we didn't have much on the agenda for our time in laos, but we quickly found the night market, more temples, and one of my favorite foods of the whole trip - coconut pancakes. i ate them every day. and have since tracked down what they are called (khanom krok) and how to make them (which involved the acquisition of an ebelskiver pan). delicious!
our hotel was just across the street from a temple, so at sunrise and sunset every day we could listen to the monks chanting. it is so beautiful and mesmerizing and the throngs of monks in saffron robes was a sight to behold. we visited a number of temples around the city. they were slightly different than the temples we had visited before - these were all buddhist temples and the style of decoration was a bit changed. the tree of life and statues of the buddha tended to be the centerpieces in these temples.
buddha statues
tree of life mosaic
temple in the center of town
river crossing to get to the cave
one section of the cave - the buddhas come from all over the area
when they are no longer needed/wanted at a temple
when they are no longer needed/wanted at a temple
the highlight of luang prabang was a day long outing that included elephant riding, boating, limestone waterfalls, hiking, and river rafting. we set out early and arrived at the "elephant farm" for our first adventure. all the elephants at the eco-camp where rescued from logging camps. hopefully people riding on them is a better life than hauling logs?! we boarded our elephant along with our mahout and started our journey through the forest. at one point our elephant decided it didn't really like us very much and started growling. yep, turns out that elephants growl. and it is kind of scary! it feels like you are sitting on top of a giant rumbling generator that at any moment could flick you off like a fly. gulp. but our lady ultimately decided that we were not so bad and finally started moving again. soon after, our mahout (elephant driver) jumped off - pete and i were on our own. pete eventually assumed the role of driver and i soon followed suit - what a crazy experience!
happy elephant with some sugar cane (and a driver)
mahout pete (post-grumpy elephant)
steering an elephant - crazy!
next we traveled down river in a very narrow, very tippy, long-tail boat. our destination was the limestone waterfalls, which were pretty neat. it actually looked like a completely fabricated landscape at first because it was so interesting. we spent a bit of time here - enough time for a hike upriver and for pete to go on a zipline adventure.
limestone waterfalls
pete on the zipline
the last portion of our day trip was quite possibly the most uncomfortable part (from a safety perspective) of our entire trip. pete, erin, two guides, and i all boarded a bamboo raft (literally lengths of bamboo tied together with twine) that would float us down the relatively slow moving, meandering river. sounds lovely, right? except that the five of us were WAY over the weight rating of the little raft. whenever one of the guides would move to use his oar, the whole thing was precariously close to flipping us all into the river. it was a warm day and the raft fortunately had some innertubes on board so pete almost immediately slowly maneuvered himself off the raft and into the river. that definitely helped, but it was still scary times on the raft. i soon followed suit and hopped in an innertube to float solo down the river. between the two of us, we got enough weight off the raft so it could float properly. disaster averted! the river water probably took a few years off my life, but i won't go there...
scary, scary bamboo raft
happy on our innertubes...
luang prabang was a beautiful city and i highly recommend it if anyone is heading in that direction. the quiet, mountain air was just what we needed at the end of the trip.
