MUST finish laos!
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
26
117
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
this morning sean's alarm goes off just before 6am. oh yes, i'm going monk spotting. after the other morning, arriving into luang prabang and watching the troops of monks, walking the streets, collecting alms - or gifts of food - from the locals, i finally decided that i would drag my heavy ass out of bed to go see them in action. out of bed, pee, throw clothes on, and i'm down the street with the other laos folk, all early risers, all already up and about. and it's nice. i can see now why my dad likes to get up so early. it's so nice to walk around when it's practically dead, especially here with no tourists hanging around! so i wander down to where we think we saw the monks that morning before, and soon realise that either i timed it wrong or they decided to get up even earlier because many of them have already got their bowls and are pounding the streets home again. despite this however, i did manage to seek a peek at one or two 'packs' picking up food from some of the locals. but what was also fascinating was watching their expressions after they'd got what they'd come for. i'm guessing back in the day, the collecting of alms was a peaceful affair, with only the locals to have to contend with. however, since word spread of their early morning risings, there seemed to be as many tourists watching the monks as locals actually doing what people are supposed to be doing at that time of the day - feeding the monks. no, it seemed to me that most of the tourists appeared to almost be gawping at the monks, because some of them really got in close to the monks, with their cameras zoomed into their faces. and as much as i would have loved to have got in there with the rest of the piranha paps, it was the behaviour of some of the monks that deterred me from doing so. it seemed that as soon as they'd got their food, they almost gave a scared look at the tourists around them and picked up their feet to walk away faster. no, i don't think they're too keen on us tourists. anyway, it was an experience to watch from affair, and though i couldn't be so close i could smell them, the zoom on my little digital camera was good enough to get some great shots of the monks and surrounding piranhas! after returning back to bed for an hour or two, and waking sean up to say how lazy he was and all that he'd missed, we went for breakfast in this trendy coffee shop called Jamo, which did a fantastic cinammon roll. beautiful. following breakfast, we went to seek out a boat to take a trip down the mekong river to see pak ou caves. we'd read that we could charter a boat for next to nothing, but every travel agent we asked tried to sell us an expensive package, inc. boat trip, walk around several local villages, the caves and waterfall. we explained that we only wanted the boat trip, but one sonny tried to convince us that we'd never get ourselves a boat because there was some sort of a quece, and that every boat owner had to report to him before going out on the river. i didn't understand it myself and within minutes we'd told him to his face we didn't believe him and that we'd get ourselves a boat. ten or so minutes later, we had. we'd struck up a deal with one of the boat owners for a return trip down the river, inc. cave for 250,000 kip, which i did know how much that was, but since coming over to vietnam and now working with the dong, i have just become so confused with all the currencies we've used and their exchange rates. anyway, after lunch with a dancing bug, we boarded the boat, which was driven not by the boat owner, but rather his son. now, we don't know if it was a case of the current holding him back, or instructions given to him by his father, but this kid would not move far into the river, and instead for a long while hugged the shore. sean was getting frustrated with him after a while, but i quite enjoyed being able to watch the monks and people fishing and all the kids throwing themselves into the murky waters below. some of them even seemed to throw themselves in on purpose, as if for show for us! i took some award winning photos that's all i can say! lonely planet would be proud! further along, sonny jim decided to brave it and pull out into the river so giving us some superb views both upstream and downstream, and of either side of the river. we also got to get up close to some of the other boats on the river, moored up beside the villages, we decided to reject. there are only so many village folk you can piss off by snooping around their homes! more sights along the river included entire hills of felled trees, a petrol station on a barge style boat, and butterflies that suddenly moved when the boat passed, similar to the moan rats in alice in wonderland! when we arrived at the caves, our learner driver sat back in his boat, to sleep no doubt, and we paid to enter them and see the abundance of buddhas rescued from temples up and down the country. i believe?! while in the cave, sean was harassed by a woman trying to sell him incense sticks to show the buddhas in worship to them. i'd wandered off. i don't see why we should pay for incense to worship when we're not religious. anyway, he finally gave in and gave a small donation for the restoration of the cave, despite neither of us knowing what it must go towards. we said, the money certainly doesn't go towards paying someone to dust the buddhas. they were covered in dust! on our way up to the next cave, we were stopped by a couple of girls trying to get money out of us to free birds and toilet money, but sean said no to both and we wandered by. at the next cave, our torch decided to die on us so we had to pay for the hire of another one. always paying for something! within the cave were, surprise, more dusty buddhas, and too much darkness for my liking. he decided that to get any good photos, he'd decide to turn the torch out, which just destroyed me. i kept taking photos too, but everytime i went to see the freshly snapped photo in the image display, i half expected to see some sort of crazy ghost or werewolf creature! oh yes, i do watch far, far too many horror movies! i love them, but it plays havoc with my imagination! on our way back to the boat, we expected to see those two girls waiting for us by the landing dock, telling their parents we'd physically amused them or something as a way of getting more money out of us - not that we'd done anything you obviously understand - but they were nowhere to be seen. maybe out capturing more birds?! after getting the boat back to land, we went for dinner in a restaurant called the lao lao garden, on the 'fun side' of the phu-si hill, a garden full of fairy lights and platformed tables. we ate water buffalo, and i was made a fresh lemonade - the lemon having been cut directly from the bush after placing my order - before going to their next door bar, the lao lao bar, for cocktails, inc. the pink gay, and games of pool. we had one last one in the hive bar, before we were asked to leave, as they closed at 11.30pm. we'd been told our guesthouse curfew was midnight, but on arrival at 11.45pm, the gates were already bolted and padlocked. needless to say, with all our rattling of the gate, and hello-ing, when the 'security' person for that night didn't wake up and another had to wake to come to our rescue, no-one was particularly happy with us! saying that, no tourist we spoke to was happy with their curfews, or sticking to them either, but if you're going to run a place for people who go out late, you have to expect to stay awake for them, and not drop off to sleep as you've done most of the rest of the day already! if you didn't know, the laos people like to sleep ALOT!
