I have to admit, after the first few days of my two week beginners course at the Sunshine Massage School in Chiang Mai I felt overwhelmed.  Fortunately, by day 5 or 6 I was starting to get the hang of things.  Our highly knowledgeable teacher, Yan, taught my class of 10 students over 125 different stretches and positions, and provided a wealth of information about pressure points, energy lines, anatomy, working with injuries, alternative healing techniques, and relaxation exercises.  Given my background in yoga and reiki, I found all of the information completely fascinating – I just hope I can remember a fraction of it.

After 60 hours of instruction and practice, I can now confidently give a full 2 hour massage – and a longer one if I’m working with someone who is a bit more flexible.  I’ll be practicing on John pretty regularly over the next few months to be sure I maintain my skills until we get home.  He’s more than happy to oblige, as you can imagine.

This course was the main reason we came to Chiang Mai, and the only thing keeping us here after we decided that Thailand wasn’t resonating with us.  I’m so happy to report that I got so much out of this course – enough to make our month here in Chaing Mai well worth it (even if you don’t add in the cooking course and ziplining adventure we enjoyed here.)  As my brain processes all the information over the next few weeks I’ll probably only have more good things to say about my time spent studying at Sunshine.

Now that I’ve finished my course, however, it’s time to move on.  Yesterday I passed my final exam (giving a 2.5 hour massage to a classmate – the middle image above is of the epically long sequence I used), and today we’re hopping the overnight train down to Bangkok.  Onward we go!

That’s right, we’ve officially been homeless for an entire year.

Where We’ve Been

Thailand.

The Highs

• The food at our  Three Day Thai Cooking Course was superb.  Such amazing flavors (and views!)
• Finally going ziplining.  We’ve skipped this tourist activity through all of Central America and Southeast Asia, but Thailand is the last tropical location where we could zipline through the rainforest so we finally decided to go for it.  I’m glad we waited – the place we went was impressive.  It took us a full 90 minutes to make it through the entire course, and we got to see a whole family of gibbons.  Much cooler than the ziplining I did in Costa Rica years ago.
• Songkran.  Simply hilarious.
• Thai Yoga Massage School.  I’m going to leave the two week course I’m currently taking with a slew of new massage and yoga moves and a whole host of information about anatomy, working with injuries, and alternative healing techniques.  Win.

The Lows

• Failure to connect with Chiang Mai.  Despite the above mentioned highs, we really haven’t much liked Thailand.  I know people all over the world rave about this place, but we just aren’t feeling it.  Time to move on.
• Homesickness.  As you can imagine, failing to connect with the city you live in makes it easy for homesickness to creep in.  Add in a 13 hour time difference that makes it difficult to connect with people back home and it’s not surprising that I visited the Denver apartment listing section of Craigslist this month…just to see what was out there…

Things I’ve Learned

Good Thai food cannot be taken for granted.  There is a (shockingly) high percent of Thai food that is not tasty.  I would not have thought that possible before visiting here.

Also, I do not thrive in 104 degree heat.  As such, I’m ready to get out of the tropics.  John, who claims to love all hot weather, is also suffering.  It appears we have reached our limits – I hope Nepal can provide some much needed cooler temperatures.

What’s Up Next

Cambodia and Nepal.

I’ve wanted to take a cooking course in Thailand since well before World Tour, and its something I’ve been looking forward to for months.  I’m not alone in this desire, and thus Chiang Mai is practically bursting at the seams with restaurants and cooking schools willing to provide foreigners with an “authentic Thai cooking experience.”  Of course, all of these experiences look identical – they tour the same market, teach the same bland dishes, and offer relatively few vegetarian options.  With our experience with the sub-par cooking class in Vietnam, which aimed to entertain more than educate, fresh in my mind I felt weary about taking a cooking course in Thailand.    After viewing brochures and websites ad nauseum I was tempted to scrap the whole idea of learning to cook Thai food at all.

Fortunately, I am the queen of internet research these days, and persistently kept searching for a class that would suit our desires and needs.  My persistence paid off when I located this vegetarian cooking course.  Though I believe the program used to be offered fairly often, the woman who teaches the course now runs a restaurant in Chiang Mai and is writing a cookbook, so it has become much less frequent. After many emails, restaurant visits, and a few phone calls I managed to secure two spots for John and I just a day before it began.

The course took place at the Pun Pun Center for Self Reliance, an organic farm and sustainable living center about 30 miles outside of Chiang Mai.  Pun Pun has an amazing setting, with gorgeous mountain views and some of the most stunning sunsets we’ve seen in a while.
We arrived at Pun Pun in the afternoon of our first day.  After settling into our rooms at a farmstay down the road (think beautifully constructed adobe huts with outdoor showers where the water pours out of a hollowed out tree branch), we were toured around the facilities at Pun Pun.  A community of people live at the farm year-round, living, eating and working together.  They all live in adobe buildings they have constructed themselves, many of which are far more impressive than I expected.During our tour we learned about the sustainable projects and seed saving program at the farm.  John and I later visited the neighboring Panya Project, another sustainable community focused on permaculture.  While I don’t think I’ll be moving to one of these communities anytime soon, I did learn a lot about what they are capable of doing with sustainable resources and earned a healthy respect for their passion for innovation and education.

The chickens at Pun Pun are definitely free range – they have the run of an enormous pen and could not be happier.  They produce heaps of delicious fresh eggs to feed the community.After touring around the facilities and gardens, we plucked some fresh organic produce for our dinner.  I always love seeing how food grows (we are so sheltered from our food system in the US.)  The farm grows a huge variety of plants during the wet season, but even in the dry season we could see things like okra, lemongrass, huge radishes, plenty of fresh herbs and greens, onions, mangoes and pineapples.  You know the food will be incredible when the ingredients are picked just hours before dinner.
Rather than cooking for ourselves on the first night, we were treated to a meal cooked by our talented teacher, Yao.  While she and her team whipped up several tantalizing dishes for our dinner, we wandered to the local reservoir to take a swim with the other 10 students in our group.  The sunset and views along the way were truly exceptional. Mountains and papayas in the same space…if it wasn’t so darn hot I might call it paradise.
After our sunset visit to the reservoir (below), we practically inhaled the amazing meal Yao served us, stoked that we’d be learning to make food that delicious on our own the next day.  While Thai food in the US usually has several vegetarian options, it’s been difficult for me to find good vegetarian Thai food in Chiang Mai.  Yao’s cooking exceeded my expectations for vegetarian Thai food.Over the next two full days, we did some serious cooking.  Each morning we’d have a yoga class followed by a substantial breakfast of fresh fruits and culinary creations made by other community members.  The rest of the day was filled with cooking and eating (with a few breaks for digestion, thankfully.)

The simple outdoor kitchen provided an excellent setting for Yao’s teaching.  When it got too hot, we’d retreat to the indoor kitchen to prep more food.
Yao would demonstrate how to chop or crush each ingredient, then the 12 of us would get to work slicing and dicing mounds of produce and herbs.
We used soo many fresh ingredients, and I could not stop photographing them after we had chopped them all to perfection.  The vibrant colors of fresh food are irresistible.Below are some of the many components involved in Thai curry.  We learned to make four types of curry paste (and their resulting curry dishes and soups) from these and other raw ingredients – Massaman Curry, Green Curry, Penang Curry and Tom Yum.  The curry paste tastes exquisite on its own, but when you add coconut milk something amazing happens.  Coconut milk is magical.Since they cook for the entire community at every meal, the kitchen at Pun Pun is equipped to make enormous batches of food.  They are usually cooking for around 20 people at a time, though the numbers can swell up to almost 100 people when they are hosting certain workshops and classes.  Though I can’t imagine I’ll be cooking Thai food for groups any larger than 2-8 people, it was handy to learn some of the techniques for making these dishes en masse.

Throughout both days we were constantly tasting the dishes to learn what they should taste like and how to season them on the fly without precise recipes (though we have those, too.)  As you can see, this Tom Yum Soup was no exception.
One of the dishes we made was Banana Flower Salad.  Though we’ve seen them growing all over the world, I had no idea you could cook with banana flowers.  It probably won’t come in handy much in Colorado, but the salad would still be fantastic with cucumber or artichokes substituted in.

Below is the inside of the banana flower once you peel it.  It has to be soaked in salt water to remove the bitter sap before you eat it raw in the salad.During the course we learned how to make tofu and soymilk from scratch, how to ferment bananas into a delicious banana vinegar, how to make coconut milk, and how to make vegetarian oyster sauce from scratch.  None of these things would even be mentioned in your standard Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai.  Yao really packed a ton of information into our three days.
In addition to cooking, Yao also shared with us some of the traditions and history of Thai food, and discussed the different flavor profiles you’ll find in every dish.  Thai food always has a little sour, sweet and spicy as part of the flavor, which helps make it so complex and delicious.  Tamarind juice provides the sour flavor in many dishes.  Here Yao pours the juice into one of the giant woks to make Cashew Stir Fry with Tamarind Sauce.
Doesn’t this look amazing??  It was.  All of the food we ate at Pun Pun was easily the best Thai food I’ve ever had, and some of the best food we’ve had this whole trip.  Making everything from fresh organic produce certainly didn’t hurt.

In addition to all the curries and above dishes we also made Pad Thai, Pad Kaprow, Brown Rice Salad, and Spring Rolls (both fresh and fried) with homemade peanut tamarind sauce.  Most of the dishes we made were so delicious I couldn’t be bothered to photograph them before digging in.  I only have photos of a sample of the dishes we made – Banana Flower Salad, Papaya Salad, Fresh Spring Rolls, and Penang Curry (one of my all time favorites.)

The finale was an enormous dish of Mango Sticky Rice, which contained enough coconut milk and sugar to make you think twice about consuming it – until you tasted it.  Our group took spoons straight to the huge plate, only coming up for air once 80% of the dish was gone.

On our final day at Pun Pun our group returned to Chiang Mai just after breakfast, but not after having the opportunity to ask Yao every question we could think of.  She is an amazing resource of information.  We learned so much during the course of our three days at Pun Pun, I couldn’t possibly explain it all in one blog post.  We ate so well, and left with a cookbook full of recipes for twice as many dishes as we made.

And of course, more photos of the sunset than one could possibly need…here’s another for you in case you haven’t had enough.

Would you believe that this course (including transportation to and from Chiang Mai, three nights accommodation, all of our meals, yoga, and the endless stream of information and education) only cost US$112?  Yeah.  Oh Thailand, you may have finally won me over.  I cannot wait to cook some of these flavorful dishes at home.

We managed to make it all of 20 feet from the entrance to our apartment building before getting soaked.  The dousing came at the hand of a middle aged Thai man, grinning ear to ear and yelling “Happy! Happy!” while pouring a bucket of ice cold water down our backs.  And thus completed our initiation into Chiang Mai’s Songkran Festival.

Songkran is the three day celebration of Thai New Year.  Traditionally, the celebrations involved pouring water over statues of Buddha to cleanse a family of any bad luck from the previous year and bring good luck into the new year.  According to an expat we met who has been living in Chiang Mai for 18 years, when he first moved to this city Songkran meant elaborately dressed Thai women carrying blessed, fragrant water would pour a little over the shoulders of passers by for good luck.  Over the last few decades, however, the tradition has morphed into a full on city wide water fight (possibly with the help of some drunk Australians, but we can’t be sure.)

All of the photos in this post were taken from a safe distance – the window of our 7th floor apartment building.  As you can see, even on the relatively small side street that we live on the locals show no mercy.  You can’t go outside with a camera and expect it to survive.

Chiang Mai is one of the craziest cities in which to experience Songkran because the festivities take over the entire city, unlike in Bangkok where it only affects a few streets.  Nearly every road is lined with people hanging out near giant tubs of water and brandishing buckets, squirt guns and hoses.  They douse everyone that passes by – whether they are on foot, motorbike, or car.  Many people circle the city riding in the back of pickup trucks, filling buckets with huge blocks of ice and throwing the melted (but still freezing) water on passersby.  Traffic on the main streets is jammed with these vehicles as they stop to soak people they pass.

The moat that surrounds Chiang Mai (which looks serene and calm in the photo from this post), provides much of the ammunition needed to keep the water fight going all day.  It is packed with people filling buckets and squirt guns, pushing one another into the water, and swimming to cool off.  This area of town was pure chaos – there was no chance I was going to bring a camera into this mess, so you’ll have to do without photos.

The waterfight lasts all day long, from sun up to sundown, and no one is safe.  If you’ve left the house and are out on the street, it is assumed that you know what you are getting yourself into.  We passed through the streets completely unarmed, and were soaked to the bone in no time.  Thankfully the temperature is in the high 90s and 100s, so the cold water actually feels exceptionally good, which is a good thing because in most areas you don’t have much of a break between soakings.  As we walked along the moat and main road we were pelted by bucket after bucket of moat water and endlessly sprayed with squirt guns.  Most locals seemed to avoid hitting us directly in the face (though the foreigners appeared to adhere to no such etiquette.)  Usually I was sprayed in the chest, unsurpisingly, and on one occasion a Thai teenager thrust a bucket of water at my chest so hard that I suffered a wardrobe malfunction.  (Yes, you read that right.  It was the closest to being on Girls Gone Wild that I’ll probably ever get in this lifetime.)

The whole event is just good fun.  No one seems upset when they get hit, and anyone who wants to avoid the splashes just stays home for three days.  People drink beer all day, but no one seemed obnoxiously inebriated.  Families participate in droves, with kids running freely in the streets and soaking strangers with reckless abandon.  Music blares from cars and buildings, and street vendors sell weapons and snacks.  I was impressed to see that the vast majority of participants were in fact Thai locals, and not just twentysomething backpackers.  The Thai people actually get really into this holiday and you can tell they are having a blast as they soak and get soaked (even on the last day when you’d think enthusiasm might be waning.)  When the sun goes down each day the water fight ends, and the real party begins.  The sounds of club music and karaoke fill the streets until well past 2am every night.

We had a great time letting people drench us – we just thought of each bucket of water or squirt gun soaking as adding more good luck to our upcoming year, and who wouldn’t want that?  At this rate, we’re heading for a very lucky 2013!

A moat surrounds the Old City in Chiang Mai, creating a square around the city.  Wat Monthian is on one side of this moat.
Directly on the opposite side of the moat is Wat Lok Molee.  (I’m telling you, there are wats everywhere.)  This temple is at least as old as 1367, possibly older, though it has received a face lift recently.The courtyard around this wat houses several statues and two gold and silver bodhi trees.  I’m thinking the writing on the leaves is either some sort of prayer or names of people who donated to the temple, but I can’t find any information about it.  It will have to remain a mystery.There are several panels of carvings inside the temple which are quite intricate…
…as are the ones outside the temple.  Beautiful storytelling.Behind the newer temple is a large chedi or stupa, which is a type of Buddhist burial mound.  This one supposedly holds ashes from the Mengrai dynasty.This wat isn’t on the tourist circuit because it’s a little out of town (nearer to where we live), but I think it was my favorite.  Really cool architecture, gorgeous carvings, a courtyard full of fun statues and zero tourists.  Win.The more touristed temple in town is Wat Phra Singh.  It’s on everyone’s list because it is one of the oldest.  It houses a giant golden buddha (with several other buddhas) and a fiberglass sculpture of a monk in meditation that is so lifelike it’s creepy.  (I did not photograph the monk.  Too creepy.)Finally, we visited Wat Chedi Luang.  There is a more modern temple in front, and behind is the old chedi that was destroyed in an earthquake in 1545. The wats are beautiful, of course, but much like the cathedrals in Europe they tend to blur together after a while.  I think we’ll skip most of the 277 other wats in town and just trust that we’ve gotten a good taste of what they have to offer.

A huge perk to our building is the proximity to one of the best markets in town, the Siriwattana Market.  Just a three minute walk from our front door is a wealth of food stalls and vendors serving up amazing, fresh Thai food.  (I’ll mention in advance that I am aware of the excessive number of images in this post.  This is mostly because food has been at the forefront of my brain.  If you spent over a week eating virtually nothing and were then throw into Thai food heaven, you’d think about food a lot, too.)

Much of the market is comprised of stalls like these – bowl after bowl of fantastic, ready to eat foods.  Curries, stews, stir fried veggies, noodles, meats…everything.  Just point to what you want and the nice person behind the counter will fill a plastic baggie with a serving size for you.  Portions usually cost under US$1 and are enough for two meals.There are also loads of pre-made baggies just waiting to be grabbed.  Salads, soups, entrees, you name it.  With this many options, John and I find ourselves a little overwhelmed.  We’ve thought about finding a local and somehow bribing them into wandering the market and educating us so we have a better sense of what to try.  I’m still working on how to make that happen.

The bags on the right are like DIY soup kits.  You buy this bag, (which has a whole fish, noodles, cabbage and garnishes) and the accompanying bag of broth (made in a huge cauldron and scooped fresh into a plastic baggie for you), and then take it home to make your own fresh noodle soup.  It’s like the Thai version of the deli counter at Whole Foods, but much, much cooler.Once you’ve gotten your main dish, you go to one of the ladies selling freshly cooked rice in single size portions.  A bag for two people runs about US$.025.

Huge cauldrons like this one are all over the market, bubbling with huge portions of food.There are separate counters for all of your fried food needs.  I’ve only been able to identify the spring rolls and fried squid, but I’m sure there are numerous surprises underneath all that batter.If it’s meat you’re after, there is plenty of it here.  This woman sells whole chickens Giant wood burning ovens roast whole fish, which is available all day long.And of course there are sausages and grilled meats of all types.

One stall has tubs of pickled vegetables.  On the right is the snack corner, for all of your dried fruit, nut and chip needs.  They have chips made out of things I cannot identify.  We’re slowly sampling out way through this stand.I’ve learned from many different people that its common for people in Asia to eat out most of their meals rather than cook.  This is because it’s so inexpensive to eat out, and the quality of food is so good.  When I say ‘eat out’ I don’t mean at fancy restaurants, of course, I mean at market stalls or from the above take away stands.  Since our kitchen isn’t very large or well stocked, we’ve been functioning along with this model as well.  This market has a huge section that is basically a food hall, and we’ve had several meals here.  Practically each table represents a different ‘restaurant’ where someone will cook you something out of the makeshift kitchen in their food cart.  There is very little English here, so we tend to point at the photos of stuff that looks good when we order.  Some things are better than others, but we’ve yet to have anything that wasn’t good.Of course, if you have a better kitchen to work with and are looking to cook for yourself, you can buy anything you need at the market as well.  I love a good produce market, and this has to be one of the cleanest, most organized ones I’ve seen anywhere.Look how everything is lined up and the prices are well marked?  I haven’t seen marked prices at a produce market since…the US.  Ok, maybe Australia.  Still, it’s rare.Posted prices means no haggling or bargaining required.  It’s a much easier shopping experience, to say the least.
Even the butcher section of this market is amazing.  It’s set off into its own little side area, which is air conditioned to keep everything cool and fresh.  I didn’t go inside the area because it’s too intense for me, but from outside the doors you can see how the meat is well organized and kept very clean.  This market is night and day from the meat stalls of Central America.I prefer the tofu, which is also readily available in huge slabs.Local fresh fruit sits beside apples, pears and grapes imported from the US.  I suppose for the expats it must be nice to be able to get fruits from home, but we’re sticking to things like mangosteens and dragon fruit while we can get them.

There’s also a bakery, stands selling fresh flowers, vendors making fruit shakes, a lady who makes fresh donuts…too much to photograph.  I’m glad we have an entire month to explore all the intricacies of this market – it’s going to take us that long to taste everything!

Food poisoning is a tricky thing.  When you are on your home turf, in your regular environment, it’s much easier to suss out which unique or suspicious food you ate that was the genesis of your suffering.  When your environment changes on a near daily basis, however, it becomes much trickier to identify the source.

We may never know what truly caused our food poisoning in Laos, but I’m convinced the meal we had at one of the most highly recommended and highly regarded restaurants in town deserves the blame.  This particular restaurant prides itself on teaching Westerners how to eat Laos food, and has its own wildly popular cooking school.  We had eaten there in an attempt to sort out exactly what Laos food entails – in our two days of experience we hadn’t been able to place any local flavors.  About a third of the way into our meal at the nice restaurant we sorted out why this might be the case – Laos food is not particularly good.  (Or to be more polite, at least we don’t have the refined pallettes to enjoy it.)  We struggled to finish our meals, and in fact didn’t do it, which is a feat for my Clean Plate Club loving husband.

Once the meal ended, the suffering truly began.  I spent the rest of the night in aching stomach pain, and the following morning puking up things I don’t dare to describe.  It only got worse from there.

You may wonder why I would bring up food poisoning in a post about a lovely waterfall.  The two are related, however, as the day we were set to view this waterfall I spent the morning puking.  We decided to put off our visit to the following day, our last day in Laos, but when I woke up the following day still feeling like rubbish we couldn’t put it off any further.  Knowing that we were leaving on a flight to Thailand the next day, I put on my game face, got dressed, and tried to believe I wasn’t going to yak over the side of the tuk tuk on the way there.  I really wanted to see this waterfall.
After a 45 minute bumpy tuk tuk ride and a twenty minute hike, I still hadn’t had a gastrointestinal incident, and was very happy to have made it.  The water in the falls is spectacularly blue and very beautiful.  The terraced falls just keep going on and on – they’re surprisingly large.  There are several larger pools (not photographed) where you can swim, and there’s even a rope swing.  I didn’t have the energy to climb to the very top of the falls (John claims I didn’t miss much) or up the tree for the rope swing, but I did manage a swim in the freezing cold waters.We were there early enough in the day that there were only a handful of other people enjoying the falls.  On our way to leave, however, was a different scene.  All of the drunk and disorderly backpackers were just starting to file in for afternoon swimming, and we were (un)fortunate enough to meet the first American traveler we’ve seen in a while.

This particular guy is the kind of American who makes all of us look bad.  You could smell the booze seeping from his pores, and as he approached us (wearing aviator sunglasses, brandishing a cigarette and drinking straight out of a liter beer bottle), I immediately wanted to run in the other direction.  Fortunately, he seemed more interested in swimming than chatting, and after a few moments he jumped into the pristine natural waters with his beer and cigarette still in hand, and floated off under one of the waterfalls, aviators still on, to continue drinking alone.  I apologize to the country of Laos that we in the US produce deuchebags like that.  (Sorry, but that’s just the best word to describe him.)

Seeing it was time to leave, we headed back to town, and not a moment too soon.  Once I got back to our hotel room I was practically immobilized, and didn’t leave again until we had to leave for our flight to Thailand the next day.

At some point, John got sick, too (though we think his was from the hotel food in Thailand.)  The two of us then spent the first four days of our time in Thailand laid up at a hotel in the outskirts, trying to recover enough to take a four hour winding bus ride through the mountains from Chiang Mai to Pai.  Finally, after nearly a week of illness, we decided the universe was trying to tell us not to go to Pai.  Instead, we cancelled our mountain trip and found a high rise apartment in Chiang Mai where we will be living for the month of April.

I’m now finally on the mend (and on antibiotics) over a week later.  With any luck this will be my last episode of stomach illness on world tour, but I’m not crossing my fingers.  If I can get at least through April without further ailment, that will have to be good enough.

Where We’ve Been

Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.

The Highs

• Teaching a yoga class for our Couchsurfing hosts in Singapore.  I love being able to share my skills with people around the world.
• Vietnamese street food.  It’s seriously delicious.  Don’t even get me started on the coffee.
• Cruising Halong Bay.  Gorgeous scenery, good company, and a much needed break from the hustle and bustle of city life.
• Buying custom made clothes and shoes in Hoi An.  The wonderful tailors in town can make anything for you at cheap prices, so I replaced some old clothes and falling apart shoes and John got a pair of silk pajama pants that are actually long enough for him.  Win!
• Kuang Si Falls in Laos.  It’s just as beautiful as it looks in all the photos.  (Mine aren’t posted yet, but you can google it if you are impatient :) )

The Lows

• Stomach bugs.  I spent our last few days in Bali ill with some sort of stomach flu, and spent most of our time in Laos (and the first four days in Thailand) laid up with food poisoning.  For March I spent 10 days sick – that’s a third of the month!  Yeah, I’m pretty much done with being sick.
• Missing out on a few things I wanted to see and do in Laos because of above mentioned illness.  We did very little during our stay because I couldn’t get out of bed.  Not cool.

Things I’ve Learned

Since I can’t possibly express everything we’ve learned while traveling, this is usually a section with flippant little anecdotes about laundry and massages.  Please don’t think that is all I am actually learning about while we travel.  After chatting with people native to China, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand for hours about education, government, healthcare, and culture what we’ve learned about the world in this month alone is astounding.  It’s also always fascinating to learn what the world thinks of the US (especially because nearly everyone says the same things.)  Needless to say, we’re learning a lot this year.

What’s Up Next

April is all Thailand.

Since the ceremony is so impressive it has become quite the tourist draw.  Most of the people giving alms now are tourists, and the roads are full of travelers with cameras documenting the event.  Unfortunately, many of them are invasive and disruptive to the process, getting quite close to the monks to snap photos and chatting when they are supposed to be silent.  (I realize the irony of me saying this, given the photos I took, but I stayed across the street and did my best to be unobtrusive and respectful.  I did not use a flash and I took all of four photos.)

There appears to be quite a bit of controversy about the alms ceremony because of its tourism component.  I can’t imagine the monks enjoy having their photos taken day in and day out, but the government reportedly keeps them performing the ceremony because of the tourist draw.

During our five day stay in Luang Prabang, we only watched the alms ceremony once.  It was a cool opportunity to see the various ages and faces of all the monks (some are very, very young), and the sea of saffron robes is a sight to be seen.  John even participated for a bit.  But it felt a little weird to contribute to the glut of travelers in the streets.  So for the rest of our days, we skipped it.  It felt more respectful.

The city is set in a peninsula between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers.  The area is surrounded by green hills, but there is only one hill in town, Phou Si.  If you climb the staircase to the top there are several statues, a temple, and what is reported to be Buddha’s footprint.
A reclining Buddha.This Buddha is very tall….…and appears to have Dutch style footwear…The view from the top of the hill is supposed to be spectacular, but because it is burning season in Northern Laos most of what you can see is smoke and haze.  Locals are burning farm land and underbrush to prepare for the upcoming farming season.  It smells like a nice campfire when you wake up every morning and the air is still chilly, but when the heat of the day hits it becomes a bit oppressive.Elsewhere around town you can’t walk two blocks without seeing a temple.  Literally.  And every one of them is ornate and beautiful.There is such detail on the doors, and inside the temples the walls are completely covered with painted murals.  Seeing as there are several monasteries in town, there are also hundreds of monks.  They do much of the upkeep on these temples themselves.  On more than one occasion I witnessed monks painting temples, climbing on roofs to make repairs, and working with power tools on various projects.Wat Xieng Thong, the oldest and one of the most important Laos monasteries.  Inside there are hundreds of Buddha statues and ornate paintings.  The outside of other buildings on the grounds have beautiful tile work.We’ve become familiar with a few variations of tuk tuks from various parts of the world, but this is a new one for us.  It is driven like a motorcycle while passengers sit in what is essentially the flat bed of a truck.  Not as bumpy as you might imagine.
I don’t think I’d be willing to sit in this old school side car, though.More temples…seriously they are practically everywhere.I love seeing the bright saffron robes hanging out to dry outside the monks quarters.  Such colorful laundry.Boats on the Mekong River.
We walked across a bamboo bridge similar to the one below at night, and it did not feel very stable.  But the locals walked across them fearlessly.  I guess we’re just wusses.