Life Eaters

Day 7
Luang Prabang
Waking up early to be on the street by 6:00 am to see the Tak Bat, where orange robed monks walk in a line down the street to collect alms at dawn. As they passed many locals would place a small amount of sticky rice into a pot that each monk carried.

After that, the girls went out for a massage (which Heather has her own stories about), and Mark and I rented scooters for our afternoon plans. The scooters, unfortunately, came with an empty tank of gas, and we only made it a few blocks before one of them puttered out. The gas station was happy to fill up a plastic water bottle with gasoline to take back to the dead scooter though. I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t fly as an approved fuel container in the US.

The four of us scooted the 50 minute ride out to the Kuang Si waterfall. Our scooter ride alone was worth the cost of the rental. We went past small villages with crowing roosters and the smell of barbecue, and winding roads past ivy covered forests and Hmong farmers.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of waterfalls, and I was a little hesitant about spending an entire afternoon to see something that could be more of the same, but this waterfall was one of the best I’ve come across. The photos can’t capture enough, of course.

After our scooter ride home we had some lunch at a riverside restaurant, then went back to our guesthouse for som trip planning and ticket buying. We had plenty of concerns about our options for how to get up river to our next stop at The Gibbon Experience, since no option sounded very pleasant, but we ended up bargaining for our own private boat to take us there.

In the center of town there is a 100 meter high hill, atop of which sits the Phu Si temple. Being almost sunset, Mark and I made a quick, sweaty climb to the top hoping to catch sunset. We were a bit late , but the views were still spectacular.

Our dinner took us down the street to Place where we had hot pot. This was a pretty new experience for all of us. They placed a bucket of red hot coals in the. Enter of our table, then put a pot of boiling broth on top of that. We then chose from the menu an assortment of ingredients for us to toss into the pot at our leisure. Greens, mushrooms, tofu, meats, herbs, egg. The result was a delicious soup. The casualty of this meal happened when Alyssa accidentally grabbed hold of a plate that had been sitting a little too close to the coals, and ended up with a second degree burn on her thumb. It’s blistering up pretty nicely now. Alyssa’s doing fine with it, although we’re stockpiling anything anti-bacterial we can find for when we go into the jungle.

At dinner we met a really nice boy from the UK named Peter who ended up sliding over to our table and having dinner with is. He also joined us afterwords for another trip to the night market and a glass of wine before calling it a night