Day 4: Laos and water
Today’s rather accidental theme was water.
After another good bowl of chicken noodle soup and too many chillies for breakfast, we headed into the jungle, aiming for the Tat Kuang Si bear rescue centre. This is home to a couple of dozen moon bears, beautiful creatures that wander around like big dogs until the stand up, and then you realise that’s no dog. The younger ones can be playful, and the older ones seem happy — especially when you consider the alternative is being caged and tortured for a miserable short life for some limp dick chinese or vietnamese to take their bile to make them “stronger”. If you think bear bile will make you stronger, the only stiff thing you deserve is to be mounted on a star picket.
As I was saying, the moon bears are beautiful, all have sad stories, and all are able to enjoy a better life at the centre, even though they can never go home properly. The centre has cunningly situated itself near the Kuang Si falls, some gorgeous waterfalls that draw tourists by the busload. While the centre doesn’t get money from the falls entry fee, I’m hoping a good number of these tourists will stop and see the bears, and possibly think a little, though there are always some fat white bastards who just take a car right up to the falls and miss this. In summary: bears are beautiful, bears are endangered, we need more bears.
The falls are pretty too, they start small and beautiful, and then the big reveal comes and it opens up to a big one (about 60m). The water is crazy blue from the limestone the river flows through, and if you get there early enough the place isn’t totally swarming with tourists. We also saw a magnificent dragonfly, that had black wings and a bright green body.
Before this fun, we were persuaded to stop at a Hmong village, which is a bit of a tourist con. We were shown how to separate cotton from the seeds, and spin it to make threads. Then the sales pitch, being shown some rather beautiful scarves and things that sadly didn’t appear to be local or hand made, but feeling obligated I bought a scarf. Then we had to run the gauntlet of small Hmong children trying to sell various knick knacks before rejoining our driver. One of those experiences that makes me wonder what good comes from this type of thing.
Another experience today was “the weaving village”, which is nothing like it sounds, feeling very unvillage like, and despite the many beautiful textiles, we were pressed to see if any weaving actually takes place among what felt more like a couple of streets of shops. We came away with something that was possibly handwoven silk, so that’s a plus (the advantage of having L around, she can spot these things).
Then it was back to Luang Prabang for lunch (an alleyway eatery, had a steamed fish in banana leaves that was almost as good as the one I made yesterday) and a foot massage. I have many sore places on my feet and calves, I discovered.
Late afternoon was a sunset cruise on the Mekong. Around Luang Prabang it’s a sleeping giant, wide but doesn’t look that powerful. We were out for a little over an hour: maybe 30 minutes powering up stream, 20 minutes drifting downstream, and another 20 minutes powering upstream to get back to where we started. While the Mekong basin/subregion is home to over 300 million people, it was pretty quiet today: a dozen tourist cruises and a handful of fisherfolk. I was hoping to see a source of the famed river weed that we’ve been eating by the handful, but it was not to be.
Dinner was back at the Bamboo Tree restaurant, where we ate Monday night. More wonderful weeds and spring rolls, followed by a 2 star beef stew that apparently isn’t too popular with foreigners for it’s local herbs, but we ate it all. I even managed a couple of the baby eggplants, which look like a green chickpea and are basically bitter.
Last night in Laos, so we’re starting to turn our attention to Bangkok. L is looking forward to the warmer weather (it’s been 22-23 during the day here, but drops like a stone once the sun goes down, they are forecasting 4 tonight). I’m looking forward to tom yum soup and maybe some shopping.
Luang Prabang has been a good place to start this adventure. It’s been a little quiet, there are less tourists here than last year, but if it got much busier I’d have hated the place. The food has been exceptional, the people friendly, it can be a little pricey compared to other countries in the region, but there’s nothing here to warrant adding Luang Prabang to the Places I Never Want to Go Back To list (FYI currently the list is Venice, Liverpool, and Auckland).
Final words. $2 Laos whisky, a tasting note: a hint of floral caramel on the nose, toasted caramel briefly on the tongue, surprisingly smooth, no finish to speak of, no real alcohol kick (I’m only taking small sips) and nothing really lingers on the palate. I was honestly expecting it to be a lot worse, I’ve certainly had harsher, more industrial-tasting spirits. Hopefully I still have some eyesight tomorrow. Overall the biggest flaw with this dram is how insipid it really is. If you’re only looking to kill brain cells on a budget, you could do a lot worse, but really life is too short for this blandness.