Day 8 – September 25 –Luang Prabang, Laos

We got up, had breakfast, and met our kayak guide and tuk-tuk driver outside the hotel. Our guide’s name is Man. Sweet! I can remember that. Man turns out to be a 20-year old from the Khmu tribe. He explains to us that there are three main ethnic tribes in Laos: the Laos, Hmong and Khmu. He has some interesting views on the various tribes. The Laos are laxy, the Hmong are hard working but not that bright, and the Khmu are smart and good with languages. Fine, we will start with that. Tell us about your company. Well, Man says, it is run by this incredibly smart guy who speaks Spanish, French, German, English and Laos and Khmu. Interesting, we say, so he started this trekking company himself? Yes, Man replied, he runs this whole thing himself and runs it incredibly well. I love working here! And is he Khmu, then? Oh, no, Man starts, he is actually Laos… but the only smart diligent Laos I know! We will leave it there. We then asked him about our trip for the day. It sounds awesome.

We get to the put in, where we find Robin and I will be in a tandem sit-on-top kayak while Man uses a single. We are the only guests. It turns out that Man has to really work to keep up with us and we are going significantly faster than most of his other guests. We are starting on the Nam Khan river, and, unfortunately, since we wanted to see the caves, we had to bypass most of the rapids. Our day is going to be all flat water. We had a great time. The scenery was incredible with limestone cliffs climbing vertically out of the river. It was like the Grand Canyon, expect that these were mountains, not a canyon carved by a river. The effect is incredible. Almost neon green mountains rising from light brown river water. I’m completely awe-struck. At a certain point, Man catches up and suggests we venture over towards a lone fisherman on river right to see his haul so far this morning. He is in a small wooden boat at the mouth of a small limestone cave. As we get closer, I notice one of his legs is thinner than the other one and his foot is deformed, pointed completely sideways so he stands on his ankle. He is a happy fellow, plenty welcoming even though he has not caught anything, yet, today. We wave goodbye and head downstream to the confluence with the Mekong. Here, Man tells us we have to muscle it through to the other side to get to the caves. The current is stronger here and we have to dodge longboats and other tourist vessels. When we get to the caves, we dock between all the longboats. People are just staring at us. Who would want to kayak when you can take a motorized boat? Us. I don’t want to be packed into a rinky-dink longboat with 60 other tourists listening to the diesel motor roar and inhale carbon monoxide for an hour. The kayak is perfect for us.

We walk up to the upper and lower caves filled with hundreds of Buddhas. Unfortunately, this has become more of a tourist trap than a special experience. I enjoyed going, as you can picture how special of a place this was twenty years ago when the dark cave was illuminated by candlelight and hundreds of Buddha statues of varying height and materials stared back at you. Now, however, the florescent lighting and constant souvenir peddlers have a demystifying effect. The upper cave is slightly more interesting, being completely dark on the interior, one must use a flashlight provided at the entrance to see anything. It is more interesting walking around and discovering for oneself the intricate dragon carvings in the rock wall and Buddhas placed in crevices all around the cavern’s interior. Also, no souvenir peddlers. Relief. We walked around for about 45 minutes and then made our way back to the kayaks. There was a curious old man at the kayak, poking it, stepping on it, and looking intensely at the paddles. It was quite amusing. When we got on, he gave us a thumbs up and a wide grin.

Man had us paddle for another 15 minutes before he suggested we eat lunch on a small muddy island on the left side of the Mekong. We looked at this shallow, reed covered mud island and thought, he must be kidding. Turns out, it was an amazing view. You could see up the river with a fantastic view of the hills and mountains framing the caves. The longboats were more appealing from afar, since we didn’t have to listen to motor’s constant roar or other tourists annoying chatter. We just got to eat our chicken sandwiches, which were overloaded to the point of saturation with mayo, in peace in the middle of the Mekong. All in all, not a bad morning!

We returned to the kayaks and kept paddling. Man told us we were incredibly early at this point, and we should slow down. We did, savoring the scenery around us. As we approached the Lao Lao Whiskey village, a long boat with five young children was sitting in the water near us. They jumped up and down yelling, race, race! Oh, it was on. We raced the kids for about 3 minutes, just barely beating them. They were pretty good. I just feel bad we didn’t have any treats for them. Robin kept paddling while I took photos. We got to the dock and pulled the kayaks out of the water. There was a small family waiting for us to show us the Whiskey distillation process. We got to try some of the really hot whiskey straight out of a distillation barrel. I half inhaled the shot and half drank it. I almost puked right there. It was strong stuff. Robin had a measly half a shot and I had to finish his so that we wouldn’t look ungrateful. Then again, he had finished off the BeerBoom bucket by himself. We walked through the village and waved to all the local kids, then got on the tuk-tuk to return to LP.

It was a great day. The kayaking was superb and Man was a nice guy. We got stuck in on the outskirts of town, kind of in the local district, due to a traffic jam, so we decided to walk back to the main town. It was really fun walking through the local area, people looked at us like we were martians. We had a couple of Beer Laos on our balcony, watching the sunset and thinking about the trip thus far. Pretty awesome. We rambled along the Mekong and watched the fires burning along the banks. We discussed the impending typhoon, about to hit Vietnam on Tuesday. We decided it would be better to not chance getting stuck in Pakse or the 4,000 islands in case the typhoon grew stronger and disrupted travel in Laos. We bought new tickets from Vientiane straight to Phnom Penh. We had to eat the bus ticket, but we determined we’d rather confirm our visit to Angkor Wat.

We had dinner at a small local place near the ticket shop, away from the tourist area. The food was fantastic, with the minced pork fried in bamboo shoots being our favorite local dish, so far. It was awesome. Then again, what food deep fried isn’t good? You see my point. We had after dinner drinks at Lao Lao Garden, where their slogan is “Where you can drink like a fish for the price of water!” They are right. We sat outside in the very nice garden toasting our successful couple of days in LP. This place has been amazing. The people are nice and friendly, and incredibly helpful. No one has been pushy with souvenirs (with the exception of the people at the caves), and we have gotten to relax. We will be sad to leave LP tomorrow, and we will definitely look back on the city with fond memories. At least we have most of the day tomorrow to savor the waning hours in LP. Then, Vientiane!