Patrick and Mary Go Round

We just got done with four great days in Luang Prubang – the spiritual capitol of Laos. It is a beautiful little city snuggled along the banks of the Mekong River.  The incredible haze that has hung over everywhere we’ve been so far (from the heat, and the farmers in the hillsides burning the underbrush) finally wasn’t a nuisance here, but added to the overall charm and mystical quality of the city. We were never outside the sights of at least one temple and lots of little novice monks were scurrying everywhere.

A monk contemplates among Luang Prubang's haze

One of the best activities was to rent bicycles and check out the sites. It’s definitely the smallest city we’ve visited thus far in South East Asia and the streets are a lot less congested. One day we crossed the Mekong River by water taxi with our bikes and checked out a series of temples that line the opposite side of the river. The temples were exactly the way I would want a temple to be – nestled in the woods, overlooking the lazy river, and quiet enough to block out any noise of civilization. Each temple was really different. One was actually a cave where they put old statues of the buddha. We were led around by flashlight by a little novice monk who pointed out to us “where buddha sits”. Another was a more typical monastery-temple complex we have seen, but really old and beautiful. Wat Chompet was a really old temple on top of a hill and seemed almost deserted, with sweeping, misty views of Luang Prubang.

The Buddha in old Wat Chompet

Over in the main part of Luang Prubang we checked out the temples on the Phousi Mountain, which is a forested hill that juts up in the middle of the city. It is an amazing complex with little treasures tucked all over the hillside, including one side of the hill being like a grotto with lots of different buddha statues situated in the trees and a small cave dedicated to what is supposed to be a footprint of the buddha. We seemed to have shared the hillside with as many monks on pilgrimage as other tourists, which made the experience really unique.

Atop Mount Phousi

After hearing tuk tuk drivers ask us if we wanted to go to “the waterfall” for three days, we finally took them up on it on the fourth day. We headed out to the Kong Si waterfall on our last day in town.  It was a beautiful series of waterfalls with deep green bluish pools that you could jump into from on top of the waterfall or from a rope swing.

Swingin' into the waterfall

I don’t think I can recommend enough a visit to Luang Prubang. It is exactly what I want South East Asia to be – bicycles, temples, markets, the Mekong, temples, monks – with far less tourists and people in general than we encountered anywhere in Thailand. It was a great entering point for Laos and I think we are really going to like it here.