Luang Prabang, in Laos, is a relatively small city, with a population a bit over 100,000. Everything is reasonably close together, so getting around and sightseeing is relatively easy. Our guide met us at 8am , at the hotel, to take us on our tour for the day.
First stop was the National Museum, previously the Kings Palace, but Laos abandoned monarchy in 1975, so it became a museum.
Our land transport for the day
We have arrived in Luang Prabang in the middle of New Year Celebrations, so our guide is a bit hung over, and not everything is open, but everyone is out on the streets celebrating.
The National Museum
Building where the Kings Carriage is kept
No photos were allowed in the museum, which gave an interesting pesrpective on how the monarchy lived.
Next we were off for our boat trip up the Mekong to the Pak Ou caves, we have been particularly looking forward to seeing the Upper Mekong.
, which promises to be very different, as we are now in quite mountainous county and the river current seems quite strong.
The four of us, and our guide, have a 27m river boat to ourselves.
There is plenty of room, and a western style toilet
The throttle is also hi tech
We are told it is powered by an engine from a Toyota pick up truck, possibly a Hilux. Nevertheless it motors along effortlessly into what seems to be a 4-5 knot current. It is going to take us almost 2 hrs to get up to the caves and only a bit over an hour coming back.
The current is strong, with mini rapids in some stretches.
The river is filled with rocks and the captain has to be very careful, as he travels close to the shore (and the rocks) to minimise the current. The shore is also very sandy in many places.
There are less fishermen than we saw downstream, and only a few fish farms, but there are still a lot of small boats trying to net a catch.
Along the river we see also see some elephants being led down to the water
And some water buffalo having a bath
After about an hour we call in to a small riverside village that is well known for its rice wine and whiskey. It also has all the normal tourist trappings, bbut is almost totally deserted due to the New Year holidays.
Distillation apparatus for distilling the rice 'wine' ! Being an old brewer, Mike interrogated them on how they made the product and left not a lot wiser, but did manage to taste it. Probably not his best decision of the day.
Finally we ended up at Pak Ou caves, which consist of one large cave just above river level and anothyer about 300 steps up the cliff face. After seeing the first cave we were not motivated to climb up to the second, as were were told it was not as impressive.
Boats tied up at the "jetty " at Pak Ou caves
The main cave is a place of worship and is famous for the many Buddhas that grace the cave.
There are estimated to be 2500 Buddhas in the cave
The caves are on the Mekong, opposite where the Ou River enters the Mekong. The Ou river comes in from Northern Laos whereas the Mekong continues off to China and Tibet.
The Ou river entrance. The water looks much cleaner than the Mekong.
It takes a bit over an hour to get back to Luang Prabang, just in time fior lunch and a New Year procession. I can remember New Year in Thailand where everyone gets soaking wet as water is thrown over anyone and everyone for luck. There were early signs that the same tradition applies here.
A motorcyclist gets a dousing as they ride by
This young boy decides to climb into his water bucket rather than throw its contents on others
We have a sort walk to the main street from the river bank to find ourselves a good seat in a restaurant to have lunch and watch the procession. Our guide finds the perfect spot, and the procession is already lining up.
We get a seat on the upper floor overlooking the street. It is also far enough off the ground to not get wet.
The procession is lining up and the water starts flying
All sorts of weapons are allowed
Most of the monks are saturated before the procession starts
There are many colourful floats and they fight back throwing water back at their attackers
After lunch we went down the road to see Wat Xiengthong , which is supposed to be the most spectacular temple in town. Our guide had served as a monk there for 9 years in his youth so was very knowledgeable about the place. We managed to get there without getting wet, and Loy decided to head back to the hotel in the Tuk Tuk
After our visit we catch a Tuk Tuk back to our hotel. The streets are now very busy and water throwing has increased in intensity. People are transported around by the truck load and are easy targets.
We thought we would be safe in our Tuk Tuk, and could avoid the frenzy by sticking to the side streets. We quickly discovered that no streets were safe and we hastily has to protect anything that was not waterproof, as were were absolutely saturated by the time we got back to our hotel.
We were so wet, we called out to reception to bring our keys out, rather than drip water all through the reception area. he staff were is hysterics. All i can assume ids that we should now have enough luck to last us through the year.
We felt a lot better when we got back to the hotel, and found out that Joy was equally saturated on her trip home, with someone coming out of their house with a hose and aiming it at her and the Tuk Tuk driver.
Our guide recommended a couple of restaurants in town that we should try for dinner, one was booked out, the other closed, but the girl at the hotel got us a booking at a respectable place. We asked if we could get a taxi as we didn't want to get saturated again on the way to dinner. Taxis are not an option in this town, so we sought assurance from the girl at the desk that water throwing was over and we would by fine if we took a Tuk tuk.
Guess what, one rogue water thrower got us again, not far from the restaurant. We arrived at the restaurant to the tune of Gangnam style being played in the street through a monstrous speaker system that occupied the whole back of a hatchback. After about 30 mins they left, and we had an enjoyable meal.
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