now: all your needs can be met in one place!
in luang prabang i discovered a new twist to my usual habit of laundry-photo taking, and it soon became my favorite: monk laundry! (when you visis the wats, where the monks live, you will often see their robes drying.)
boats on the mekong (docked without the dock, i guess you could say)
I am thinking perhaps of a new game show: Name That River!
a (seemingly) randomly-placed satellite dish. next to the river.
now *that's* what we all need, eh?
you'd be amazed to learn how many different kinds of rice you can buy. this is a very small selection, at a small roadside shop. in a market you'd see many more.
rubber bands: what every traveler needs at some point but all too often cannot find when she needs them. a friend i went to spanish school with in guatemala gave his girlfriend rubber bands for christmas and she was thrilled. (i didn't buy any because, needless to say, i brought my own.)
whole fish on sticks: a common sight around town. luang prabang is definitely a good town for street food, though (unlike most places in thailand and vietnam) it's all concentrated pretty much on the same two streets.
platae of mixed fruit plait (ick, i know. it was christmas when i was there, after all, though.)
want your photois carved on everything you can imagine? you've come to the right place!
My friend Tien and I found a back way to climb up to at Wat Phra That Chomsi, the main temple in Luang Prabang, at the top of Mount Phousi.
not sure what this little house along the way was...
but i liked its decorations.
incongruity #857,520... (i like how it appears the buddha statue on the sign is watching tv. or would be if the tv were plugged in and turned on, which, thankfully, it wasn't.)
i thought it was a blue hose, but it's her hair.
the mountain affords nice views of the mkeong, of course.
'buddha's footprint, one of the wat's main attractions
The day after my Vietnamese friend, Tien, told me how people back home used old American warheads as vases and planters, we saw several being used as décor at Wat Phra That Chomsi.
and on tuesday, buddha reclined.
this wat is also known for having all of the buddhas -- there are two for every day of the week (day and night).
now, near the top, we were at the place we saw on our climb up the mountain. (see first picture)
offerings
the mekong as viewed by us and the buddhas at the top of the mountain
the stupa at the very top
remnants from a history of offerings
never did manage to make it to the museum (it's opening hours were variable, to say the least), but did enjoy the lovely wat ho prabang, right next to it.
ferrying a truck across the river
the most pimped out tuk tuk in luang prabang
there they were again: three balls of sticky rice, this time even more (seemingly) randomly placed than on the bus' dashboard in houai xai
more monk laundry
it started raining so we took shelter in a wat, and while tien walked around taking photos, i helped this young novice practice his english, which was just bad enough to make it actually painful after a while.
that rain lasted quite a while.
this woman sells tickets to the wat and calmly waited out the rain under her umbrella with her sleeping baby.
...and ate her lunch.
luang prabang is full o lovely little lanes like this...
some of which might have something good to eat on offer.
most of the lovely buildings in town are guesthouses, and they made me want to be able to stay at all of them.
wat sensoukharam (with pimped-out tuk tuk in front)
as the sun started to go down we heard the gongs and wandered into this wat. it turned out to be a bit of a scene, with foreigners all over trying to get photos. i did it too, of course, but at a distance. lucky for me i have a good zoom.
fields and homes on the other side of the mekong
the mighty mekong meanders (other times of the year it flows)
dogs on steps
elephant selling burgers & beer
Gret Food! Good Karma! Bed Spelling! (Lao lao, by the way, is fairly dangerous rice whiskey. You can buy it homemade from a jug or just go for the bottled version--which I assume is what this bar has on offer.)
tien spent a really long time talking to the roti guy and watching him make roti.
monk...droppings?
ah, fallen laundry.
sleeping or studying...not sure which one.
what's more lovely than monk laundry drying in the sun, really?
thrown carelessly by a novice or blown by an uncaring wind after drying?
this batch (which includes the previous monks and monk laundry) is from wat mai suwannaphumaham, one of the city's largest monasteries.
it's not all gold and majesty at this wat.
inside it is, of course.
wall of buddhas!
makin' sausage
kitty boy ice cream cone-shaped candy, anyone?
tien forgot his camera battery charger so i loaned him my camera for the day while i did some writing. photos in this next batch, then, are his.
napping before the night market madness begins
'stay another day' is a campaign that focuses on fair trade and other socially responsible businesses tourists are encouraged to patronize throughout the country. a great idea, i thiought. i later found out there was a stay another day cambodia as well.
man selling (and perhaps practicing?) traditional lao medicine
carrying something up from the river...
riverside laundry
not sure what they are carrying, but they are clearly following the man in the previous photo
sleeping kitty in the garden in the back of our guest house
tien took these for me because he knew they would make me smile. which they did, of course.
construction--with bamboo scaffolding
the streets at sundown
music at the night market--it was quite the party, actually. some of the foreigners got a little rowdy on the dance floor.
lucky dog
tien borrowed my camera again the next day for a trip to what's knows as the 'buddha caves.' (i did some writing again. which is how i ended up with a very lengthy belatedly written blog post about music in thailand...)
misty morning
the boats are all bringing tourists to see the caves.
you're getting the idea, right? a lot of buddhas...
in a cave.
fronts of buddhas, backs of buddhas. i'm feeling like there's some potential for a dr. seuss story...
the tour then took them to a village that specializes in weaving.
these next few, you'll see, tien took for me in exchange for use of the camera.
(the chicks were probably for me as well...)
these photos are from the morning market in town--which, not being for tourist, is much more interesting than the night market.
like markets of its kind everwhere around the world, it's almost exclusively women.
i can't tell you what the green stuff on the left is, sorry, but isn't it cool-looking?
another elephant...
one which i guess someone is afraid will get stolen. or they are making a political statement about enslaving elephants for human use (did you know elephants are used to detect land mines and consequently get their legs blown off...or worse?). which i doubt...and not just because of the presence of the the lock.
it's actually quite rare to see conical hats in laos, which is why tien (who is vietnamese) and i were particularly interested in this man.
In Laos there are monks pretty much everywhere, especially in Luang Prabang, where there are so many wats where so many novices are studying. Their gorgeous robes make it very hard to resist taking surreptitious photos.
another lovely lane
ok, i didn't test it out but...somehow, yeah, i doubt it.
the one morning we got up early to offer the monks food, the evidence was all over town. balls of sticky rice on the sidewalks.
some seemed like they might just have fallen out of the monks' bowls...
others were clearly purposefully placed.
the architecture in luang prabang was just so great. these are old chinese shophouses.
the monks/novices got so much sticky rice they clearly couldn't eat it all themselves. we watched this one passing a large portion of his off to a women we presumed was his mother.
the height of doggy fashion
swarm
drying rags
did you know felix was magic? i've seen some of the strangest things on garbage cans in this country.
wat nong
novice laundry service?
tien
bananas drying on the roof of tamarind restaurant, across the street from wat nong
saw these rice crackers drying on the street and then realized we were across from a small 'factory' where they made them.
sorry no photos of the group of women working to make them. the were sitting outside what appeared to be someone's house and we watched the process for quite a while (grinding, pounding, make the circular shape, etc), but it would have been rude to snap a photo, i thought, so i didn't ask.
wat xieng thong (golden city or golden tree monastery), one of the most important monasteries in laos.
this wat was so gorgeous. full of mosaic. also, unfortunately, full of tourists.
i must have waited more than ten minutes to get this shot, as every other tourist and their mother (literally and figuratively) had to pose in front of it for their own photos. (this is the back of the wat.)
and then i managed this close up (just to show you how lovely the mosaic design really is).
elephants are very prominent in the design of many of the wat's buildings.
the walls inside of this temple were crowded with buddhas, seemingly randomly placed.
ok, these were more obvious.
nothing says serious biker like this little hello kitty model.
another sight that became quite common...
drying racks of beef on the street. almost as familiar as drying fish, which i've seen in pretty much every country i've been in so far.
truck ferry across the river
view of the mekong from our riverside restuarant table
me and tien on the river early into new year's eve
