Luang Prabang Day 9, 4 February 2006.










My sleep last night was not continuous but I did not have any problems getting back to sleep again. I got up at 7:30 am. By 8am my breakfast was delivered. It was my first full meal after my diarrhea. I was feeling very hungry so my breakfast did not last long. I continued taking the medicine we got in town. I was feeling strong enough by 9-am to walk about. At first I wanted to rent a bike but decided not to do so because there are no paved roads in this part of Luang Prabang. Ms Vanh recommended that I visit the village of Xing Lom which I could reach by following a trail. Ms. Vanh's assistant Pat showed me the trail that I should follow. The trail itself was easy to follow. It was also quite busy because the villagers use the trail to reach points of the river to ride their boats. Even so, it was still a challenging walk because I would still have to go up and down the hill. As I pass villagers along the trail, I would greet them "Sabai dee". There were also a lot of activity in the river as people were traveling up and down the river.

I finally reached the Ban Xing Lom. People were already up and about, mostly doing their morning chores or else chatting in front of their homes or the corner store. I spotted an old woman with her grandchild. The little girl was wearing warm clothes and a cap. Then her grandmother put her in a pail and carried her past me. I thought this was quite amusing and was very glad that I was allowed to photograph the baby in the pail. The only trouble was that my meter was set to EI100 and my film was ISO400 so I am sure the photo would be overexposed. Well, worse things had happened before this and a picture still came out. When I got to the wat the light was so beautiful. Best of all, there were some clouds in the sky. As I was about to take this perfect picture, my meter died down on me. I did not want to estimate the exposure, so I just went back to the resort using the already familiar trail.

I tried going back this time with a digital camera. An elephant was bathing in the river. I tried to hurry up to get to the river bank and by the time I got there, the elephant had also gotten out of the river to the other bank and walked away into the camp. I tried to walk towards the village once again but this time, I was not feeling well, so I decided to just go back to the resort to take a nap.

My lunch was delivered at noon. However, I did not have a good appetite that I could barely finish half of the vegetable fried rice that I ordered. I then continued reading Coelho's book. I was getting to the exciting part of the book when Kaew turned up in my bungalow. He told me that his boss lent him the motorcycle, we had some small talk and I invited him to go with me to the boat ride that I scheduled that afternoon. Then I took a nap.

When I woke up it was time for our boat ride. We decided to go upriver. I was getting bored with the scene but the boatman said there are villages upstream. He was right, here I saw how the villagers depend on the river for their livelihood. It is their means of traveling from one place to another, they use the water from the river to water their vegetable garden. The Kam river is also full of seaweed which the villagers collect and pound into paper which are included in their meals.

Upriver, we stopped in one town. I was told that there was a festival in this town. It turned out to be the death anniversary of someone in town so women were cooking a feast. Near the bridge we saw people washing the entrails of the pig while on the other side of the river there were women bathing. We went further up the river a bit more before we decided to turn back. The sun was already setting and we arrived the resort at 5pm. Kaew told me that he has to go back to town because there are still a couple of empty rooms in their guest house. We said goodbye and I thanked him for all his help during my visit.