Beatiful French Jewel in Asia

An example of the temples in Luang Prabang
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We enjoyed our last couple of days in Siem Reap with a visit to a stilted village. The village is not normally somewhere that tourists go to and was quite far off the beaten track. The tuk tuk ride there was on well surfaced roads to begin with but this changed to dirt roads until we couldn't go on the tuk tuk anymore. We then had to set off each on the back of a motorcycle before hoping on a river boat to get to the village. The village is built on stilts up to 10 metres high as the waters from the lake flood the area during the wet season and then the waters receed during the dry season. It was a very interesting place to look around but one of the best things about this day trip was the chance to talk more with Mr Han our driver. We talked about many topics but the story of Mr Han's life was particularly interesting. Mr Han is the sole surviver from his family. His parents and brothers and sisters were all killed by the Khmer Rouge. He only survived as he was with his aunt at the time. He came to Siem Reap as a young man and became a fisherman working very long hours for little money. He next started a small grocery stall in a market for a few years until his wife became pregnant and could no longer help him in the stall. This is when he became a tuk tuk driver. He now has two sons but says that the money he earns does not allow him to save anything - it all goes into food for his family. He hopes the economy will pick up more as investment comes into Cambodia so that the future for his family improves.

Corey masters the Lao style BBQ
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We also learned other interesting facts from Mr Han such as the average age for people to die in the rural areas is around 45 due to the harsh lifestyle and the belief that if you don't smoke - you are not a proper man. Also, if two people sleep together, this effectively means that they are married so many marry very young!

The night market is lovely with single lightbulbs hung over the wares of each seller which are laid out on the ground.

Monks collect food offerings in the alms ceremony.
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On the 29th of Jan, we left Siem Reap and arrived in Luang Prabang. This is a city sitting 700m above sea level and quite a contrast to Siem Reap. The weather is a lot cooler up here and the streets are spotlessly clean. The french architecture makes this an extremely attractive stop and the food is also french influenced. It does seem to be extremely touristy but it is easy to see why this happens as it is a magical place in the evening as you walk down the main road with all of the french doors opened out onto the streets containing cafes and restaurants. The night market is lovely with single lightbulbs hung over the wares of each seller which are laid out on the ground.  From our hotel balcony, we can watch the monks (of which there are 800) walk down the main road in the morning to collect their breakfasts from people with rice bowls that line the street. This has become a large tourist attraction and many people do not respect the wishes of the monks who ask that everyone is silent and that they don't take close-up photos. This morning there were two bus loads of Japanese tourists talking loudly as they gave rice offerings to the monks.

Enjoying New Year 2008
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Yesterday, we travelled to an elephant camp to have a ride on an elephant. The elephant that we rode on was also 35 years old and like to go at a slow and steady pace. Unlike what we had heard from Noel and Vaughan who had quite a different type of elephant ride, ours was peaceful and non-eventful. The mahout gave me a turn sitting at the head of the elephant which involved a lot of concentration and thigh squeezing to ensure that I stayed put.

We decided to head out on the town for New Year's Eve and found a strip of bars on one side of town that all had very large New Year displays out the front so thought that looked like a likely area. We started off with a delicious and interesting Laos style BBQ at the Lao Lao Bar where you cook all your own food over burning charcoals placed in the centre of the table on a metal BBQ. You tip water around the outside of the BBQ to make a noodle soup in while you fry the meat on the high point of the metal BBQ. It was a lot of fun to make and very tasty. We also enjoyed the two for one cocktails made with the locally made Lao spirit. It had quite a kick and the drinks made with it were dirt cheap.

Becoming one with Budda
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After dinner, we went inside and started to play some free pool against other tourists in the bar. This turned out to be a great way to meet some people and we soon had our own 'possie' which included some other people from Christchurch, some Australians and some English. We chatted for awhile before heading to the Hive Bar next door which had a DJ and was very crowded. With the number of tourists in the bar, we could have been anywhere but it was as a lot of fun and they had five drinks from their entire menu for $5 US. At around 2pm, we finally weaved our way back home.

The rest of our time at Luang Prabang was spent going on a couple of rather overpriced outings (the outcome when you book with your hotel instead of shopping around). The first was to the waterfalls near by and these very really lovely. At the entrance, they have a bear rescue centre for bears rescued from poachers who would have put them into bile farms where bears purposely are kept with holes in their sides so their bile can be extracted and used in Chinese medicines. It was great to see the bears looking healthy and content in a resonably large enclosure. There was also a tiger in another enclosure that had also been rescued by poachers. The waterfall itself was quite impressive and there is a walk you can do up the side of the waterfall to the top where you can walk through the stream of the water just before it cascades down below. The second excursion was a one hour drive on rather bad roads and then a short boat trip across to see a cave that has a number of budda statues contained within it. The cave was quite interesting but did not take all that long to look through and we weren't sure that it was worth the time to get there. Still, it was another look at how influential the buddist religion is in this part of the world. After, returning from the caves, we set off for Hanoi by plane.