Luang Prabang - Monkey Magic

Luang Prabang (Laos)

Waking up, getting up and then actually moving  before the sun comes up, unless I’ve been out drinking all night, is generally a very difficult task. Come to think of it, the former task is more difficult than the latter. With that said, programming brains, setting alarms and bolstering the ‘internal will’ mechanism to try and get out onto the streets of the town at somewhere between 5am and 6am was actually a mercurial marvel.

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Never the less, as the darkness turned into that mysterious early morning blue and the veil was beginning to be pulled of the exterior of the Luang Prabang streets, JJ and I found ourselves making our way to the main street of LP in order to watch the monks obtain their daily alms, in other words, their daily food allowance from the local residence and of course the falangs, should they choose to participate. Not knowing exactly where this ritual would take place or at what time we felt somewhat validated in our fluke-ish judgments by the ladies we saw carrying bowls of sticky rice. Then as always, we had some lady point to us and tell us in no uncertain terms, ‘Monks come here, monks come here’ ,although here looked to be a place where everyone else was NOT going. Then for some reason she kept repeating it and beckoning us to stay or come, we couldn't really figure it out in the end. Either way we followed the people in the know to the main street, it felt like much more of a sure bet.

Monks collecting their alms in the early morning - Luang Prabang - Laos

So apparently one of the ways to gain merit in the Buddhist religion is to give alms to the monks. Not that we actually did that, although I think JJ and I certainly gained some credit by getting up early and checking the deal out. In any case, what happens with this particular process is basic, specific and has a degree of ritual about it. The monks each morning rise and walk down the main street whereby the ladies of LP are seated in order to give them their alms/food for the day. The monks walk in single file, silently and not speaking, by each of the ladies that are kneeling, their heads being kept at a lower level than that of the monks. In fact all people are advised to actually sit or kneel so that their head is at a lower level than that of the monks'. Each of the monks obtain there handfuls of food from each subsequent person and progress until they’ve exhausted the number of people offering. This in turn had me thinking, on those bitterly cold mornings, how many people actually show up? Do the monks check out the weather forecast and think ‘damn, Friday is going to be a bitch, better stock up otherwise I’ll be on a food flat line for the day!’, hmm, maybe, I know that I would. Still, the monks passed silently and in that charming, quaint kind of way it was nice to know that this ritual is a daily event, woven into the fabric of LP. Lets just hope that there aren’t too many tourists making there way here so that the entire tradition becomes completely bastardised/commercialised.

One of my favourite shots taken in Laos - on the main street of Luang Prabang

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After the Monkey magic experience I think JJ and I went back to crash out for a few hours, Lao superbugs and early morning starts sometimes gets the better of you. We resurfaced around noon in order to jump a little tour for the afternoon which was to take us out to the Kuang Si/Kouangxi falls, about 25 or so kms outside of LP. Somewhat surprisingly also, as we discovered upon arrival, the falls and the area in general were quite picturesque. There were some great waterfall tiers, terraces, rock pools, rope swings and all that sort of cool runnings stuff going on in this little sanctuary. We spent a good couple of hours there taking photos and checking out the Black bear sanctuary, that was kind of small but okay, credible for Laos.

One of the tiers near Kuang Si Falls - Luang Prabang - Laos


Kuang Si Falls - Luang Prabang - Laos

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Later that evening we made it back to Luang Prabang and obviously stopped off for some additional alcohol somewhere along the line. It was at this point that we made our fatal logistical error, it was a price to be paid for dreams which later became those that were to remain unfulfilled. As JJ knew, I had always had it in my mind to check out the Plain of Jars just outside of Phonsovan. The critical issue was how to get there? Flights out of LP were once a week and the only realistic mode of transport was a 6-7hr bus ride, culminating in what we thought would be a quick ‘hit and run mission’. The alternative was to head straight down to Vang Vieng and miss the Plain altogether ,mentally I wasn’t exactly prepared for that option. So the way we figured it is that we’d get to Phonsovan the next day, check out the Plain of Jars the following down and then fly out to Vientiane in the afternoon, then make a b-line up to Vang Vieng in the evening. Fast paced, high energy and all good in theory, you know what they say about the best laid plans however...yeah, I'll follow that up in the next entry.