Cruisin' the Mekong, part 2

Day two of our Mekong river cruise starts slow, with a slow descent from our second-story room for breakfast, where a slow cook wakes himself up to make us eggs and bread, after which he goes back to sleep! We eat while watching the small procession of monks slowly walk by the hotel, local villagers kneeling before them with pots of rice and bags of food, giving of the alms and requests for prayers. The sun slowly rises over the misty mountains of the Mekong river valley, and we slowly walk along the only road in town to the dock, where our boat is boarding. It's a slow kind of morning.


As the boat sails along the smooth-like-glass surface of the river, we wrap ourselves in blankets and drink cups of rich Lao coffee, trying to keep warm. The mist in the mountains and the wind whipping past is making us cold, and all we want to do is curl up and nap when there is so much more beautiful scenery to watch as we float by! Eventually, the sun melts away the fog, begins to warm the air, and we slowly emerge from our blanket cocoons to appreciate the world around us. Mario and I try to play Jenga, but the boat has other ideas for our teetering tower of blocks.


Sometime after another amazing lunch buffet(fried spring rolls! stir-fried eggplant! chicken laab! so much good food!), we arrive at our first stop of the day, the Pak Ou caves. Located in a nature cave at the mouth of the Ou river, a tributary of the Mekong, the Pak Ou or Buddha Cave. Its location was central to all the fishermen passing through and families traveling up and down the Mekong, and to guarantee safe passage and protection, people would transport a statue of Buddha here and leave it in the cave. At first, the statues were of silver or gold, and some were brought from neighboring wats during the Secret war to protect them, but now the majority of the Buddhas offered are of bronze, wood or even acrylic. And they have multiplied over time, with current numbers sitting around 2500 in the lower cave, and 1500 in the upper cave. That MAY sound impressive, but most are of the size that can sit in the palm of your hand or fit in your pocket, which makes a lot more sense to trek up 200 or so steps into a cave than something much larger and much heavier!


Being so close to Luang Prabang now, the Pak Ou Caves are view-able as an easy day trip, and as a result, there are many more tourist groups climbing up the steps and crowding the relatively small caves. Also, the large number of tourists bring in a large number of souvenir hawkers: women holding babies in their arms, hoping for pity purchases, trying to sell us sad-looking friendship bracelets, or urging their cute little grubby-faced children to play to our weaknesses, working for the sale. It's a veritable gauntlet, trying to climb up those step, dodge the kids, only to be rewarded with a lack-luster showing of Buddhas. Mario and I both agree, had it not been included in our tour, visiting the Pak Ou caves would NOT have been something we would pay money to visit.

Next up, a little liquor-tasting at the Whisky Village, Ban Xang Hai, famous for distilling their own agricole alcohol, made from the sticky rice we have become so accustomed to eating with our every meal her in Laos. They grind it into a powder which they turn into yeast balls, and these are fermented in large blue drums covered with squares of cotton. Now is not the time for rice, so it is also not the time for whisky - what we are tasting is last season's product. There is the first whisky, the strong stuff that is the first pass through the still - similar to the rum in Guadeloupe, this stuff clocks in at a staggering 55 proof, but has nowhere near the same smoothness. This is the stuff you knock down quickly and react adversely to. They boil the rice again to make a second whisky. Cloudy and coloured, depending on the rice used, this whisky is more akin to a sake in flavour: you taste the rice, the alcohol, the fermentation. It's not bad, and WAY better than the stuff they are selling with snakes, and scorpions, and centipedes in the bottles, which is clearly done for the sale. Supposedly, the men in the village drink THAT stuff  to make them "stronger". Yuck.

We walk through the village for a moment, through the corridor of tables where the village women have laid out their scarves and other textiles for sale. Some of the women are embroidering cloth, others are weaving it on big looms. Mario and I ponder where they get all their wares from, since we know they cannot make it ALL by hand. We see them working, yes, and can clearly pick out the handmade pieces, but 90% of the fabrics are too refined, too delicate or too synthetic to be woven by hand. Every person here has the same variation on a theme, so where do they get them from? Does a large box come in from a factory every week? and the women divide the pieces among themselves?


A little while longer cruising down the Mekong, and we arrive at our destination, the beautiful and spiritual town of Luang Prabang. One last perk of the upgraded cruise is a transfer to our hotel, the cozy Cold River Guesthouse, right on the Mekong river. Our room boasts a balcony overlooking the water. It's perfect, and a great place to spend our last 3 days in Laos. The evening finds us wandering the city, getting lost in the miles and miles of night bazaar, and joining the locals for a bite to eat near food street. I'll let you guess what they sell down there!


(And for anyone wanting to know the continuing saga of Blue Jayson, yes indeed, we ran into him again! As we are returning from our walk through the night market, we cross paths with him leaving our guesthouse. He tried to book a room, but the place is full tonight. He will, however, be checking in tomorrow, and staying here for the next little while, so we'll definitely be running into him at breakfast!)