Luang Prabang Day 5, 31 January 2006

This morning I found a place near the market swarming with Thai tourists. I had been craving for hot chocolate since last night so I was so happy to find this corner in the market seving hot chocolate and pathongko. Pathonko are huge batter fritters. In a cold morning it is nice to dip a morsel of these fritters in the hot chocolate, the eay I would dip pan de sal in coffee when I was little. It did not seem to be rude to do this because everyone was doing the same thing. On the way back to the guest house, I passed by Bong's place to make sure our photo session was still on. I found him chatting with neighbors. He told me his daughter was not available. So it would only be him and his wife. The light was dappled so it was a challenge to position their faces. We managed to do some solo and shots of them as a couple.

I decided against taking the bike and asked Bong to take me around Luang Prabang again. I figured the places I will be going today were too far for me to bike. We visited Ban Xang Long, a village famous for weaving mudmee silk as well as making mulberry paper. Our first stop was the wat. There did not seem to be many monks in this place. So I started taking pictures of the wat. Then some women carrying brooms came in to sell brooms to the head monk. After they finished their transaction, I asked one of the women if I could take her picture. I was glad that she had agreed. Then the novices started to approach me to while I was taking a picture of the wood pile in the middle of the temple courtyard. I then asked if they wanted to have their pictures taken. Later on, as I was going back to meet Bong so we can leave the village, I saw the same novices in the street, walking and they told me that they are on their way to school.

The town's biggest weaving factory was a few doors away from the temple, so I just made my way there. Their work looked pretty good. They have some nicely colored silk scarves so I chose one for my sister. I then asked if I can take some pictures of their weavers. The owner consented to my picture taking. I took black and white pictures of the weavers in this shop. I also notices how intricate the tapestry weaves that they are doing. No wonder the prices are so high becauses of the intricate weaves that they were doing.

It was almost lunchtime when we finished. We found a restaurant in the middle of the Kham river, right in the middle of the vegetable patches on one of the larger sandbars on the Kham River which is quite near by the old wooden bridge. It seems we over-ordered this time because we ordered miang, a sort of vegetable salad where you wrap different things in lettuce leaf and eat it. By the time the huge grilled fish arrived, we were already quite full and I just asked Bong to take the fish home.

kham river scenes

After dropping off the broiled fish, the afternoon was equally slow. Bong took me to the nearby Vietnamese temple. I noticed that there is a flag under the bo tree. While taking a photo of the banner, a novice approached me and started to converse with me. He told me that the banner commemorates a dead person. He also told me that all the monks in this temple are ethnic Vietnamese while all of the novices are Lao. I also asked him why he was not carrying bags of cement like the other novices. He told me that today he was having stomach problems so the monks told him to do lighter chores. The place did not cover a huge area but there were several little temples within the place. There is one huge Buddha statue facing the Mekong river. When we were leaving the place, 5 novices were preparing to put sand in their sacks when I asked if I could take their picture. They said I can do so provided I send them a copy of their pictures. It would have been an easy one had the temple helper not kept of trying to get into the picture as well. So I started positioning everyone including the helper where he could be easily edited out of the viewfinder. I was trying to take a second photo when the head monk started scolding the novices. So I bade them goodbye, it was time to leave and Bong was chuckling as we left the temple hurriedly.

I told him to pass by the bridge so I can take a picture of the golden stupa. I found out later that a group of buddhist nuns stay in this temples. As I had not visited this particular temple, there is no way for me to confirm if this was actually so. Once again the sun was already setting by this time. I just asked Bong to take me back to the guest house. He then told me that we may not see each other before I leave because the following day he was leaving for Van Vieng to get rice for his family.

Lugging the heavy rucksack filled with camera accessories was getting to be difficult so I left most of my gear at the guest house and only took the tripod and my digital slr. Most of the boats are now docked and people were just doing some chores and some are bathing. Then from behind me I heard Seng call me. Today was another busy day for him because a Canadian hired him to go to the buddha caves. I invited him to go to dinner together with his brother Kaew.

Kaew promised to take me to another massage place. It turns out he was referring to the Red Cross in front of Wat Visount.
While they used less oil for their massage, the quality of the massage was quite good and it only cost $3.20 for the hour.

At 8, I was at the gate of the Red Cross waiting for Kaew. We then headed off to the same barbeque place that we went to yesterday.