My Love for Laos Restored by Looms and Rice

July 11 – 20

All across Asia I encountered a singular dilemma: to stay in a hotel or guesthouse with a private room (better amenities and my own room) or to stay in a hostel (shared room, less wonderful facilities, but a better chance to meet people). The price difference was small, a few USD more for my own room, though hotels and guesthouses were more likely to include free breakfast as a perk, so the cost evened itself out.

In most cases, I chose the hostel. Asia is cheaper and more fun if you can share transportation and tours. In New Zealand, signing up for a shared tour and finding out you were the only one was a treat, but if you can’t speak with your driver beyond “hello” and “thank you” and some generic hand signals, then it’s a lonely day out and about.

Sometimes, however, it backfires. For example, I might end up staying at a hostel with fewer amenities, shared rooms and bathrooms, and end up meeting no one. Or no one interested in doing things together. Some hostels have social vibes. Some don’t. Some have great common hangout areas, offer activities, and promote certain tours. Others have just one of those things or none. It’s difficult to find through reviews the right hostel for someone like me (social and friendly, but not party).

However, the one thing that I will always choose (and sacrifice other comforts to have) is a hostel that offers free dinner or cheap “family dinners.”

Dinners are the single best way for all types of people (introverts and extroverts, party and non-party people) to meet and interact. Unlike breakfast, where people show up at different times, there is a set time for dinner so you’re all there together. Also, unlike breakfast, you can meet and chat and make plans for tomorrow, rather than meeting and chatting and realizing you both have already made plans for the day and they are different.

So, in Luang Prabang, Laos despite there being some lovely centrally-located hotels with $10/night rooms with swimming pools and free breakfast, I decided to stay at La Casa de Jardin, a hostel about a ten minute walk outside of the city center with A/C only at night, but free breakfast and free dinner every other night. The good news: the staff were incredibly wonderful and the people I met at the dinners were fantastic. There was also a good place to hang out during the day that, while without A/C, had good airflow, shade, and several fans. The bad news—the walk got old and the beds were the worst I’ve slept in across my entire travels. (I’m pretty resilient when it comes to beds, but it could hardly have been worse if they’d made us sleep on a gravel driveway.)

But it was still worth it. Luang Prabang turned around my Laos experience, which, if you read the post before this one, had been going horribly thus far. In Luang Prabang I did a series of amazing activities. I met wonderful and friendly people, and I felt happy and independent in a beautiful city. The only thing that could have improved my time were a better mattress and a stunning sunset, but alas, you can’t have everything.

What I did have were some incredible experiences.

The afternoon that I arrived, I walked up a small hill (Phousi Hill) for a view over the city and the Mekong River. At the top, I encountered a Vietnamese couple who had participated in the organized tour from hell with me the day before and I ended up talking to them about their NGO jobs for almost an hour. After, I enjoyed a smoothie (mango, of course) by the river.

As there are only a few touristy places in Laos, Later I ran into another familiar face. I’d met a friendly Chinese woman two days in Vang Vieng at Mad Monkey. Moments after I’d met her in the dorm room, she asked me if, as a western woman, I knew any tips for how to make nipples less obvious when not wearing a bra. As a conversation starter with a stranger, not one I’d recommend.

However, in Luang Prabang, I saw her scootering past me on the street. She stopped and we talked for a while, then she gave me a ride to the night market where we grabbed smoothies. The conversation was considerably less odd on our second meeting. And I realized that despite feeling like my efforts to meet nice people in Vang Vieng had been thwarted by the party atmosphere and poor organization, I had met several friendly (if a little odd) people. I needed to be more open-minded and forgiving (of course, that’s so much easier when you’re not suffering from acid reflux and feeling ripped off by your hostel and tour company).

The next day, I found a wonderful cooking class where none of the students were treated as beginners. The chef picked fun, challenging dishes and we got to do all the hard stuff. We started with a walk through the local market. I’d already seen some things in Thailand and Vietnam, but each market is a little bit different. In Laos, a fermented type of fish sauce is really popular and they sell it in these open barrels so the sour, cringy smell is pervasive. As is the copper scent that emanates from the butcher section.

The class was in the country side a short tuk-tuk ride away. Surrounded by forest, greenery, and a small pond, we all layered on the mosquito spray. We cooked over clay fireplaces rather than gas stoves, got to choose if we wanted authentic ingredients (water buffalo stomach, water buffalo bile – I did eat the stomach, but I opted out of the bile after almost producing my own bile when I smelled it!), and enjoyed sticky rice the traditional way – rolled into balls and eaten with the fingers.

In the afternoon I walked around Luang Prabang, absorbing the colonial architecture: the shutters, the rounded arches, the stucco style.

On my second day, I went to Living Land Farm. A month ago, I read about Living Land Farm in a Lonely Planet Guidebook and immediately clocked it as something I wanted to do. I’d been looking forward to it for several weeks and it lived up to my expectations. At Living Land Farm I learned how to…

…Grow, harvest, and prepare RICE.

So maybe that’s anticlimactic to you, but for me, after being surrounded by rice fields and the rice way of life for the last three months, I was so excited to finally understand the whole process from seed to mouth.

And now, despite your level of interest, I’m going to share the whole experience!

My skinny, tiny rice farming guide was named Sai. He spoke excellent English and was well-traveled through Southeast Asia. He returned to Luang Prabang after his travels to help set up and run Living Land Farm. He was an enthusiastic and informative guide for my fascinating experience. After sipping on some green tea, we jumped right into it.

Literally. Shoes off and everything.

In Sai’s fields, they get two rice harvests a year. This is because Living Land Farm has a freshwater spring they can draw water from in the dry season. If they used pesticides and chemicals, they could do three rice harvests a year, but they keep things organic. Either way, the remnants of the previous rice harvest have to be cleared along with any new, rascally plants that grew in the fields during the break. So, step one is to prepare the fields, plowing the fields so all the straw is turned under and soft mud is on top.

Today, a lot of farmers use a small machine to pull their plows, one they can stand on, riding through the gray, clinging mud. However, before machines (and still in many rural areas today), water buffalo provided the power. Sai gave me a try plowing a small section of the rice field.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t contribute anything–it was hard! The plow is heavy, the mud is thick and clinging and very difficult to walk in as it comes up to mid-calf. Susan the water buffalo didn’t really feel like going in a straight line. Perhaps if we’d spoken the same language (Susan, of course, understood all her commands in Lao) I might have had better luck, but I doubt it. She was definitely the boss of me.

As for the plow itself, it was nothing like what I imagined. It’s very 2-dimensional, the metal contraption able to lie flat on it’s side and create a very small vertical profile. So I was the balancing force. Additionally, the plow did no good if I didn’t apply upward force to it, therefore thrusting the front down into the mud. This is a weird movement, lifting up a heavy metal thing in order to lever the front down.

As a short, minutes-long activity, I enjoyed the challenge, but all day for several days on end…

Finally, it’s time to pull out the seeds saved from last year. The seeds are, of course, simply un-eaten rice grains still in the husk. To see which ones should be planted, Sai filled a small clay pot with water then added several heaping spoonfuls of salt. He checked that he’d added enough salt by putting an uncooked egg in the water. When it floated, the salt content was high enough. Then, he dumped in handfuls of the saved rice seed. Any that floated, he scooped out and told me he’d feed to his chickens. The husks that float are empty, but the ones that sink can be planted.

So, we went back into the field and mounded up some of the fresh mud we’d just plowed until it was above the water. Then, we scattered the seeds atop the mud. The scattering wasn’t like throwing out wildflower seeds in a meadow. The seeds were all very close together, often touching.

After about a week, the shoots are already at least 6-inches tall. Everything seems to love to grow, and grow rapidly, during the rainy season in SE Asia. At this point, the shoots are actually carefully picked, pulling just above the roots. The roots are washed of mud and kept in a bundle. Then, the shoots are carried to a new plowed field, carefully separated so that only 2-3 narrow stems are in a group, and replanted in the ubiquitous rows that you see in all the photos of Asia. The fields are already flooded, so it takes some experience to figure out how deep into the submerged mud to plant the shoot. Too deep and it will suffocate, but too shallow and it will float away.

The mud we plant in was a soft grey and full of clay, but also very soft. I sank up to my ankles in the mud, the water extending even further up my legs. It wasn’t the same texture, but it reminded me a lot of the squishy mud on the bottom of Gaynor Lake back home.

(A few weeks later in Cambodia, I learned that they tend to let the shoots dry for a few days before they replant them. But, the rice they were growing (and eating) in Cambodia wasn’t the same as the sticky rice Sai was telling me about, so maybe this differs based on the type of rice?)

After the second planting comes several months of weeding and water management. Sai showed me the pipes and plugs in each of the fields. Though the area is flat, upon closer inspection the slight terrace design of the field is obvious, so that water from the paddy above drains into the one below and so on. New, fresh water is added to the paddies about once every week.

(Also in Cambodia, I learned that there are lots of fish and crabs and snails that live in the water in the rice fields. They all help to keep the rice healthy, and the fish especially are appreciated because they eat mosquito eggs. Also, the crabs, fish, and snails are eaten (in Cambodia, possibly also in Laos) by the family. In Cambodia, families will dig a square pond next to their house so they have somewhere to keep the fish during the dry season. And the fish will actually walk out of the paddies and into the ponds.)

When the rice turns yellow, it is harvested by hand using a scythe. Richer families will use a machine.

The field is first drained and left to dry for a few days to make the task easier, but the farmers are still bent in half, cutting the rice from the bottom about six inches above the ground. The rice is then bundled by wrapping a piece of its own straw around the stems and it’s laid on the 6-inch-tall remaining stems to dry for several days.

With a recently dried bundle, Sai showed me a threshing technique. This involves (in the old way), gripping am armful of dried rice bundles with two sticks connected by a rope and then swinging the rice bundle over your head to slam into a slanted board. This knocks the rice husks loose from the straw. Sometimes people will lay the bundles flat and beat them with brooms instead. Today, in richer areas, this is done by a machine.

Then comes winnowing. So Sai swept the rice and straw that had come loose in the threshing process into a pile and then waving a giant fan over the pile to blow away the straw and just leave behind full rice husks.

From here, it’s time to bring the rice home. It’s all swept into a pile and then transferred to bamboo baskets. Depending on the ethnicity of the farmer, the style of the baskets differs. Highlands people carry a single basket on their backs with two straps like a backpack (these are the Hmong people, like I saw in Sapa). Midlands people use a single basket with a strap that goes around their forehead. And Lao people (lowland people) use two baskets attached on each end of a bamboo rod that goes over a shoulder (as the Vietnamese do).

Once at home, the rice husks need to be removed. This doesn’t happen all at once. Generally the rice is stored in big bags with the husks still on and gradually the husks will be removed as the family eats through the bags.

In a two man team and using a simple lever-like machine that looks like a seesaw, one person steps on the back of the lever to raise the grinding head, then lets it slam down into a stone bowl. The second person turns the rice in the stone bowl. The force knocks the husks loose from the rice, but also breaks the rice grains. I hadn’t realized that, for centuries, people ate “broken rice.”

The next step is similar to the winnowing though Sai used a different word that I can’t recall. For this step (a woman’s job, he explained), the rice and husks are placed in a flat bamboo basket and through a tossing technique, the rice stays in the bowl while the husks fly out onto a mat on the ground. (The husks are then used as chicken feed). This is ridiculously hard–I have not mastered the technique–which Sai told me means that no one will want to marry me.

Some rice is ground into a fine powder using a massive stone mill. The rice powder/flour can be used to make rice crackers, puffs, noodles, etc. I gave the stone mill a try and while I could occasionally get it to go all the way around uninterrupted, I could not seem to string the motions together. I tried for half a minute and could feel the strain in my arms, legs, and abs. It is quite the workout!

For the rice that is not ground and will just be eaten the normal way, the rice is soaked overnight. In the morning, the water is drained away (but not thrown away-the rice water can be used for washing hair) and the rice is put in a bamboo bowl and covered to steam.

Finally, the final step is to eat! After my meager two hours of work, I got to eat yummy sticky rice by rolling it into small balls and dipping it into a delicious spicy paste. I also tried rice crackers, rice puffs, and rice cookies (basically rice puffs dipped in caramel).

As I ate, Sai told me how this land was his grandfather’s farm for many years, but then they turned it into a shared space where many of the villagers can have small rice fields and also use the space to host and educate visitors. They also have a home-stay, offer a cooking class, and teach an English class to children from the village every afternoon. Some of the proceeds also go to the free children’s hospital in Luang Prabang where his wife works.

It was an amazing and enlightening experience and a great support to the local community. I have since recommended it to everyone I’ve met.

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The next morning brought another anticipated experience. I read in a blog a few weeks ago that the writer’s most memorable experience in SE Asia was a weaving class in Luang Prabang. That sounded amazing, so I signed up. I was the only student for the full day, though a few joined later in the afternoon to do a half-day class. I got to see the silk worms, learn a little bit about the dying process, and then I was suddenly picking my silk colors and getting started.

First, we spun the silk fibers onto bobbins for easy handling. The indigo dye came off a little bit onto the pads of my fingers as the thread whisked through my pincher fingers and onto the bobbin.

My teacher, who did not speak English, started my color on the loom. Then my guide (who did speak English) explained the process to me as we watched her. Then it was my turn!

The bobbins were placed in a boat shuttle, so called because the wood is shaped like a little boat and is very smooth so it can move over the thread without snagging. I had to push down a peddle with my feet to separate the base threads and slide the shuttle through to the other side. Then, I switched my feet to push down on the other pedal (separating the base threads the opposite way). I compacted the thread against the previously ones with a comb-like tool, which is what makes a tight weave, and threaded the shuttle back through. Once I got into the pattern of threading, moving my feet, pulling the threads together, and then going back through, it began to go quickly, almost meditatively.

Then came the complicated part: the pattern. So far I’d only been doing a solid color. However, the complicated part was aided by my teacher. Previously she or someone else had built out the pattern, which means that, at the back of the loom, she marked out which base threads needed to be up or down to create a certain single line of the pattern. And then which needed to be up or down for the next line of the pattern. White threads were looped through the base threads so that they could be pulled up or down (just like my foot pedals do, only with the specific pattern in mind).

So, to create the pattern, my teacher searched through the white “pattern” threads, separated them, and then ran a piece of wood between them to pull the right ones up. Then I brought the boat shuttle through. Then she found the next pattern line and I brought the boat shuttle back through.

She did all the hard work, and I just had to remember which color to grab. Later, however, she helped me pick the pattern threads, but I had to do the whole process of separating and using the wood to keep them apart while I threaded the shuttle through with one hand. It wasn’t a hard concept, but it was difficult to keep all the of threads where they needed to be and I definitely missed some because I can see where I broke the pattern on the finished product. Ah well! The scarf still looks amazing!

The class took place in a bamboo building on the edge of the river and we even took a quick brake for a delicious lunch overlooking the water. With fans blowing the heavy air around and my attention focused on the soothing pattern, it seemed like the day slipped away. While it was wonderful to sit in peace, fingers moving, I imagined being surrounded by my female family members (as weaving is “women’s work”) sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes just letting the words flow like the thread. I’ve always loved doing projects with my mom such as paint-your-own pottery or cooking meals. Weaving created a very similar space as those activities, but I didn’t have family to share it with.

My guide did chat with me for a little bit at the beginning (which is exactly when I wished I could have been left alone to concentrate), but it was fascinating. He told me about growing up about 6 hours from Luang Prabang in the countryside. His village was in a very heavily bombed area during the Vietnam War (the US bombed parts of Laos because the North Vietnamese Soldiers used a path through the Lao jungle to transport weapons south). The kids used to collect the unexploded bombs and sell them to get money to buy candy. He says that some of his friends died but that he was very lucky. After a few months, the parents began to figure out what was going on (they hadn’t known before because they went off to the rice fields everyday and the children waited until they were gone to go into the forest looking for bombs).

He says he also remembers occasionally hearing bombs go off in the distance and everyone running over with a hammock to help the person. Sometimes, he said, they breathed a sigh of relief because it was only a water buffalo.

He went on to talk a little bit about politics, all super interesting stuff, such as explaining that in the years since COVID, Laos has experienced almost 60% inflation. Before COVID, 1 USD was equal to 8,000 kip. Now it’s about 22,000 kip. Also, China. Two years ago, the railway in Northern Laos opened. It’s called the Lao-China Railway and is mostly funded by China. Additionally, China is financing the building of dams on Lao Rivers, including the Mekong River. This is, of course, helping Laos. They love the train and the hydro-power generated from the dams will help the country. But they also are in great debt to China who gets amazing benefits to use the railway, to get cheap energy, etc. My guide was not pleased with the dam building, especially because it is impacting the local villages and the river quality. His stories were fascinating, but also peppered with, “foot pedal” and “that stitch was wrong” and “left hand!” Somehow, amongst all his talking, he could instantly spot when I got too distracted by his words and fumbled the pattern!

But the finished product turned out beautifully!

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That night at dinner, I met a great woman at the hostel and we organized our whole dorm to visit the alms-giving ceremony in the morning and then the famous Kuang Si Waterfall the next afternoon. It was her and me, a young guy from South Korea and an older guy from China.

First, we woke up at 4:30 in the morning to trek to the center of town to witness the traditional alms-giving ceremony that Luang Prabang in known for. The alms-giving is a ceremony where Buddhist monks walk the streets at dawn and receive gifts of food from the locals. In Luang Prabang, it has become a major tourist attraction with massive groups of people kneeling to give offerings and, unfortunatley, tourists shoving their camera’s in the monks’ faces. My new friends and I sat on the opposite side of the street to watch and found it both beautiful and super strange.

The line of monks and the people who seemed to the find the offerings meaningful were very beautiful, but the hustle and money-grabbing done by many of the locals was sad and the food given to the monks (little cakes and biscuits as well as the occasional handful of cooked sticky rice) was really odd.

Every thirty feet or so there was a little trashcan on the side of the road and the monks would dig through their basket and drop the sticky rice in the trash. We were kind of shocked that they were throwing away the offerings right in front of people, but also thought that hygienically it was a good choice. Then, we learned that the bags of sticky rice are gathered at the end of the ceremony and taken back to the temple. So they do eat the gross sticky rice that has touched many hands.

As we left the main area, there were some locals giving alms away from the hustle and bustle, probably the same way they and their ancestors have done for generations. That was very cool to see and to realize how this massive tourist attraction started with it’s humble roots.

Went all went back to the hostel and went back to sleep, but later when w were up and functioning normally, we got a tuk-tuk and ventured out to Kuang Si Waterfall. We started at the bottom on a forest path and walked up beside a beautifully pale blue river. There were a series of cascades and swimming pools until we reached the ultimate waterfall at the end.

I met a kiwi man there who told me that he’s seen a lot of waterfalls in his life, but this one was really impressive. Having explored New Zealand and seen so many of their incredible waterfalls, I was in agreement. The Kuang Si Waterfall was massive, white water cascading down and fanning out to finish in a ice-blue pool.

The four of us also hiked to the top of the falls. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the river! But the view over the green hills was lovely and there was a cool tree-house cafe to explore. When we got too hot and sweaty, we went back down and swam in the chilly water. It was a lovely day out and made so much better, as I’d suspected, by being able to share it!

I was sad to leave Luang Prabang because it had completely transformed my experience in Laos. I was worried about everything see-sawing back into disappointment and chaos upon visiting somewhere else. Luckily, the stars aligned in Pakse as well!

Pakse is not a tourist destination and I loved it. The city is pretty big and full of life, and yet totally quite in the evenings. There probably is a more lively area, but it’s not where the hostels are. People don’t come to Pakse to party, it seems.

I spent at least 2 hours wandering around town in the drizzling rain (in my flips flips because I didn’t want to get my sneakers wet, so my feet hurt and also, why don’t Asian people get mud all over the backs of their legs like I do?)

Also, I got a lot of bug bites. Which was really worrying because I’d read that Southern Laos has a 4x higher chance of having mosquitos that carry malaria. And, because I didn’t plan the Southeast Asia portion of my trip, I, of course, did not have any malaria pills. But I kept telling myself that I was mentally tougher than mosquito bites and definitely mentally tough enough not to get sick. I hadn’t been sick once since I left Colorado, so the odds were in my favor.

Anyway, that night I read my book in the common room, on the lookout for other people who might want to do the same things I wanted to do. Luckily, I met two other women from the US and we signed up for a full day tour of the Bolaven Plateau together. It was a big surprise as I hadn’t met any other Americans in Laos and yet the three of us found each other on my first night in Pakse. We had to keep explaining to people that we didn’t know each other before!

We were an eclectic mix of Americans. Melissa was in her 30s and a nurse from Florida. Jai was my age with short hair and a rat tail and perhaps thirty tattoos. Though her family was from Puerto Rico, she grew up in Missouri. And then me. I’m not sure how I come across, but later the others nicknamed me the guide because I was so prepared with a rain coat, and umbrella, and a plastic bag to put my backpack in when it rained (plus an extra plastic bag for Jai to use) and led the way on the hike, so I guess that says something.

Our tuk tuk driver didn’t speak much english but he was a good driver, taking us out of Pakse on the highway. The road was really good and the ride was comfortable, but we really didn’t know much of the itinerary. So about forty minutes later when he pulled over to the side of the road, we looked at each other in confusion. We knew part of the day was visiting waterfalls but nothing about this spot screamed “waterfall.”

“Tea plantation,” the driver said, and pointed down a dirt driveway. There was a two-story cement home and then a work area beneath a crooked wood and corrugated metal awning. As we walked up, a young boy of about fifteen bounded up to us. He didn’t introduce himself or the business, just gestured to a bottle on the table and said, “bug spray.” We all used his bug spray, then followed him down a dirt road between rows of small plants.

“Tea plants,” he said. “We just cut them last week.”

“Oh, you harvested last week?”

“Yes,” he nods.

“Red tea,” he says later.

I’d never heard of red tea and neither had the others. He had nothing to say to that but a big smile and a chuckle. He was so energetic with his bouncing walk and his big smiles. His presentation of the area was so vague, like we already knew stuff about growing tea. Turns out the farm (I don’t think plantation is an appropriate word for this operation) was planted by his grandfather. Also, the tea is cut once a week all year long (not the same plants every week, but about every three months). Bobby (we finally asked his name) didn’t explain that without lots of prodding. He told us a little bit about the process of massaging and then drying the tea leaves, but when we asked if there were more steps he just grinned and said, “it’s a secret.”

He let us taste some tea and his mom was around, but otherwise it was a quiet operation and we learned almost nothing, but Bobby was the cutest.

We continued on in the tuk tuk to the most famous waterfall of the region: Tad Fane.

When we first walked up, clouds and mist obscured the view below, but it was all moving and shifting quickly and within a minute or two the view became clear.

We spent a while at Tad Fane enjoying the view. The other two zip-lined, but I hadn’t realized there was a zip-line and hadn’t brought enough Kip (the zipline company didn’t take cards and the closest ATM was back in Pakse! I wasn’t mad as the zipline was so expensive I probably wouldn’t have done it anyway, but it was silly that the hostel didn’t warn us about the lack of ATMs or credit card availability, because even though Jai and Melissa had both planned to zipline, Jai had to borrow 300,000 Kip from me because she didn’t have enough and Melissa used all her kip paying for the zipline, so I had to spot her some money for lunch and the other entrance fees).

It’s so interesting traveling around in South East Asia because people are so friendly. They’re friendly with each other, but they’re so friendly with foreigners too. If someone speaks English, they tend to want to talk to you. Here is a selfie that a Vietnamese man asked me to take with him after we’d talked for about five minutes about Laos and Vietnam and his job, which is what had brought him to Pakse for the week.

I wandered around the rest of the grounds and got my favorite picture in Laos while sitting on a bench and contemplating life. Voila:

When the other two were done ziplining, the driver brought us to a cute coffee shop. The three of us seemed to be a great combination as every conversation we had I enjoyed immensely. It doesn’t always work that way with random travelers, but it was a perfect balance in my mind. Of course, it’s easy to get along with people you know you’re only going to see for a maximum of two days. It’s not a long-term investment.

We grabbed some lunch at the next stop, which was perfectly timed as the sky opened up and dumped rain. As soon as it slowed and then trickled to a stop, our driver urged us onward. It was still a little bit drizzly at the next waterfall but with the force of the waterfall blasting mist onto us, it didn’t matter if it was raining or not. We were drenched!

We spent some time appreciating the English translation on several warning signs and then tried to see a final waterfall (Tad Champee), but the bridge over the river to the viewpoint was submerged and we didn’t feel like tempting fate and crossing a submerged bridge that was no wider than a foot and had no railing.

We ended the day at the Big Buddha outside of Pakse, which was a steep climb up a series of steps to a Buddha statue and a giant temple that was built only in the last 20 years. We actually spent a lot of time up there because we realized really quickly that the temple was not built symmetrically and once we started calling out errors and crooked columns, we just couldn’t stop.

The next day Jai left and Melissa and I took a tuk tuk to Wat Phou, the small site of an pre-Angkor (i.e. built before Angkor Wat) Khmer temple. It was grey and drizzly the whole time. The most impressive part of the ruins were the two constructed corner halls in the distinctive Khmer style.

However, my favorite part was the climb up the old, disrupted stairs midway up the mountain. There, we walked around the sacred spring, found the Buddha footprint (from a much later era), and found some carved stones with a snake, elephant, and “crocodile.”

A little bit of research let me know that the “crocodile” is actually thought to be part of a human-sacrifice ritual from the culture before the Khmer, but no one knows for sure. Creepy!

I geeked out a little bit with all the history, but also felt extremely frustrated. I wanted to geek-out more, but so much was vague and unexplained. It planted seeds of anxiety in my stomach about visiting Angkor Wat in Cambodia in a few days because I began to worry that it, too, would be under-explained.

Even with the lack of real, explanatory information, it was an interesting area to wander around for a few hours. Once I let go of my frustration and the lack of answers, I instead embraced the lost world feel of the place, especially when I saw a cracked platform that reminded me of the stone table from Narnia. Then it started to feel magical and mysterious. And it couldn’t have been more green and magically misty if it was the set of a movie. The rain and the lack of other visitors, as well as the overgrown greenery made the whole place feel like a separate world disconnected from tourism and the realities of life in a way that I imagine is the antithesis of Angkor Wat. So I changed my tune and I fell in love with Wat Pho simply because it had been abandoned and forgotten. And I love forgotten places.

I was a little bit sad and a little bit relieved to be leaving Laos the next day. The country had been vigorously redeemed in my eyes, but the memories of the first four days were still fairly prominent. They gained a faint, rosy hue as distance made the memories more amusing rather than vexing, but I was still ready to move on to Cambodia and start fresh!

Bring on more adventure!