Tour of Ancient Kingdoms, September 21 - October 11, 2023

The center of town, where our hotel is located, has historically small streets, so our tour bus could not enter that part of town. We switched to "Jumbos", a larger, multi-passenger Tuk Tuk.

On the way to the hotel we passed this staircase guarded by two 7 head Serpents.

Boat tour today along the Mekong River.

Many places along the river had a small cafe or restaurant.

Some of the larger houses had a long staircase down to a dock on the river.

We stopped to explore a village

The Wat Xieng Thong Buddhist temple and monastery is located here, built in 1559-60. We had the opportunity to explore the grounds.

Buddha in quantity (as usual)

This is the huge drum used to announce wake up and prayer time.

Like many houses, this has a retail outlet near the entrance, with a residence behind the store. I suspect the boxes on the pole are electric meters for the several properties in the area.

A lady was making decorative paper - floating her mixture onto the fine screens in the bowl, then carefully moving the slightly dried layer from the screen to the reeds to dry in the sun.

In fact, she was far more productive than just a couple sheets.

Another lady was making rice cakes that would be dried and further cooked. The speed and precision she could form her cakes (without any mould) from the pile of sticky rice on the table in front of her, was amazing - just a few seconds for each piece.

We arrived at the Pak Ou Caves - natural caves along the Mekong river that for centuries have been a Buddhist holy place (and a place to leave broken or unwanted Buddha images/statues).

Jenny was the primary explorer of the lower cave, which had natural sunlight through the front opening.

As you climbed (or looked) upward, every horizontal surface was filled with Buddhas, many smaller hand-carved wooden items that hadn't survived the centuries.

You can see the start of the (long) staircase to the upper cave. Bring your own light - it is not open to the sunlight from the riverfront.

Those interested (not Jenny) left the hotel at 5:30 for a temple where arrangements had been made for our group.

Each donor takes their shoes off and sits on the ground (or a low plastic chair), and has a container of sticky rice. (Our tour group arranged the containers of rice, etc. for us). As each monk comes by a handful (yes, bare hands) of rice is put in the monks alms dish.

The monks line up in order of seniority. The novice monks have their robe only over one shoulder, the senior monks have both shoulders covered.

After the alms procession, more alms are taken directly to the temple.

The cooked food and basket of fruit are formally presented to a novice at the temple

Their temple is quite elegant, for their meditation, but they often have other work such as teaching.

We stopped by the morning market on the way back to the hotel.

One stop was a blacksmith who made and refurbished machetes -from old car springs (see under the knives). Blue shirt was our guide, Nong, translating, light green shirt is one of our group, operating the bellows (the poles in his hands are alternately pushed to fan the forge) - normally done by his wife! He gets the blades red hit, them pounds them to shape on the post-like anvil in front of him, and about once a year refreshes the shape of worn knives for the equivalent of about a dollar.

We then met with the leader of the Hmong Hill tribe, an indigenous people who live near the village. These people were great allies during the Vietnam War. The local shaman got dressed up for our visit - his vest contained many rows of hanging discs. He had 13 daughters with his first wife, who left and moved to California so that he could take a new wife and perhaps father a son.

He demonstrated a ritual dance with an unusual musical instrument.

As you may have seen during the Alms procession, sticky rice is kept in a special container that keeps the moisture right and opens like this:

I was really delighted with some of their door handles.

I first saw one of these signs at the village we visited, then I saw them several more times in the rest of the trip. Often they pointed to an outdoor facility (remember this is tropical) with one or several urinals.

Their shower was particularly attractive - blending with the general design... until I looked closely in the corner - there is no calking between the bricks. My last shower I realized why the floor was wet (I was not splashing out of the shower!) Water was running behind the bricks and tub, and coming up through the floor.

Today is the two hour train ride from the old capital - Luang Prabang - to the current capital - Vientiane. This is a train station (looks more like an airport to me).

The Chinese built the high speed train line and operate it. It travels about 100 miles per hour (much less than the Japanese bullet trains) but it is still very fast, especially through the mountainous part where almost half the time was in tunnels.

In the evening we visited a local family and helped prepare the local-style dinner

which we enjoyed eating with them. Our group of 14 travelers was broken into smaller groups going to different homes - one other couple came to this home with us.

They tried to teach us some of their local dances

The huge carving in the foreground is the back of the chair/sofa facing the other people in the picture.

We had a very interesting extended discussion with a monk. His English was outstanding and he was highly educated, including a master's in business communications.

One question - how big is their robe? Answer - the size of a sheet (queen size?)

How is it worn? The under garment contains pockets for pen, paper, phone, money, etc. Then start with a corner in the left hand. There were some tricky moves rolling the excess on the right so it could be secured.

And here is the result. He made it look easy but I could not dress as he does.

In 1965-75, during the Vietnam War, Thailand provided air bases for American bombers. However, when they returned from a mission over Vietnam, they were not allowed to land with unused bombs. Therefore they dropped them on Laos and Cambodia. The red areas of the map received more bombs that the total dropped by all sides of World War II. And roughly 30% of the bombs do not explode.

One of the types of bombs dropped was a cluster bomb, illustrated here, which has anywhere from a few to 600 sub-explosives that can be dispersed over a large area. Each of the bomblets can kill a person (as much as 25 miles away), and has a 20% chance of remaining unexploded. The small bomblets are very hard to find, but still kill or cripple decades later. By international law they are no longer allowed.

We visited COPE (Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise) - a non-government facility that made artificial legs and provides rehabilitation therapy for bomb victims. Since they are all custom made, when the person dies or outgrows the prosthesis, it cannot be used by someone else. One of our speakers had two below-the-knee prostheses.

We attended a traditional puppet show

Sometimes there was live acting

Sometimes the performers acted with puppets on both hands, both knees, and their heads.

Other times they were on their knees, hiding behind an umbrella, with a puppet over their head

Or sometimes they worked with larger puppets in their hands.