We got off the slow boat at Luang Prabang, Laos. When Laos was a colony of France, the French had a huge influence in Luang Prabang since it was the capital of the time. So the very small city (more like large town) is visually interesting with Buddhist Temples next to French inspired architecture and bakeries galore. Thailand doesn't really do bakeries or bread for that matter so we were excited for the change up! Not to mention some sweet treats:
Speaking of food, we had our absolute favorite soup here at the Night Market in the center of town on a street corner. It was spicey minced pork with noodles, who-knows-what seasoning and then add your own greens and chillis. We are here twice!
The second night we planned on eating in this alleyway we found where for 10,000 kip (little over $1, even in Laos very cheap) you get a bowl and can help yourself buffet style to anything on the table which included all sorts of meats, veggies, broth, etc...
We went back to the soup instead so unfortunately I cannot vouch for that one!
...even chicken head if your heart desires:
The main part of town was very cute, with colonial-style buildings intermixed. These pictures really don't do it just but you get the idea:
We walked around town out first day. It rained in the morning so the town was very quiet. Scott didn't take a lot of photos with the phone so here is just one of the oldest active temple in town, popular for it's very large funeral cart in a side building as well as mosaic displaying Ramayana on a red well which was pretty cool. More pictures when we upload the camera photos
Oh yea, and we have one of Scott having a little fun - please forgive the lack of respect towards the Buddha.
A sacred tradition in all Buddhist cultures, but particularly strong in Luang Prabang, in the Alms Giving Ceremony. This takes place every morning - all monks from all the temples around the city link for a procession down the Main Street of town at sunrise. The people kneel and offer sticky rice, sweet treats and other small food to the monks as they pass by, giving blessings in return. It's a very quiet, reverent process (ruined only by us tourists taking photos, but we kept our distance and tried to show respect!) Thisnparticular procession was the first official day of Songkran (the new year) which is why there is a market set up behind them and I think was a larger procession than what is typical.
We also visited a very beautiful waterfall outside of town (I'll add the name later). We almost went trekking and biking riding instead of this since Scott is not very impressed with any waterfalls since seeing Iquzu Falls at eh border of Brazil and Argentina on our last big trip. But at the last minute we got some good advice to go and I'm so glad we did - it was truly beautiful. This one was especially interesting because it was a vertical series of falls with small pools at the bottom if each one that were deeper than expected and an amazing light blue color. There were some places were several small pools "stepped down" one after the other. At the too, the stream was calm and they had built a small fence (wouldn't have trusted my life to it or anything!) that allowed us to wade into the stream and essentially look down over the top fall. We also found one of the pools about half way down to swim in that also allowed us to safely go right up to the edge and peer over. Oh yea, we weren't really supposed to swim there hit we took the lead from some teenage monks and figured it would be fine :)
Also at the same park as the waterfall was a best rehabilitation center. These folks have rescued bears from poachers and have built a habitat for them to get healthy and grow happy. They were very playful and cute as you can see with this one playing with a stick in the water:
Luang Prabang's "city center" has a somewhat random talll hill almost right at the center. It of course has a small temple on top, with a lot of Buddha statues on the way up and interestingly a Buddha Footprint (we need to find out more on that and report back - although definitely a rock with indentations in the shape of a footprint, it would be a very Large footprint so were not quite sure history of it). Most importantly [to us] it's a GREAT place to watch the sunset:
We didn't get to spend a lot of time in Laos but Luang Prabang was probably our favorite of the few places we got to see. :)
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