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iguana
Emily and I spent a week in the World Heritage city of Luang Prabang, Laos in October, then two weeks touring from the north to south of Vietnam into November.
For the second half of our Laos trip, we had two amazing elephant rides, and saw more beautiful temples and scenery:
Monday
We spent Monday wandering around town to see most of the many, many Wats in town. This one forms part of the former Royal Palace complex, now a museum. There was a strict no photos and no bags policy in the museum (we had to leave our things in lockers) but the take-away from the palace was: bling! The last King of Laos before the country became a republic had had the palace redecorated and he really liked gold.
This is Wat Xieng Thong, where the parade floats had waited before being launched into the water the previous night. We barely recognised it, not being packed with people and colourful paper boats.
Inside each temple there were wonderful large sculptures. Some, like this one, were full of statues and other collections of objects for safe-keeping.
Both Laos and Vietnam had geckos all over the place, but especially Laos. These fellow were hiding out on the ceiling of our guesthouse most nights, being cute and such. They eat mosquitos as they fly near the lights, so they were most welcome.
Tuesday
I'm on a boat! This was the first part of our walk to the Tad Sae waterfalls, crossing over a river to a rural village before continuing onwards.
On my arm you can just about make out the good luck bracelet that the guest house had given us both when we checked out in the morning. After the walk we were off to Lao Spirit Resort, which we'd booked as a luxury couple of days before realising that Thong Bay was itself amazing.
We are adventurers!
We were rewarded with some amazing scenery after climing up a very steep hill for about 15 minutes.
My favourite shot. This is part of Tad Sae waterfall, which was lots of shallow steps like these for about 200-300 metres. We walked along the falls until we reached the end, where there was a small bar and a rope bridge hanging across the river.
There was also an "Elephant Camp" on the riverside, and although we had elephant riding booked with Elephant Village the day after, this place offered elephant bathing, which we couldn't resist.
Into the water on elephant-back we went, our elephant happily collecting the sugar cane on offer at the other side. She dipped under the water at one point to have a good soak, then we got back on her back as she waded around some more.
Our guide took some super photos on Emily's camera while we were enjoying all this
The camera is not food.
Wednesday
We checked into Lao Spirit Resort, which is located on a hillside overlooking the same river that Tad Sae flows into. It also happened to be within walking distance to Elephant Village, where we had a day's trekking and elephant riding booked in.
The first part of the trek introduced us to this little fellow called Maxi.
He was energetic and very friendly, and a little determined to eat anything that came his way.
The mahouts would play with him by having a pushing match with him. Emily and I both had a play with him, and he was already too strong for either of us.
After saying goodbye to Maxi, we took a motorboat along the river, as it turned out to Tad Sae falls again where our trek started. We walked much longer along the river than we had the previous day since some of the land belongs to Elephant Village.
We reached the point where we would have lunch and as we arrived, so did our elephants who had given another group the reverse journey. After lunch, off our we set!
Being on elephant back was a great experience. I haven't even ridden a horse before so I can't really compare the two. However, it was great being so high up, being able to see across fields whose crops would be taller than you if you'd been on foot. You could also feel the strength of the elephant's legs beneath you.
We finished up our time in Laos with a Lao massage on the balcony of our bungalow during a roaring thunderstorm, then a drive back into town where we ate lunch in the excellent Tamnak Lao, which we thought was better than our previous choice of the Tamarind restaurant, then wandered one last time around the town before hiring a tuk-tuk to take us to the airport.
I really hope to go back to Laos again sometime and see the rest of the country, although Luang Prabang was welcoming and beautiful and I could have happily stayed there for many more weeks. But our flight to Hanoi called...
Next post: Vietnam: Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Hoi An
