Luang Prabang

Personally, I think the UNESCO World Heritage designation has been handed out a bit too often, watering down the product a bit. We’re not even really sure what it means, but there are so many places advertising their UNESCO World Heritage status that you eventually stop caring a bit. The entire city of Luang Prabang has this special distinction, and in this case it’s easy to see why. It’s a charming little town right at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. I was actually quite shocked at how remarkably clean the city was – unheard of in this part of the world. Every street and alley in the town is spotless. The town is full of traditional Lao wooden houses which seem to be influenced by the former French occupation, with wrap-around balconies and shuttered windows. There’s plenty of intricately decorated wats scattered around the city, narrow alleyways to explore, and small handicraft shops to browse. Easily the most charming city we’ve been to in Asia. I guess the city has a lot of history – it was the capital of the first Lao kingdom way back in 1353 – but that’s about all we know. We were just here because we heard it was nice.

Our hotel, kinda hard to tell but it was nice

Thailand is the king of the silk industry in this part of the world (thanks to our old friend Jim Thompson), but some people are working hard to get Laos’ textile industry internationally recognized as well. Ock Pop Tok is a company working to achieve just that, while also providing income for some of the ethnic minorities who specialize in this industry. These are a lot of the same ethnic minorities that we came across in Vietnam. Ock Pop Tok has a couple shops in town, which have some really beautiful pieces (and tempting souvenirs), but to really see the process you have to visit their “living craft center” a few miles out of town. Here, you get to see some of the ladies working their big weaving looms, which seems incredibly complex. It was hard for me to even wrap my head around them making such intricate designs with such basic, although complex, tools. We also got to see how they produce silk (it comes from the cocoon of the silk worm if you didn’t know) as well as how they dye it using natural ingredients. It was actually pretty fascinating and Steph was dying to take a weaving class. I don’t think I’d have the patience, much less the skill. I also got to try silk worm poo tea, which is exactly as you read it. Wasn't too bad, tasted pretty much like green tea just as the waiter promised.

I shall drink your poo later

All the colors and the natural products they use to dye them

Loom

They hand-draw these patterns on there with wax, dye it, then melt off the wax to leave un-dyed pattern

Says it right there, Silkworm poo tea

One of the most popular tourist activities in Luang Prabang is slightly controversial, and that’s the giving of the alms. Every morning at about 5:30, all the monks file out of the wats and walk around town in their orange robes collecting alms of food – typically sticky rice but sometimes little baked treats – from kneeling worshippers. This is all the monks will eat, so they rely on the generosity of the locals for their sustenance. It’s a beautiful ceremony. Unfortunately it’s become a bit too popular with tourists, who often want to participate for their own amusement, or who cross much closer than would be considered a respectful distance in their effort to get close up photos of the ceremony. Well, this is at least what we hear. We didn't want any part of that, so we made sure to stay well away from the touristy areas of the ritual. Luckily the monks walk right in front of our hotel, so we simply had to walk outside and sit off to the side to see a few locals kneeling on the sidewalk offering their daily alm to the passing monks. Pretty cool.

Steph did get off a cheeky picture

Another activity that might actually be more controversial, depending on who you talk to, is the elephant tourism industry. You may remember from when we were in Chiang Mai that we chose to visit an elephant sanctuary that didn’t allow you to ride the elephants. I did a lot of research again, and could write pages on the subject, but I’ve come to this conclusion: Best case scenario for these elephants is to be wild and free. No doubt about it. They should be able to live in the forests and go about their lives in peace. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly realistic, at least for the elephants that were born in captivity or have already been domesticated. Second best case is elephant sanctuaries, where they can basically live as they would in the wild, but might get herded together daily for tourists to come take their pictures. Third comes elephant camps, where domesticated elephants are kept in camps with their mahouts to entertain the tourists. Last and absolute worst case scenario is for them to remain in the logging camps where most of these domesticated elephants come from, where they are worked hard, beaten into submission, and generally not well taken care of. Anything is better than that last option, and it’s not realistic for them all to end up in elephant sanctuaries or back in the wild, so we chose to spend our money on an elephant camp. Now, there are different levels of these elephant camps, and we chose one that, as far as I could tell from my research and observations, truly did care for the elephants and want to give them a better life. They did chain the elephants (otherwise they could run off – it’s not exactly easy to build a fence to contain an elephant), and they did carry those nasty bull hooks with the sharp metal hook on the end of a stick (but I never saw them use one or could see any signs of abuse on any of the elephants). Not long ago I would probably have judged someone that spent their money on a camp like this, but the number one goal is to get the elephants out of the logging camps and provide them a better life, and I feel camps such as ours are doing just that. Sorry. That wasn’t as concise as I was hoping, but now you get to look at elephant pictures. We had an awesome day at the camp. Feeding time might have been my favorite as you really got to get up close and personal with the elephants. We went for a ride, which was okay but certainly the least-interesting part of the trip. The most fun part was getting to sit bareback on the elephants as the walked into the Mekong River for a bath. Steph had not signed up for this part, but even she couldn’t resist and jumped at the chance to sit on an elephant in a dirty river. She’s come a long way.

As part of our elephant trip we were taken to Kuang Si, a nearby waterfall which is a very popular excursion out of Luang Prabang. I was expecting something similar to the Blue Lagoon near Vang Vieng – a dinky waterfall (we’re right at the end of the dry season here) with an overcrowded pool at the bottom. We were pleasantly surprised – the waterfall was definitely one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, nobody is allowed to swim at it’s base, and there were lots of other pools for people to swim in so it wasn't overly crowded. We also got to visit a sanctuary for Asiatic black bears, also called Moon Bears, which were rescued from bear bile farms around Laos. Yet another cause you can consider supporting (Free the Bears). I got myself a t-shirt to do my small part. The only problem with our visit to the Kuang Si waterfalls is that they only gave us 2 hours, so after the waterfall and bear center we only had about 20 minutes to tour the butterfly center. Too bad.

Luang Prabang was the kind of place we could have easily stayed at for a few extra days. Heck, I could have gone out on a few more elephant trips (did I mention it was only $30?). But, we were feeling a bit anxious to get back to Thailand and a combination of excited and nervous about how we were gonna get there. There’s a few options – expensive flight, long bus ride, or 2 days on a ferry chugging up the Mekong. Any guess as to which one we chose?