Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Luang Prabang - Kuang Si Waterfall

Today we took a shared ride out of town to one of the most beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen, fully meeting and even exceeding tropical waterfall expectations. There was swimming in the most incredible pools a ways beneath the waterfall, and a steep hike up to the top of the 50-meter falls where we waded across the top of the falls, practically right on the lip! It was incredible.

The pictures are pretty self-explanatory. See the side topic on travertine for the geological explanation of this amazing place.

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There was also a little rescue bear park.

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After, we went to the Lao Ballet, which probably would have been more interesting if we knew the stories of the Ramayana, but was still pretty.

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From Drop Box

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Luang Prabang - Wats

Slow start to the day with Mary feeling queasy in the morning after breakfast. Josh wandered around and found us a different hotel with wifi included, which we moved to.

After moving, Josh brought Mary back to the Wat he'd found with a bunch of graphic Buddhist Hell murals on the outside. We didn't know that Buddhism had a concept of Hell, but it seems to involve all kinds of nasty torture. I'm thinking these levels of Hell are somewhat deeper than the ones Dante described.

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After a frustrating lunch (Mary threw away her first sandwich without tasting it after thinking better of the mayo that clearly sits out in the sun everyday without any ice or anything), we climbed the 300-ish steps to the top of the sacred hill in the middle of Luang Prabang, where we enjoyed nice views and nice cool shade inside the wat.

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On our way back down we saw a couple of large "Buddha footprints." Way too big to be human footprints...

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There was also a shrine area that had a bunch of "Days of the Week" Buddhas. Seriously.

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Next we wandered down to Wat Xieng Thong, which is supposed to be the primary wat attraction in Luang Prabang. A lot of the style and condition made me think of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and what it must have looked like before the massive restoration. (This is one of the smaller, but more interesting buildings.)

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There was a giant funerary procession vehicle.

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And we especially liked some of the mosaics that only filled in the subjects with murals, while leaving the background undecorated.

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Then we walked down to the confluence of the end of the peninsula and Josh put his feet in the river.

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We wandered all over town looking for a not-to-touristy Lao dinner. Didn't find one. We decided to go back to the Bakery associated with the Ancient Hotel and right as we got there found the food in the Night Market. The food in the Night Market is a little hard to find, it is mostly down the side street on the left hand side of the Bakery. We decided against the 10,000 Kip buffets since who knows about prepared food that's been sitting out for a while, and instead got fresh skewers and sticky rice. Josh got a fish that he really really liked, and Mary got some amazing pork. Can't believe we almost walked right by without noticing the side street!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Sometimes in Laos, You Are Expected to Get Out and Push - Nam Ou River - Slow Boat from Nong Khiaw to Laung Prabang

Today's adventure, which turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected, was a scenic boat ride down the Nam Ou River from Nong Khiaw to Laung Prabang. The good thing about Nong Khiaw having become a big tourist destination is that there are now normally enough people for the daily "public" boat to go to Laung Prabang, at $12 pp instead of chartering your own boat for more like $100, as (some) people were doing a couple years ago. These days Lao people generally take the bus as it is cheaper and faster.

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The scenery was, as promised, spectacular. We motored more powerfully and more constantly than I expected though, so we didn't really see much wildlife. Just cows, a few birds, and fish being pulled from the river in nets.

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There were rapids in the river, and the water level was quite low, making us very glad that our boatman seemed to know the river well, and that our boat was of the flat bottomed variety that doesn't need much water. It was also reassuring to remind myself that the boat was surely worth more to him than the electronics in our bags are worth to us.

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The Laos people, villages, and uses of the river were very interesting. There were, of course, tons of children playing in the water and along the shore when we passed villages. And there were many people fishing, with small throw nets, larger nets left in the river with bamboo or plastic drink bottle floats, and we even saw a couple guys with goggles and harpoon guns.

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More curious were the strange bamboo tripod structures sticking out of the river and held down with large river stones. Sometimes there would be just one, other times there would be a dam of bamboo between multiple, forming a bit of a pool. One of the other passengers said they were associated with panning for gold and pointed out some gold-panners to us.

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Finally, in a couple places, we saw similar bamboo structures holding what appeared to be steal poles dangling in the river, pulled sideways by the current, and for some reason spinning at great speed. This seemed very strange until I spotted the wire connecting them with the mainland. Small-scale hydroelectric turbines. Sweet.

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After about 3 hours on the river, we stopped at a sandy beach near a village for what we thought was a pee break, until our boatman informed us that the river up ahead was too shallow and we would have to walk a section to lighten the boat. We walked up to the road, loaded onto a minibus, and went a surprisingly long way before unloading and walking down to another beach and waiting for our boat.

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Along the way, we noticed many bulldozers along the river. We thought at first that they must be dredging the river to make it more navigable, but once we got back aboard and boated past some of them, their true purpose became clear--more gold mining.

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A while later, just as we were joining the Mekong River, we got to another very shallow area with rapids and all of a sudden, the boat ran a-ground! We started going sideways, then leaned over to one side. The boatman quickly got out (into shin-deep water) and told us all to do the same. So there we all were, walking shin-to-knee deep in the water along side our boat until we got to deeper water. We were all a little miffed at first, but, you know, it's all part of the adventure and it was actually kind of cool.

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Hardly had we all gotten back into the boat, however, when the boatman seemed to be having difficulty steering the boat into the channel that he wanted. For some reason, he didn't seem to want to engage the engine, which makes steering very difficult. He quickly climbed out of the "cockpit" area and around onto the front lip of the boat where he paddled frantically, then tried to push off a big rock in our path so hard that he fell backward off the boat and into the water. The passengers on that side also tried to push us away from the rocks, but they slid painfully along the side of the boat. Fortunately, they don't seem to have done too much damage, as we proceeded to finish the journey uneventfully.

Oh, yeah, and right after that, we passed a cave. Tham Ting cave, we think. We might go back and explore it another day.

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Sunday, March 28, 2010

Nong Khiaw - Travel and Cave

Traveled to Nong Khiaw in a minibus. It was slightly pricey compared with the regular bus, but we were excited to find one going direct and when we wanted to go, as we've read that the bus transfer could be quite time consuming (like, overnight).

We were told the minibus would take around 8 hours, but incredibly, in spite of construction for much of the first 3 hours, it only took 6 and a half. We were impressed by how much of the road they had under construction at once, but unlike in the US, there did appear to be a reason behind it. Every couple kilometers there was another team with a pile of rock, sand, and preformed concrete gutter sections working on their own length of road with shovels and hammers. Some teams seemed to be working out of a local village; in other places there were a couple bamboo-and-tarp tents nearby, presumably housing the workers. Traditional parallel processing.

We also saw lots of fires raging in the jungle. Surprisingly, these were mostly on the hills rather than in the flat low areas, suggesting that perhaps, contrary to what we would have expected, they were probably not being cleared for agriculture or ranching. They don't seem to use the hills at all for that stuff: a sign, I guess, that there is plenty of land to support the local population. At least this seemed to be the case in the rural far north.

Upon reaching Nong Khiaw, we discovered that it has been fully integrated onto the tourist trail. Disappointing. But it was still beautiful.

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We did the hike up to the nearby cave where the local population took refuge from the bombing during the war. It was kind of cool, but the real point of the walk was to see a bit more of the incredible scenery.

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We also saw more burning, clearly controlled, and this part in an area that did look like it had potential for agriculture. Probably this was the burn responsible for the huge amount of ash we'd noticed in the air in town.

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Back in town, we wandered around trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. There was a similar situation as Laung Nam Tha with a couple outfitters offering overpriced tours (trekking, cycling, kayaking, etc). Although there were tons of tourists in town, no one else had signed up for anything. We decided that these places must advertise to make you feel like you've come all this way, and you need to spend the last $30 pp to see the "100 waterfalls" or whatever. Except at that price you are really paying for 2 dudes to sit around all day surfing the internet 6 days per week waiting for that one sucker to sign up for a tour on the 7th. We decided not to be the sucker. Seriously, it's more expensive than the Tower of London or Stonehenge. But I doubt it's as unique an experience.

We were also considering taking some time to travel an hour north on the river to a village that doesn't have any roads and was, as of the publication date on our out-of-date guidebook, a totally unspoiled destination with few tourists. But considering the way Nong Khiaw has been transformed into a tourist trap in the last few years, and every second tourist we talked to was headed up the river there next, we're guessing the unspoilt days are over for that village.

So what did we come to Nong Khiaw for anyway? Just for a transit transfer actually. The 7-hour slow boat ride down the Nam Ou River to Laung Prabang is supposed to have incredible scenery; one of the best sections of river is Laos. We're here as a compromise doing this instead of the 2-day slow boat ride along the Mekong River to Laung Prabang that Josh wanted to do and Mary thought would be too much. That's tomorrow.

We spent the night in a cute little bamboo bungalow.

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

Laung Nam Tha - Biking to Villages, Waterfall, Industry, and Walmart

After a leisurely morning, we went forth to try a motorbike. Given what we had heard, splurging on the Honda ($6) instead of the Chinese cycle ($4) was a good idea. Unfortunately, the Honda was a manual, and Josh quickly showed his lack of proficiency, such that they wouldn't rent us the cycle. They suggested an automatic, but Mary was freaked out, so we opted for pushbikes.

Our first destination was Nam Dee waterfall, some 5km out of town. After the first kilometer, the road became a hellish combination of cobble/dirt that was exceedingly jarring. The views along were pretty sweet: verdant hills, bamboo huts, rice paddies, and of course the ubiquitous chickens. The villages along the way are composed of ethnic minority peoples, frequently refugees from some war or another. Somewhere along here (around 1pm), Josh's watch stopped working. :(

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The waterfall itself was ok (it's the dry season here too). There was a reservoir dam upstream of it, with a pipe leading down to the closest village.

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Next we biked up to a stupa on a hill over the town. The statues were interesting for representing the diversity of the local peoples. Also liked the fountains of women washing their hair. There was a small shrine set into the hill behind the stupa.

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After a lunch and rest, we started out toward Muang Sing on our pushbikes. The terrain was pretty hilly for a single speed bike, but we caught some nice views along the river. We stopped and took some pictures by the dam (appeared to be hydro-electric), but we were shooed away. Also passed a lumber mill and what appeared to be a query and brick oven.

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We returned and perused the market. The market was completely free of tourist trinkets and was actually quite a lot like a Super-Walmart, with its huge selection of imported cheap stuff China to fill virtually any need (though we couldn't find a sink plug). There was also the grocery section with lots of fresh vegetables, dry goods, and dead meats (including something that looked like a rat), along with the requisite live chickens, and fish jumping out of their cement holding tanks. You know, the usual. We picked up some razor blades for Josh and a pocketknife for Mary.

(You may notice a conspicuous absence of photos of villages and the market, this is because the local people here are not generally okay with being photographed.)