hills and straw huts as we bump along the rough roads further in land. Finally we make it to our destination at 2.30am. After faffing at the bus station we are in a Tuk-Tuk taking us to the ATMs as all our money went on the bus tickets. However, this is more of a bus size Tuk-Tuk, so it isn't just us being driven all over town. This seems to end up an ATM crawl as all stop working at night - we assume something to do with the curfew. The driver even wakes up an ATM keeper to double check. Somehow we end up at the other bus station, are moved to a different Tuk-Tuk and agree to pay in Thai Baht at a premium and finally are dumped at the side of a deserted road at about 4am. There are meant to be hostels near by! 
 

dawn collection

As you could guess, by this point I am a little grumpy and desperately wanting sleep. Not my travel buddies. Its 4am but they still want to do the search, wake up all the hostel owners and find the cheapest! They find one place which might be ok but negotiating the price as its only half a night! By the time this is done its 5am - and now they decide we may as well stay up another hour and save tonight's accommodation totally! Aghhh. We are camped outside a shop with a concrete table and benches so set up the cards as dawn approaches. With it comes the procession of the monks making their dawn collection. We notice that tourists with cameras have started to appear. 10s of orange robes are coming down the street towards us in a long line. Bald monks of all ages make up the line. With it comes the rattle of the shutters in the shop we have camped out in front of and slowly we are shooed off. Meanwhile Alicia and Rachel had gone in search of cash (we couldn't even buy the monks a banana!) It's nearing 6am and they've found us a cheep hostel and now it counts as the next day! 
 

View is Lang Probang

We decamp in our hostel - after the owner has got rid of the giant hopping spider on my bed, yuck. It even made the owner jump. Now all desperately hungry, aim 1: find cash. Its still quite early on Sunday morning, so finding anywhere to take our travellers cheques or a cash machine is still difficult. Meanwhile the food stalls are all opening which is really not helping. There are baguettes, coffees, juices, fruit appearing everywhere now.  Finally a kind Kiwi couple point us in the direction of a cash machine which suddenly appears to be working - it must be on a timer. At last, food before a nap. 
 

After teh monk conned Eriq!

Late morning we head into town exploring. We go up the Buddhist Wats, situated on top of a hill in the middle of town. They offer spectacular views of the area. We go into a small temple at the top. Inside is a monk. Alicia and I discretely back out but Eriq is invited in to pray. Rather awkwardly he does. Meanwhile the monk starts to chat wanting to 'practice his English'. Eriq who enjoys chatting to everyone obviously partook. He then starts asking for money. Apparently he wants an English dictionary. Eriq gives him 2k - a small donation, but he asks for 50k. This strikes him as odd so Eriq makes his excuses and comes and joins us admiring the views on the benches outside. Retelling the story Alicia is horrified!

Palace

As she has learnt on her Buddhist meditation retreat, monks aren't meant to request or desire material things. There is a box in the temple for donations. He must be a fake or corrupt monk. Sure enough in the few minutes for us to return to the temple to have a look for ourselves the monk has mysteriously disappeared! We meet a couple of English girls and all head back down into town for lunch, check out the palace, explore the peninsula into the river before we book in for an even more bargainous massage ~ group discount! This is followed by the night market, all this shopping to be done, and then exhausted slump back to sleep.

Palace garden

 
Monday, breakfast, check out and hire a Tuk-Tuk for the day. It's already gone 11am by the time we've negotiated all of this, and we want to go to the caves and waterfalls - both over an hour way in opposite directions, then to the bus station. We do some hard bargaining and eventually he agrees. Having said caves first, we seem to be heading to the waterfalls, oh well, not important!

Alicia helping out!

Another minor set back as we get a flat tyre - then off again. It's another glorious sunny day, so we welcome the chance to pay our 20k and find the swimming holes. We follow a little track from the car park past an enclosure of rescued bears. Then from amongst the trees appears the river. IT is beautiful.

Arriving in paradise

The light turquoise colour of the pools with white cascading falls tumbling into it. Its so hot we want to strip off and jump right in, but resist and follow the path further up stream. There are even more beautiful pools and cascades, then again through the trees to another. This one we have to ourselves so we jump straight in!

3-2-1 Jump

The pools are deep as we splash around and have our photo shoot!

Look at the clear water

Finally we drag ourselves out and follow the path along, this time to the big fall stretching high into the sky.We cross the bridge and follow the path up where you can walk along a path of small streams to a pool part way up the waterfall with views of the pools far down below.

more us and waterfalls!

Spectacular. Time is just disappearing. We do a survey on the other tourists about the caves. With a 2 hr drive to the caves and the chance they close in 2hrs we give them a miss in preference of food and more swimming!

View from half way up the waterfall

Thank goodness we came here first. One of the lower pools has an overhanging tree so we take it in turns to launch ourselves back into the water. Too much fun to be had. By 6pm we are the last in the park and head to our bus. There's a big dispute over price as we didn't get to the caves. The big expense is said to be fuel - well he used less than half by cutting out the caves. Suddenly now that isn't the only cost! Well this had to be resolved quickly as our bus turned out to be leaving at 7.30pm not 8, so we are lucky to have made it on time!

Another swimming hole

More jumping off trees!