Day 125, Tuesday 8 May 2012, Luang Prabang
Wow, those long island ice teas really had some effect – I didn’t really wake up till 9:15 this morning, awesome – though mildly hung over. I got up and had breakfast, with Bettina gone I am now the only person in the guesthouse !
My stomach is back to playing up again and I spent till lunch time in the room, but did get three days of photo editing done, good to have a catch up. I went to saffron cafe for lunch as it was nearby, and the coffee was fantastic ! Lunch was great too but went through pretty much immediately : ( I am so pleased I got through yesterday unscathed as I would have been gutted to miss that experience through being sick.
I waited till late afternoon and was pretty convinced there was not much left inside to come out and then took a walk up to the main drag and hired a cheap push bike so I could do a bit more exploring. I wanted to find this big golden (painted as it turned out 🙂 ) pagoda you can see from Phou Si. I only got misplaced a couple of times before finding Vat Phanpao up a small hill, there were great views from there, but the vat was closed which was a shame.
I rode around a bit more and found these at a temple that I cannot name. I have never seen these before, they are funeral pyres, I am reasonably sure they just burn offerings in there rather than bodies. There had been a funeral that day so one of the three was burning away, out of respect I didn’t photograph it.
I rode over the bike bridge to the other side of Nam Khong river and looked at another couple of vats, but am pretty over them now, and they were not worth photographing – three days of them is enough !
My stomach was starting to cramp again so I made a hurried trip back to the guesthouse and it wa a close call – guess it wasn’t so empty after all.
After a wee lie down out to get some more water and decided to have one dark beer at the Big Tree cafe above the Mekong. It’s my last night in Luang Prabang and it is a shame to not be able to celebrate with a nice meal. I sat and read IQ84 for a while. I am not really a dark dark beer fan, but am loving this Beer Lao Dark beer, and at 60c a bottle I am not going to complain at all.
And if you read it too (all 1173 pages) then you will know why I took this photo – apart from it looked good : )
I only had one beer – and one imodium just in case – and was back in my room by 7.30 and caught up with blogging and emailing 🙂
Where is Phil now? 