Indochina Day 6, River Riding Day 2

Thursday June 2^nd

Today, after breakfast we re-boarded out river boat for the second day of our journey down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang the capital city of Laos. This area of the river is quite remote and uninhabited. The river flows down through the low mountains with lush forests and the sound of loud singing insects. There are some villages, but they are a ways apart. The water of the river is brown and quite swift flowing. The surface of the water is pretty smooth, but in lots of places there are rocks under the water that cause eddies and whirlpools. Many times our river guide, has to navigate these underwater rapids as we continue downstream.

Everyone is quite tired today and are napping around the boat, as they went out pubbing after dinner last night. I am reading, listening to music and enjoying the ride. At noon, we enjoyed another home made lunch on board that was quite good local food, soups, fish, curry and the like.

Later in the afternoon we stopped at a large cave that the locals have used as a religious place for a long time. Inside the upper and lower caves are over 400 Buddha statues of various sizes and quality, all donated by local people. To get to the upper cave, we had to climb 210 stairs. The cave would be a perfect roost for bats, and apparently did house bats, until over time the locals netted and ate them all!

The rest of the ride was uneventful and relaxing. We arrived at Luang Prabang by 4:30, took tuk tuks to our hotel and checked in and got settled. Then we met up in the lobby for an orientation walk of the neighbourhood and the main street. We are here for two and a half days and there are a number of activities we can do. There are a lot of tourist travel agents in town where we can book any activity we want. Then we went for a short walk along the river to get to Richard's mother-in-laws house, where he and his wife live. The picture at the bottom is of Richard, his wife and his mother-in-law. We were their guests for a local typical Laos meal. The food was good, chicken curry, Laos salad, sausage, fried eggplant and sticky rice and mango for dessert. After that we went for a walk along the main street is see the night market. Every night a portion of the main street is shut to cars and motorcycles and lots of little shops are set up on the street. They sell touristy stuff but it is not junk. It's handicrafts of jewelry, bags, clothes, and other things. Much nicer than the usual stuff. Then back to read and relax.