2/15- Luang Prabang River cruise to Pak Ou caves

After a fairly restless night where, even though the bed was quite comfortable, we were kept awake by lots of traffic noise, we arise to find a beautiful cool morning as we sip our coffee on the balcony.  We make our way downstairs to the terrace for breakfast, which is, as we have found all over Asia, a huge affair. The menu has great choices – from eggs any style to pancakes to toast and jams – and I splurge on a banana pancake, while Ed has scrambled eggs.  After swiping a couple of fresh bananas from our “welcome” fruit plate (to be used as our snacks on the boat ride), we go back upstairs to shower and start our day.

We’re sort of making plans as we go here with little other than a 3pm Friday tour on the agenda. So today, Thursday, we’ve decide to try to take the public boat up the river to the Pak Ou caves, which contain over 4,000 Buddha statues.  Essentially, these statues are broken or excess relics that people come from all over to place in the caves as a spiritual resting place. We’re looking forward to a day on the river and figure the public boat/ferry is a cheaper alternative than the lunch boat trips.  Our Vietnamese friend from yesterday had told us the boat leaves around 8:30 from just down the street.  He’s not here this morning, and the guy at the desk doesn’t speak a lot of English, so we sort of figure out that he is telling us the public boat dock is right down the street.  We strike off along the river looking for the dock, passing lots of cafes and breakfast spots, restaurants and other lunch boat tour docks, but not the public boat dock.  Darn it – it shouldn’t be this hard to find!

We’ve walked way down the river and we know our hotel guy said it wasn’t more then 5 minutes walk, so we dutifully turn around, retracing our steps while enjoying the cool early morning and the great colonial buildings lining Manthatoulat Street (or what we are calling the “river road”).

As we are passing yet another lunch boat tour, one of the guys working on the boat comes up the stairs and asks us if we want to go on the boat.  It’s $25 US each, with a full lunch, entrance to the caves and a stop at the whiskey and craft village on the way.  Since we haven’t had any luck finding the public boat – which would be far cheaper but not include any amenities or entrance fees – we decide, what the heck.   The boat looks nice, and this guy is very sweet (and not overly persuasive), so we say yes.  He says he can send a van to pick us up – but we are literally a 5 minute walk away, so we tell him no thanks, we’ll just come back here at 9:15, like he tells us to do.

That settled, we can go back to the room for a bit until our scheduled departure. And of course, in a true Amazing Race type episode, a little further on we walk right past the public boat dock!  Darn it!  It is hidden on the side of one of the breakfast places we passed earlier.  You can’t tell it is a ticket office, as there are barely any signs. The only way we noticed it this time we passed was because there was a crowd of people there buying tickets for the boat.  Oh well – you know – it will all work out better in the long run.  This way we don’t have to pack any of the fruit and snacks I was hording for lunch, we’ll not have to worry about entrance fees and our ride will be far more comfortable than on the public boat.

We arrive back at the launching area at the appointed time, and our guy is right there waiting for us. He escorts us down to the boat – which looks really cool from up above, and just as neat when we’re on it!

As we’re the first guests, he puts us at a table, and then explains they have to get the boat ready for the rest of the people, “a lot of people,” he actually says.  Bummer. We were sort of hoping to have a small crowd, but no matter. We have a table, we’re inside, and we are comfy for our 2 hour ride up to the caves.  The boat starts filling up with an assortment of guests – an English speaking family with 2 kids, lots of foreign speaking couples and small groups, and a Chinese 4-some – 1 guide with 2 young guys and an older gentleman.  We’re thinking father and sons, but at the end of the cruise they exchange business cards, so it must have been some professional meeting. Who knows?

At any rate, we finally push off the dock a little before 10 to begin our journey upstream.  It’s a beautiful and comfortable trip, here in the shade with the breeze blowing through the open windows.  The banks of the Mekong slide by as we pass serene beaches, small little villages, fishing boats and other river life. We get a glimpse of two different herds of water buffalo cooling off in the shallow waters, and wave to a cute little boy who is on one of the many boats we pass along the way.

After about an hour and a half, we reach our first destination – the whiskey village.  Pulling up alongside the shoreline, there is really nothing here but small little canoes and a very muddy shore.  We’re not quite convinced all of us will make it across this rickety little makeshift dock they’ve got set up, but somehow we all do, and proceed to climb up the steep embankment to the village.

We figure this will be a waste of a stop, but it turns out to be quite fun and interesting.  The guide from the boat explains the whiskey and wine making process, and gives us tastes of different rice wines, which are quite good, good enough in fact for us to buy a bottle to take back with us. (It’s insanely cheap.)  Of course we can’t taste the “good” stuff with the snakes and scorpions in the bottles – but that’s ok – we’ll just stick with the regular rice wine, thank you!

We have 20 minutes to spend here, so we all head up the dirt path, through the silk weavers stalls to explore the rest of the village.  There is a lovely wat here, which is pretty big for such a remote village (of course it’s probably not all that remote – I’m sure there is road access on the other side of the village to draw further tourist activity!), but nonetheless, there’s alot to see here and we explore it pretty fully – alongside the cats in residence, and the cute little monk-boy hanging out the window…

…we’re not quite sure what this altar is supposed to represent.  Either pointing to India (or current day Nepal, really) or telling the supplicant to get out?  You choose!

As we head back through the village to the boat, we stop at one of the silk sellers, because, well, really, why not?  And she’s got lovely scarves and weaving, so we spend some time looking at different scarves, finally settling on one that was definitely not 100% silk – and probably not even made there – but looks lovely and will go with virtually every dress I own.  Purchases complete, we tote our bags back down the mud packed stairs and onto our floating ride.

Another hour passes as we slowly (but not as slowly as some of the other little boats we pass) make our way up to the Pak Ou caves.  It’s the same bucolic scenes on the banks of the river, fisherman in the shallows, fishing cages on shore waiting to be deployed, more water buffalo and lots of scenic mountains in the distance.

The biggest excitement is when we pass a tanker Junk that has sunk alongside a little island in the river.  Apparently the owner or the captain, or what have you, live on the ship in the large “hut” at the back of the boat, because all the owners’ possessions appear to be set up on the banks of the island, looking very much like a refugee camp, while a whole crew on the water side of the tanker doing repairs.  Wow.  Wonder how that happened, and what he hit (notice the side of the cabin where the roofline is all bashed in).

Soon after the wrecked tanker ship, we round the corner for our first glimpse of Pak Ou caves.