Luang Prabang

Hey everyone,
We took a bus with our new-found UK buddies headed for Luang Prabang, about 8ish hours up the mountain pass, a whopping distance of 184 km. Those are hard-fought kilometres :S

Some lovely facilities on the side of the road, and of course our 'VIP bus.'
We made it into Luang Prabang, found a hostel, dumped some bags and headed out for supper. We heard it was supposed to be something like 41-42C the next day, so we made plans to get up early and head for some waterfalls :)
We rented a tuk tuk and headed out to the Kuang Si Waterfalls. As part of our ticket we could visit the Tat Si Wild Bear Rescue. Here we learned they are trying to counteract the poaching that occurs of Sun Bears for bear bile- such a ridiculous thing to do. The illegal animal trade, at it again.

Bears hanging out in the sun

After the bears we hiked up the side of the hill, with the falls to our left. We made it to the top, looked over the falls, which was cool. The pictures will do a much better job of illustrating how the falls looked, as my geological knowledge is severely lacking! Travertine? Anyways, here's the pics:




View from the top





Can you see me?


Swimming in the pools

Looking over the edge

This is where we hung out, ate lunch and swam into a cave behind the waterfall!


Cruising an hour in the tuk tuk back to Luang Prabang

It was super fun, such a good thing to do when it is that disgustingly hot out!
The next morning Jared and I got up early to beat the heat. He was super excited because we were getting up for temples- his favorite!
The first temple we went to was Xieng Thon. It had a reclining Buddha from the 1500's, and the ceremonial vehicle that once transported the remains of the Laos Royal Family in an urn.




She old


He just loves 'em!


After that we headed up a hill- Phu Si- to get some views of the city. There was also another temple up here:



Doesn't it just look properly hot and muggy?


Shrines atop the hill


Next up we headed to the former residence of the Laos Royal family. Now it's the Royal Palace Museum. On these grounds is also a temple that holds the Prabang statue, an image of Buddha fabled to have been cast in the 1st Century in Sri Lanka and given to the city later on- they even changed the name of the city after this image! He's just a cute little guy, maybe 1 1/2 feet tall? Of course I wasn't able to take a picture of His Cuteliness, you'll have to imagine it- but here's his temple:




Some bad-ass Naga balustrades

There were an insane amount of monks there


That afternoon we met back up with everybody and went swimming at a pool. There were more temples to see but I put my foot down and told Jared it was just too hot and we needed to relax.

Next up: Jungle trekking in Luang Nam Tha