The Indochina Adventure, Part 5: Laos

Day 11 (cont.)

We finally landed in the Luang Prabang airport around 8pm and were taken to our hotel.  After spending several hours in the car and then the airport, we were all pretty exhausted, but we decided to hit up the night market in town.  It was one of my favorites by far, as everything was again so CHEAP!

Luang Prabang is known for its elephant sanctuaries, so a lot of the goods had elephants on them.  I ended up buying an elephant pillow sham and an elephant cosmetic bag for my sister.  Elephants are my weakness...

Which brings me to:

DAY 12- MY FAVORITE DAY OF THE ENTIRE TRIP

"Today you will have an elephant adventure!"--the words on our itinerary.

I had never ridden an elephant before and couldn't have been more excited.  We were taken by van on a rough dirt road to The Elephant Village, a place that rescues older elephants from being worked to death by cruel owners.  I should probably explain that Katie and me are two of the world's biggest animal lovers (she's a bit of an extremist... she will walk out of any movie where any animal dies) so this place was like Disneyland to us.  The Elephant Village buys elephants who are worked extremely hard by the local people and gives the elephants the opportunity to live out the last years of their lives walking leisurely through the forest for half the day and spending the rest of the day free to roam about the jungle sanctuary like they would if they weren't in captivity.  It really was a cool place, and refreshing to see some people who care about animals the way that we do.

When we first arrived, we bought a bunch of bananas to feed the elephants!  They eat them whole, peels and all, and it is the cutest thing I've ever seen.

Anyway, this story is better told with pictures, so here goes:

This elephant was the only one not chained up, and she kept coming after me for more bananas! I loved her spunky attitude, so Katie and I requested that we be able to ride her.  She was the best!

In my opinion, Laos was the most beautiful country we visited. Look at that landscape!

 One thing I loved about this ride: They let the elephants stop and eat whatever they wanted. Apparently they need like 150 kilos of food every day, so they were stopping to eat A LOT.

So pretty!

We loved to capture the English fails. "Not enter, don't pass, PRIVAT."

Love the saggy elephant butt. I think it might be their cutest feature.

We got to ride up behind the ears! I felt like I was going to fall any second but it was so worth it!

We saw some of the local kids all bathing and playing in the river. Naked chicken fights!!

 Our elephant stopping to eat...again

I wanted to take her home with me. Isn't she totes adorbs?

*Disclaimer: My outfits are just getting worse and worse every day. My Amazon overalls seemed fitting to wear for an elephant adventure, though.

We fed our elephants some more bananas and then I took my favorite picture with my elephant:

If you just ignore the arm in the right corner, it's a pretty awesome shot.

We were then taken down the river to a dried up waterfall. 

I didn't think a waterfall could be cool if it were dried up, but this one was actually pretty magnificent. I can only imagine its glory if it were running!

Another English fail: Thanks for your feeding elephant.

There just happened to be another elephant sanctuary next to this dried up waterfall, and they offered BATHING AN ELEPHANT at this place.  When they told us that not only were these elephants really young (under 5 years old), but that they love to play with people in the water, we were sold.  

Again, this story is better told in pictures:

 Keep in mind that in every single one of these, we do in fact have an elephant underneath us. Sometimes, they liked to dive down under, so Reed and Laura's is under the water in this one.

 One of my favorite pictures of the day: Nothing but the very top of Reed's head is showing! Their elephant liked to dive all the way to the bottom. 

 Although I look a little worried, my elephant was nice and controlled and didn't even make me get my hair all the way wet!

 Another of my favorites: Katie's elephant splashing her. Hehehe

 I never wanted it to end, but eventually we had to take the elephants back out of the water. Aren't they the cutest?

 This elephant knew to hand up the driver's shoes! They are so intelligent!

Nothing but a little rope around its neck to hold on to. I was a liiiittle bit worried (as pictured), but I made it out ok!

Here's a video to show a snippet of our swim with the elephants:

Sadly, our elephant adventure was over for the day, but we still had a lot of things planned for the rest of the day.

We were put on another boat which we were told would take us to the Cave of a Thousand Buddhas. Best part of the boat: we're pretty sure the seats were taken from cars.

They even reclined!!

The cave was PACKED with Buddhas! They filled every possible surface.

First we visited the lower cave, which was small and really well lit because it was pretty open.

Then we walked up 160 steps to the upper cave!

Taking a break on the way up...

This part of the cave was not lit at all, so we had to take flashlights in. My pictures aren't the greatest, but it was pretty cool seeing all the golden buddhas in the dark!

I took a few with no flash, so they are a bit blurry, but you can see how dark the cave was.

Then it was back to the boat. Had to capture this on the way back down. Laos is gorgeous!

The view of the lower cave and stairs to the upper cave from the river.

We were then taken back to Luang Prabang by boat in our nice comfy car seats.  Our guide, Bonleur (I think that was his name) took us to hike up to the top of a mountain in the town for a great view of the city and surrounding area. Katie's parents bailed because they were pretty exhausted, but we were all over it.

 Almost to the top!

 The city of Luang Prabang

 View of the river from the top

 The mountainside had a ton of HUGE Buddhas.

Photobombed by Buddha

It was an awesome conclusion to the best day (at least in my opinion) of the whole trip.

Day 13

We woke up bright and early to get to the "giving of the alms," a ritual in which local people gather to donate food to the Buddhist monks.  People line the streets at 5:30am to hand out sticky rice and various other goodies to the monks, who collect the food in a little basket.  We purchased some rice and what appeared to be spring rolls to hand out.

 Men are allowed to stand as they hand out food to the monks, but the women are expected to kneel.

We learned that the monks only eat two meals each day: Breakfast around 6:30 and lunch around noon.  After that they don't eat anything for the rest of the day! What self-control!

No wonder they are all so scrawny...

After just two short days in the beautiful country of Laos, we headed back to the Luang Prabang airport to catch our flight to Cambodia!

To be continued