Luang Prabang, the World Heritage listed city of temples. It once contained 66 operating wats, now pleasing itself with half that number. Having once seen a few wats and marvelling at their amazing similarity, I decided to forgo visiting another 30 or so. I saw many of them 7 years ago and finding they hadn't changed in 500 years, I was safe in the knowledge they wouldn't have changed since I saw them last either.
The biggest change from my last visit was the phenomenal increase in tourist numbers. In certain areas, the Lao people are far outnumbered by not just the feral backpacker or tour group participant. The old have gathered here in force and are flocking to a place that must have been sold to them as being somewhat devoid of young hooligans. Good on them for getting out there and getting involved, and making me feel younger at the same time, but even while being lashed by a typhoon, Ko Pha-Ngan offered more entertainment for the eyes.
I have to apologise if my descriptions of the places I visit are somewhat sparse. Having been to these places previously, this trip doesn't have the same element of intrigue, or curiosity for me. But that was never the purpose of this trip. As previously stated, I saw this trip as an opportunity to recognise areas of negative influence in my character and return home to a fresh start in which to start working on removing their cause.
So if you want to know more about Luang Prabang, I suggest youGoogle it! Even though I am only about 67 facts short of knowing absolutely everything there is to know.......about stools, I don't know a great deal about Luang Prabang. I do know its 700 metres above sea level, and hence f#*king cold this time of year, its encircled by a beautiful mountain range, the food is tasty in a not fibrous enough way, and its main attraction is a waterfall.
And true to form, we spent 5 days there and managed to do just one touristy thing, and that is visit the waterfall. 32kms there in the back of a small truck and we arrived with hair styles dusted into boofy wind-blown sculptures. Small thanks were given for common sense prevailing over the desire to ride here ourselves on push-bikes. That distance on a flat road would have been beyond my current level of fitness, saying nothing of the condition and varying steepness of the road we actually traveled.
Before reaching the falls we passed an enclosure that housed a large collection of Moon Bears that had been rescued from bile farms. They were having a motza of a time actually able to move rather than being pinned into a cage while a hose constantly extracted their bile excretions for Chinese medicinal purposes. Another enclosure nearby housed a beautiful Indochinese tiger, Phet, who had been rescued after poachers killed her mother. (A very special place in Hell exists soley for poachers.) She was fully grown and enjoying all the fun available to large 4 legged animals, and that is dozing and licking their own genitalia.
The multitude of falls were stunning in the size, variety and the brilliant blue colour of the mineralised water. Had the chill not significantly reduced my pride, I may have been tempted to swim, as many other, obviously better endowed tourists were doing. I satisfied myself with taking photos in imitation of all the postcards sold in town that would have been ten times cheaper than having to come here myself. But not nearly as fun.
One reason for not doing a great deal in Luang Prabang was beyond our control again. Just when things started looking almost groovy, with bodily functions fulfilling long forgotten roles, it seemed Adam and I were destined for another particularly long vacation at the WC Hotel, or the thunder-box, if you wanted to use the Latin. The excitement of having some exotic disease and how unique that made you feel was unfulfilled again as it was most certainly food related. My dodgy food affliction resulted in just more of the same, but to a greater extent, while Adams necessitated sending the offending food stuff to the depths via the porcelain express. We both got up the following morning doing our worst impersonation of being alive but the seriousness had been slept off thankfully.
A day later we decided to dine upon a vegetarian pizza and the order was met with a huge slab of melted cheese on a spongy bun garnished very infrequently with vegies. It reminded me of a Happy relative I overindulged in while visiting Sihanoukville, in Cambodia last year. I would have been more happy to eat this poor substitute if it could boast any degree of Happiness. No happiness came to my stomach when it finally became apparent that a large portion of my intestinal grief was due to lactose intolerance. A few hours of cramps and that cheese was no match for a lymphatic system bordering on Olympic standard fitness given its workload in the last few weeks. But if I thought my stomach was unhappy, my bum was positively irate the next morning. No more wasabi ice-creams.
One thing we did a lot was attack the local markets with gusto, sans chocolate make-up, and I took my traveling wardrobe up to 8 pairs of pants and 7 tops. Enough to make any supermodel envious. Luckily I only brought 'one suitcase', and one credit card, and purchases are now made under the pretext of being presents. Presents I can wear before I bestow them upon the recipients back home. The weather nearly forced the first necessary purchase of an article of clothing; another jumper. I originally brought two, but in a flash of brilliance, I decided to cut one up and use it as a towel. As a towel, it served only to illustrate that it was best left as a jumper and I brought a sarong like I should have done in the first place.
One concern for me was that I couldn't help using my left hand all the time. Thanks to squat toilets, the left hand is designated bum-scrubber and is not used in any social manner. Thanks to the high powered hose in our guest house, scrubbing, or waxing for that matter, was totally unnecessary. Because of its paint stripping potential, I tried to use the ass hose for various other purposes. Shoe cleaning worked in no small degree, although they ended up a shape that didn't quite match my feet. My Buddhist principles were somewhat compromised when the hose failed in its role of non-fatal mosquito repellent. The only test case ended with the flying piranha smashing into the wall so hard, she spontaneously became a smudge devoid of any insect characteristics. So I think I will stick to using it for the purpose it was designed for, and be thankful that I actually have a need to use it again.
