Loving Laos! (More from my old travel journal)

I just realized that I wrote (1/16/08) twice. Either I got my dates mixed up or I was catching up on the 16^th and then made an entry for the 16^th. Either way, I don’t think a day really matters. I hope it doesn’t irritate any of my readers. J

1/16/2008 (Again)

Today we flew from Vientiane to Luang Probang. We did not waste any time when we got here. As soon as check-in was complete we met up with Jim’s friend Paul who is also visiting the area. Paul had already been here a few days so we asked him to point us in the right direction for some local sights. The first stop was the National Museum. The National Museum used to be the house of the royal family. After the revolution, it was turned into a museum. There is no photography or shoes allowed in any of the Laos museums. After the museum, we crossed the street to see some temples and things on the top of a mountain. It seems like most of the things a traveler wants to see can be found on the top of a mountain. To get to the top of this particular mountain you of course take the stairs. At least 400 steps later and you are at a temple overlooking the towns, rivers, forests, and you can even see the stupa across the countryside. Follow the stone pathway to see Buddha shrines in the side of the mountain. Building this place must have been difficult. My favorite part was a Buddha shrine in a cave. This place was very Indiana Jones. Sometimes I feel less like a tourist and more like an archeologist.

Oldest temple I have ever visited is in Luang Probang.

Inside the old temple.

1/17/2008

This morning we were up and outside a little before 6am to give food to the local monks. The ceremony is referred to as “Alms”. Buddhists sit along the sidewalks with things like sticky rice, bananas and other fruits and the monks walk along in a silent procession from the temple. They walk along the streets lined with people to accept the food offerings. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to take part in this ceremony. If you participate, you must have your shoulders, legs and chest covered (men and women). Remain silent. Do not touch the monks, only their food jars. A little tip: Don’t buy your food from the street vendors. Instead, buy your offerings from the market ahead of time. The street vendors will trick you into buying more food than you intended. They slip piles of rice into your basket as if they want to be friendly with you and help you make the offerings for a better experience. After the ceremony is over the vendors will come to collect all the food they forced into your basket. Not only could you get ripped off but the actions from the vendors can cause a disrespectful and noisy scene. Tour busses cannot pass through during the alms since it is considered disrespectful to sit “above” a monk. After all is said and done the Alms is a beautiful spectacle.

The procession for Alms.

Local monk reads a book in the doorway of his "wat".

The night market in Luang Probang. Photo by J.A.Atwood.

After the Alms, we headed to the local morning market. Here, you can find anything from a new blouse (or slightly used J) to vegetables and meat. Speaking of the meat, this is not your local Safeway. The meat is laid out on the ground on top of reed mats or banana leaves. Fish, chicken, duck, frogs, bats, guinea pigs (alive for freshness) and much more are available for all your protein needs. Many of the animals are alive while the larger specimens are laid out in pieces on the mats and leaves ready for the pickiest buyer to sort through.

Meat at the local market.

Laos is like much of Asia when it comes to transportation. Most of the Laos people use motorcycles or motor-scooters. They are small, cheap and use less gas. Only half of them can be seen using a helmet. And pretty much none of the small children use helmets. One motorcycle can transport a family of four. Two adults and two children. They just hop on and go! Don’t get caught in front of one of these things. Crossing a Laos street is worse than crossing a New Jersey street. They do NOT stop for pedestrians.

Later in the morning we took a riverboat to see two villages and another place of Buddha worship. All three places are located along the Mekong River and are best accessed by boat. For the caves with the Buddha statues, it is the only way to get there. Whisky Village was the first stop. Here, they make rice wine and whisky made from sticky rice. I tried some of the wine and it was very sweet. When they bottle the whiskey, they put things like snakes and scorpions in the bottles. The Laos people believe that this mixture is very healthy. They recommend a small cup twice a day to cure rheumatism, lumbago and “sweat of limbs”. They also say that a shot will cure a headache. That one’s probably true. J Anyway, they send this whiskey down the river to be sold in the towns but you can also buy it there in Whiskey Village. It’s cheaper in town.

We traveled further up the river and came to a staircase carved into the side of the cliffs. There were (of course) hundreds of stair-steps to the cave high above. Once you are up there it doesn’t take long to realize that all the exercise was worth it. You need a flashlight for the first cave. Even with all of our flashlights together, (Jim, Paul and me) it was still hard to see the details of what we were standing in front of. I had to use the flash on my camera to make out the intricacies. There were thousands of statues and one large, pointy ornament in the back of the cave. There were little holes and crevaces everywhere and all of them were completely full of Buddha statues that people have left there over the years. Almost all of the figurines in this cave were ancient. There was a second, smaller cave and this too was filled with Buddha statues. Many were very old but this cave also had some newer ones left by more recent worshippers. It was much easier to see in the smaller cave. These places do not have the heavy tourist traffic that you would find at the statue of liberty. They are difficult to get to and they are still sacred places for worship. There is little to no security. There are signs warning people that it is illegal to transport the statues out of the country but there are no glass cases; no steel barriers. There is nothing keeping someone from accessing these artifacts. I can only hope that common respect for the sacred sites keeps them in the same condition for generations to come.

The caves were the highlight of my day. We did stop at one more village after the caves. It was called Paper Village. I would go on about it but if I wrote about all the paper products they made it would probably seem a little prosaic after all the excitement of the caves. I would like to mention one thing about Paper Village though. Jim went looking for a bathroom and when he couldn’t find one he asked a villager where he could relieve himself. The villager replied in broken English “Oh, just go anywhere”. I hope this isn’t always their policy! Yikes!

It was a pretty eventful day. J  

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