Luang Prabang

After two days on the Mekong River, we arrived in Luang Prabang, the former capital of Laos, and a UNESCO Heritage Site. We took an initial walk around town, visited the night market street, and got a first taste of this cool town. I took a long night walk around the “peninsula” – a strip of land between two rivers and sort of the city center…

(Note the peninsula on the map!)

The next day we kind of did the same thing with our Lao guide, Sak. As with the previous night, some of the food items were on the exotic side: insects, reptiles, fish, pink eggs, various animal body parts, exotic fruits, and banana-leaf-wrapped Laotian concoctions. There’s a whole bunch of art and artisan crafts, in addition to some generic tourist souvenirs.

(Note the political coffee shop.)…

A varied batch: more market shots, a visit to a nearby Buddhist temple, our Laotian guide Sak, and our trip to the waterfall with a stop off at a roadside buffalo ice cream shop. It ends with some fried silk worm cocoons and crickets (yum!)…

Here’s Sak again showing us the trails around the Kuang Si waterfalls and swimming pools. There are also some bears there, among the lovely jungles, and a bunch o’ fish…

The lush water park continues with a water wheel, big trees, nice flowers, random people having lunch, Stuart in the water, more bears, etc…

Later that day we went to a silk/cotton, weaving, and textiles artisan crafts place that had a groovy treehouse and a great view on the banks of the Mekong. Ended the day with dinner and eventually a drink at the rooftop bar looking over the night market…

The next morning we were up and off to the Mandalao Elephant Conservation Sanctuary. After a talk about elephant conservation and the state of the species in Laos, we put on special boots, crossed the river by boat, and went to interact with the elephants. We fed them and took a walk with them. It was a great, up-close-and-personal experience…

I’m not sure what was more fun, feeding them crap tons of bananas or walking around together. They were very relaxed and seemingly friendly. Also some shots of tarantula nests and a big bug. We concluded our love fest, took the boat back across the river, and had a nice lunch at Mandalao…

After a nap, I headed out to the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre – small, but well appointed…

After that, I tried to go to the National Museum, but it was closed, so I checked out another temple, then took another stroll along the river – better than the first time because it was still daylight. Check out the Obama Coconut Shop (he visited to much aclaim)…

While the views along the river were great, I then hike to the top of Phousi Hill to experience more Buddhist shrines and the crowd of people there to experience the sunset. After a quick dinner, I came back to the hotel for our third and last night in Luang Prabang, and to post this!

Here are some video clips from our time hangin’ out with the elephants…

On our last morning in Luang Prabang, we got up quite early (5:00am) and went to participate in the daily ritual offering alms (a little rice) to monks. After that I finally made it to the National Museum, but they do not allow any photography (not a huge tragedy as it was rather underwhelming). I went for yet another river walk, then took a tuktuk back to the hotel – note the time lapse video clip…