6am start. Kelly and I slept pretty well last night in spite of the heat. Breakfast was next to the Mekong again – there was still a lot of fog about and it was very cool and lovely.
At 7am we were back on the boat – I had absolutely no problem with this… the sun was rising over the mountains, the river breeze was refreshing and we could all get back to relaxing! There were similar activities to yesterday – chatting, reading, sleeping…
About two hours into the trip we stopped off at a small ‘willage’ of a Hmong people tribe. They are spirit worshippers that make their living from working on rice fields at the top of the mountains. Their village was full of children as the adults were all out working – they had lots of things to sell and were very entertained by our cameras and video. Tommy taught them how to do a thumbs up, whilst JD showed off his juggling skills. It was a very interesting little experience.
Back on to the boat. Lunch was a bit of a banquet cooked by the family that lived on our boat – it was all very yummy although I’m not sure what all of it was. There was definitely pork and noodles and bamboo shoots – and fried chicken drumsticks. Then amazingly juicy pineapple for dessert.
After another 3 hours on the boat we arrived at the Pak Ou caves. with apparently 4,000 images of Buddha. They were basically some small caves that everybody had put lots of mini Buddha statues in. Not too impressive really, but it was interesting hearing about all the different positions of Buddha – Buddhism really is a beautiful and intricate religion when you begin to learn about it.
We all bundled back onto the boat, almost drowning in our own sweat after climbing all the way up to the upper caves. Another pleasant hour and half boat ride and then goodbye boat :(
Now we are in Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos and a world heritage listed town. We took a quick little tuk tuk to our hotel. We are here for 3 nights – yay for air conditioning, proper showers and not having to go searching for toilet paper!
An hour or so to chill in the hotel, then out to see the town a little. This town is quite small but very quaint and charming. The night markets are lovely – quite high quality goods and well organised – nothing like other markets we have seen so far. Lots of food too, including the weird Asian things like chicken heads and whole fish on a stick. We grabbed a mango and pineapple fruit smoothie, mmm.
Dinner was Luang Prabang sausages + crispy pork with some cabbagy thing. All yummy. And then we all went out to a bar afterwards – thats right, all thirteen of us… first time this has happened this tour! It was great fun – they had a two for one cocktail special on, so I had two pinacoladas for $5, and we all played a game of ‘celebrity’, a mixture of taboo and charades (those that know me well know my attachment to games such as these!). We got kicked a bit after 11… that’s when bars close here.
Back to the hotel for sleep.
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