Luang Prabang is in a mountainous area so the weather is nice and cool without being cold. Kind of like the White Mountains in summer. Our bungalow resort is about 15 minutes out of town on a dirt road and it is right on the river. Really beautiful setting.
New Years day several places were were closed so we took a 2 hour boat ride on a very small boat up to Pak Oh Caves which have been a sacred site in Laos since before Buddhism came to the country. Our boat driver had lots of good luck charms around his driver seat but we weren't too nervous as he scooted around the rocks and currents! The sort of spooky caves -there are two- hold thousands of buddha figures in every crevice. We got back just in time for a beautiful sunset.
Yesterday we took a trek with a small group into the Jungle (dry this time) and up to a waterfall. Guess which animal left this scat on the road?? We traveled through several Hmong villages. Check out the photos of them building a new house. These kids were happily playing marbles with bean seeds. The mountain scenery was outstanding. Since we were driven fairly high to begin the hike, it wasn't too strenuous - just right. On the return van trip we ran into two traffic jams. One was elephants returning home from their job at the elephant conservancy and the others were water buffalo who were just hanging out on the road.
We did spend New Years Eve here and there were some street parties going on but we never made it to midnight. We enjoyed sitting by the river,wandered the huge street market and had eaten dinner by 10:30.
Our experiences with Laotian food has been really mixed so we decided not to take a cooking class after all. Perhaps in Cambodia.
We have visited several of the temples with more to go and today we want to gets to the National Museum which was closed for New Years day.
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