Luang Prabang (with photos)

Daniel and Mathias After our hill-tribe hikes in Luang Nam Tha, we made it to Luang Prabang. Today is our fourth day here, in a little and very picturesque French colonial town, where the Kahn river runs into the Mekong.

After the dinner on the bus ride from Luang Nam Tha (including chicken bones and legs, without any meat!), we indulged ourselfs in the best restaurants in town. (While write this blog entry Nina and Ini are trying out the "3 Nagas", another exquisite eatery.)

Well fed, we explored the Wats (=temples) in the Old City, which are much nicer than the ones we saw in Thailand. The former royal palace was a little bit disappointing, but we didn't expect too much since the Lao communist government starved the royal family to death in the 1970ies. (It's also pretty small, like an upper-class house in Europe. But still far from being "royal-sized".)

We spent yesterday at the Khoung Si waterfalls, which was really nice and we had the chance to go swimming in some of the pools. (Except for Mathias, who still had to rest his toe.) We even found locations for some pretty decent jumps, as you will be able to see on the pictures. (As soon as they are online.)

Today we got up early to see the sunrise over Luang Prabang. To our disappointment the sky was overcast, but we still climbed Phu Si, the Sacred Hill. Afterwards we did some "Monk-Tourism": watching some locals and a large crowd of foreigners hand balls of sticky rice to the monks for breakfast. (We thought of buying Bagles for the monks to give them some more variety, but the whole city had a power cut until lunchtime.)

In general, the life of a monk must be pretty tough. They start their day at 4am, for an hour of praying, before they get sticky rice for breakfast, which already went through the (literal!) hands of several people. Then they go to school and have lunch at 11am, which is their last meal for the day! Depending on their educational level and interests, they take art classes during the afternoon, and so preserve the traditional techniques used to build the monastries. In the evening they have another hour of prayers, before they enjoy their time in front of the computers next to ours in the internet cafe.

We two and Nina did a little bit more hiking today, while Ines learned the traditional way of silk dyeing. Oh yeah, and we booked our flights from Udon Thani (Thailand) to Bangkok and then to Phnom Penh (Cambodia). Finally we will be able to fill all the empty pages in our passports!

In Luang Prabang
Schule fuer Moenche	Beim Abschreiben der Hausaufgaben	Innenseite einer Trommel
Folterszenen	Beim Bootsbauer im Kloster
Spiderweb	Staubige Buddhas
	Daniel
	Nina	Mathias
		Dieses Abendessen war echt teuer!
Monk-Tourism	at the royal palace	at the waterfall
		Yoga
Beim betrachten der Fotos	Ini schwebt	Rueckfahrt im Regen
Aussicht vomPhu Si um 5:33 in der frueh		Aussicht von der anderen Flusseite
	Metti und Nina beim Hoehlenforschen	River with Monk
Way Back to Luang Prabang