Laos

Today was a relatively laid-back/relaxing day. We woke up earlier than we really wanted to and made our way out to a meant-to-be-hot-but-was-cold buffet breakfast. I enjoyed the meal; Court did not. She wasn’t a fan of her cold, onion flavored hash browns or her extra gingery tea. She’s really excited about breakfast for tomorrow.
After we had breakfast we made our way down to Big Brother Mouse. Big Brother Mouse is an organization, created by a retired American publisher, which writes, illustrates and publishes both bilingual and Lao books for Lao people. For a lot of Lao, the only books that they have read, if they’ve read anything, are their school textbooks. If we all remember, school textbooks are NOT interesting at all. Most Lao have never seen a book that they would be remotely interested in reading for fun. Big Brother Mouse has created a lot of books, covering topics such as math, hygiene, animals, and other famous stories like “The Wizard of Oz”, to engage Lao children. They also sponsor book parties. For the book parties they travel out to a village in rural Laos, play games, talk to them about hygiene, safety and health, and, most important, leave them books. For some of these kids, these books are their first possession.

Big Brother Mouse also organizes an English speaking hour on most mornings. During this time volunteers come down and help out teenagers and other Lao people who want to practice their English. We made it down in time to help out, however there were only two students there and they were already being helped out by volunteers. One was a retired principal from Calgary who is living in Laos now. We listened to them helping out these students and decided for our own sensibilities we had to stop listening to them try to teach these students. Let’s just say the “lesson” they were getting was worth the money they paid for it, i.e. nothing. Oh well.
After we left Big Brother Mouse we went needed to have a morning refresher, which came in the form of chai latte, hot chocolate, and fruit salad. Feeling refreshed we made our way back to the main road and split up. Courtney went to a wat and I went in search of a working ATM and the hours of the post office. My expedition was not exciting. Court’s was more enlightening.

While Court was at the wat taking pictures, a group of teenage monks came up and started to talk to her. They said they’re not in school right now and they have to do lots of work around the temple. Court figured they wanted a reason to take a substantial break from doing work and practicing English is a good reason to take a break. They also agreed to let her take their picture.

(Aside: I also learned a little about a day in the life of a monk. After waking at 4am, they have morning prayers and
go around town collecting alms from the people in town (they asked if I had seen it, but we haven’t yet been awake at 5:30am, so sadly we haven’t). After alms collection, I think there are more prayers, followed by study and school for six hours. Then they have free time, which usually involves walking around the town and hanging out. They could all speak English quite well, and were very friendly. It was a really cool experience.)

We met up and decided it was time for another break, Italian soda and desserts, and made our game plan for the rest of the day. We wanted to book an elephant tour, do some more shopping, and try to find something we left at an old hotel. We actually managed to accomplish all of this; it was a tough day.

We went into Kopnoi store and met a lovely Québécoise who is living in Laos now. Her daughter and son-in-law were on a round the world trip, fell in love with Luang Prabang and settled here. She opened the first English bookstore in Laos and has started other fair trade projects in and around Luang Prabang. Her mother moved over this year to help out in one of the stores and, more, importantly see her grandchildren every day.

After shopping, it was back to the hotel for another refreshing nap. We were planning to go to the Royal Ballet Theatre at 6:00, but got up a little bit later than we should have. We had to hustle down to make the start of the show. Unfortunately, we also had to stop and get more cash on the way. Even after stopping for money we managed to get to the theatre in time. But then we ran into a problem: a disorganized family of six. They had no idea where they wanted to sit and were trying to negotiate where they could sit. Once they got the seats figured out they then had to figure out how much it was going to cost. All of us in line were getting quite frustrated with them.

We settled in to our seats only five minutes late and watched the show.

After the show it was dinner time. We went back to the same restaurant as last night, but the meal didn’t turn out as nice.

Court’s chicken soup was TOO spicy. This meant a trip to another restaurant, Dao Fa, so Court could eat some pasta. And finally, after a tough, tough, tough day, we made our way back to the hotel for the night.

The start of 2009. Luang Prabang was even sleepier and quieter than it’d previously been. Everyone we saw was moving a little bit slower, except for the party up the street from our hotel. This party started last night around 8:00pm. Well, at least that was the first time we saw it; it could have been going on a lot longer than that. There was loud music, people sitting outside eating and, most importantly, line dancing. I don’t know why, but we saw some. This party was still going on when we left to move hotels around 10:30 the next day.
We got checked in to our new hotel. The people at the hotel were surprised with the rate that we paid when we booked online. I think they downgraded us when they saw the rate that we paid. Plus, we are going to stay a couple extra nights and they are charging us more for this room.

We found out we had internet in our room and made the New Year’s calls, then went out for lunch.

We went to a restaurant called The Bakery on the main drag. The food was decent but Courtney ran into some service problems. We don’t know if our server didn’t understand English or was just a bit new or what; it’s up in the air. I ordered spring rolls. However, two people at a nearby table also ordered spring rolls 20 minutes after me and got their order first. The juice drink Court ordered, which was simple to make, didn’t arrive until we had almost eaten all our food. Plus Court ordered a chicken dish and, surprise, got some fish. We decided not to say anything; we were hungry and the fish dish was pretty good. Needless to say we will not be making a return visit, which is a shame, because their dessert case looked awesome. We finished and headed off to the Royal Palace Museum.

I had to take a detour back to our hotel. I was wearing shorts, which aren’t acceptable attire for the museum. I quickly ran back to the hotel, took a detour for a piece of coconut cake and made my way back to the museum. The museum was impressive. It was built in the 1904 by the French colonists for King Sisavang Vong. Some of the walls inside were covered by inlaid murals, depicting battles, worship services and other things we didn’t understand. Some of the battles were quite gruesome: people missing heads, people holding dismembered body parts. Quite over the top, but gorgeous. We spent most of the time in the museum trying to stay ahead of one giant Chinese tour group and far enough behind another Chinese tour group so we could see the exhibits. Eventually we got fed up and leapfrogged the tour group in front of us.

After the museum we walked to the end of the peninsula and stopped at a few wats, including Si Bun Heuang and Sirimungkhun Sop, on our way to the big one, Wat Xieng Thong.

Here are some shots from the first wats we stopped at.

Wat Xieng Thong, the largest temple complex in Luang Prabang, was first built 1560. We paid our 20,000 kip entry fee and went in.

We were planning on going to a performance at the Children’s Cultural Centre at 6:00, and by the time we finished going through this wat it was getting near show time. Students, aged 14-18, from the Center put on a puppet and traditional dance every Thursday and Saturday from 6:00 to 7:30. We thought we had to hurry to get tickets for the show. It turns out we didn’t. There was about 20 people there. Either way it was an excellent show. This is the seating area.

Before the show we were treated to some traditional Lao music, played by students. They also played throughout the whole show.

Mr. Disen’s son had a talent for carving puppets and they first performed for the full moon festival in December. The puppets were used in performances until the war between the French and Japanese started. They resumed in 1961, and continued until the Vietnam War, which caused yet another break in the performances. Then, in 1986, the government instituted a short-lived plan to bring back the performances. However, some of the performers became very sick and couldn’t perform. So, the performances were cancelled again. Finally, in 2000, funded partially by UNICEF, the Epok performance was resurrected at the Children’s Cultural Centre in Luang Prabang, and has been going on ever since.

The show we watched was, Nang Sangkaan, or the Legend of Pi Mao Lao. In the play, the puppets are preparing for the Lao New Year procession and village celebrations.

After the puppet show they started the traditional dances.

The first dance, the Dok Champa dance, shows admiration and respect for the national flower, the frangipani flower.

The second dance, the Thaidam dance, shows respects to God, and our forefathers and mothers. It also draws bad spirits out of the home and brings happiness to the family.

The third dance, the Hmong festival dance, embodies the spirit of the youth of the Hmong ethnic tribe.

The fourth dance, the Khamu dance, demonstrates the spirit of Khamu youth.

The fifth dance, the farmer dance, shows how Lao families do their daily work on the farm.

The last dance, the Lai Lao dance, demonstrates the strength and agility of Lao youth.

Overall this was an excellent show. The kids looked like they were having a lot of fun. We saw them on the stage sometimes laughing at each other and just having a good time. We both really enjoyed watching these performances tonight.

After the show Court bought a print that one of the kids made at the center. Then we went out for dinner and did some more shopping in the night market. After the night market we caught a tuk-tuk back to our hotel and called it a night.