Amazing Trip: Laos

The landlocked country of Laos is a very mountainous country, full of rivers, many forests, and few people. We really enjoyed our time in the ancient city of Luang Prabang, which has been called the "most romantic city in Southeast Asia" by our guidebook. It was very relaxing and slow paced.

Our first night we found a restaurant that gave us a "taste of Laos." Many people mistakenly claim that Lao and Thai food are essentially the same thing. This is not true (though we did find that many of the "Lao specialties" were strikingly similar to the "Northern Thai specialties")--Lao food doesn't have the same sweet/sour/spicy/salty flavor profile. Lao food is less spicy and sweet, and has more sour and bitter notes.

Clockwise from top: "Seaweed chips" though from rivers, Jeow Bong **our favorite, a sweet, fried garlic & chili paste, dried Buffalo meat(like jerky--Water Buffalo, that is, not American Bison), egg-plant jeow (dip), Luang Prabang sausage (this tasted like eggroll flavor to me, and was another fav), and tomato jeow (dip), which was rather like salsa. Served with Sticky rice. We learned that sticky rice is more filling than regular rice (from someone telling us, and from experience).

Herbed fish steamed in banana leaf, lemongrass stuffed with chicken (with a peanut sauce), stir-fried young pumpkin with kaffir lime and ginger.

Temple, part of the National Museum complex. We stayed right next door to this place. This temple houses the golden Prabang (Buddha statue) after which the ancient city is named. The Prabang is also a symbol of the Lao people. We were bummed, however, to find that the Prabang was not being displayed during our visit.

7-headed dragon on the temple steps. In Asian culture dragons are good luck. They protect people and places--allies to humans against evil spirits and demons and such.

Luang Prabang has 30+ temples in the city. They are especially dense in the Old Quarter, on the peninsula between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Often the temple complexes are literally one after another as you walk down the street. Many were decorated with paper streamers and lanterns and kites.

The dominant colors in Luang Prabang were gold and tangerine. Gold on all the temples and Buddhas statues, tangerine colored robes on the many Buddist monks.

Here, a tangerine robe on the golden Buddha statue.

Ryan under my "Hello Kitty" umbrella, purchased in Bangkok. He realized he didn't put any sunscreen on that day.

Wat Xieng Thong, the most magnificent of Luang Prabang's temples. It has a huge tree of life mosaic on the back side. All of these Wats are actually large complexes, with several intricately guilded buildings and stupas (pointy Buddhist memorials, which often hold relics--of the Buddha, or a Boddhisattva, or a pious Buddhist), as well as living quarters for monks and novice monks. In these photos, I usually just show one building, often the main temple, which is biggest or most ornate. Here, though are several photos from around Wat Xieng Thong complex.

Wax from devotees' candles

An elephant at Wat Xieng Thong complex.

A group venerates the Buddha

Lots and lots of Buddha statutes

Novice monks with umbrellas for shade in Wat Xieng Thong complex.

boating on the Mekong River.

Some novice monks frolicking in the Mekong.

Again, the chickens in Laos were obviously of a different breed than those we saw throughout Southern Africa. These ones had very long & big legs, and skinny bodies.

A view of the Nam Khan river, as we climbed Mt. Phu Si ("poo-see"), in the center of town.

Kids sliding down the bank.

We must have climbed nearly 500 steps to the Phu Si Temple. There were other temples and Buddha's along the way.

Left-right: Saturday Buddha (7-headed dragon above), Monday Buddha, Prabang Phoutthalawanh, Tuesday Buddha (reclining)

View from atop Mt. Phu Si.

Glow of the night market in front of National Museum

Every morning between 6-7am, the monks and novice monks of Luang Prabang process down the street, while devotees--mostly women--give them alms of bits of sticky rice, small pieces of fish, vegetables, or sweets, which is their food for the day. Giving alms to monks is one way of "making merit"--building up good karma to improve the circumstances of one's present and subsequent lives.

On Sunday morning, we observed another Religious ritual, though one less-common in this Communist, largely Buddhist and/or animist country. ( Though the monks are certainly Buddhist, it seems like the people are a syncretist blend of Buddhism and animism.) The Lao Evangelical Church is the only legal Protestant church in the country. We found a congregation in a nearby village and made our way there by tuk tuk.

The congregation is probably about 80-100 people who worshiped the Lao language. We sat in the back and mostly observed--it was hard to fully participate, beyond humming & clapping, and bowing my head to pray silently along with the Lao prayers.
They had a cluster of nice, new looking buildings. Children came in and out during the service, but no one was very bothered by it.

After the service, a young woman leader came up and introduced herself as Ped ("Pet"), the church consultant. She showed us around and told us all about the church. She spoke English quite well. She is in charge of the childrens' Sunday School and I gather she is also an elder/decision-maker, though we didn't get into the polity of the church. She is a real go-getter, with lots of dreams and plans for the church. One is to have colorful murals painted in the Sunday School room, in the Lao traditional style, starting with Creation and continuing through the stories of Jesus and the early Church. This one she calls a dream, the rest she calls plans--which they hope to achieve before Christmas--including increasing their library books and shelving, building a baptistry (for full-immersion baptisms), and turning a storage area into a room for patients and their families who've come to the hospital from the countryside and need a place to stay and recover before embarking home again. Currently, the Church has been allowing these people to stay on the floor of the Sunday school room, but they want to make something more permanent and private. Many of these people are not Christian, but often become so after receiving the Church's care and hospitality. I can believe that they might just make it before Christmas, as their kitchen building is newly finished, and main building looks relatively new, and well maintained.

A very interesting thing happened at the end of the service. A family came up--dad, mom and two little girls--for what seemed like some sort of blessing. Another young woman kept trying to hold the littlest girl who would then cry and scream for her mother. Later, we learned from Ped that the family had been giving their youngest daughter to the pastor and his wife. The mother had been very sick recently, and thought she was going to die. She knew the pastor really loved her kids. Also the pastor and his wife have not been able to have a child.

I wanted to ask Ped so many more questions about this situation, as it seemed strange to me. It honestly disturbed me a bit. Ped said, "she has two other, older children remaining." And Ryan asked what the difference seems to me between this situation and families in Zambia sending their kids to live with different relatives. I don't know why this struck me. Perhaps because in Zambia, you may go to live with your uncle's or older sister's family, but your mother and father are still your mother and father. The idea that this little girl would now be the pastor's child and not her parents' really bothered me. Perhaps it was also because the little girl seemed so attached to her parents. Or because she wasn't actually an orphan, even if her mother come close to death. Her parents and family would still live in the same town and she'd see them at church and stuff. I don't know. I wish there had been time to ask so many more questions.

The congregation sang many uptempo songs, and often clapped and raised hands. Singing was accompanied by guitar, and lyrics (in Lao) were projected on the wall--with an old-school overhead projector.

A group of women sing before the congregation. This young boy was constantly running in and out, but for the moment, he is rapt.

The family giving their child to the pastor (the little girl in the blue dress).

Ped shows Ryan the current library.

Similar to Lamp of Thailand, they have a picture book series that has Lao writing. This is put out by the Lao Evangelical Church offices in Vientiane.

The pink building on the right houses the sanctuary, white & brown building on left houses the children's Sunday school room and storage, and to the extreme left, mostly out of the picture is a brand new, small kitchen building.

Striking similarities across cultures: in Zambia as well as Laos, women use pieces of colorful fabric to tie around themselves as skirts, or to carry their children.

Though we sat on simple benches during the worship service, afterward, they were pushed back and table cloths laid out on the floor. Food was laid out in lots of communal bowls, out of which one just used their fork, spoon, or chopsticks to eat out of all together.

An impromptu meeting after the service & lunch. Ped addresses leaders, including the pastor, Bounnoy (far right).

Laos also has rich wildlife, although we didn't have much time to really get out "in the bush." Also known as the "Land of a Million Elephants" Laos now has diminishing populations due to destruction of habitat (logging and slash & burn agriculture) as well as forced labor in that very destruction (logging). Our last day in Luang Prabang, we spent a day at Elephant Village, a place dedicated to rescuing elephants from hard labor (tearing down & transporting trees), and caring for them through community-based eco-tourism. We had "Mahout training" which is how to ride and lead elephants (bare back, climbing up onto their necks), got to ride them and also bathe them in the river. We also got to swim in Tad Sae waterfall, an amazingly gorgeous limestone waterfall with cascading turquoise pools. Unfortunately, we lost all these pictures when our camera was pickpocketed in Vietnam. So you'll just have to use your imagination! click the link above to help you imagine.

Tad Sae waterfall

Tad Sae waterfall