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The town of Luang Prabang, the monk capital of Laos, they are everywhere in the city. The streets are a colourful mix of crumbling French colonial architecture, guest houses, restaurants and tired looking Lao housing. Lads aged six to fourteen walk along in their tango orange robes, skinhead hair cuts and school bags always looking solemn and serious. Smiling is clearly forbidden. They walk around town, going into stores, checking their hotmail account and keeping an eye on the foreign tourists who gape and take pictures like in a zoo. Its a family honour to become a monk for the early years of your life, a period in your life of school, meditation and receiving free food handouts each morning. I wonder if the attention and photos they receive goes to their heads, probably not, as they would start posing in monk style positions if they felt a love towards camera's.
One of the towns important morning events is something called Tak Bat or alms-giving. All the monks pray at sunrise and then set off to walk around the Wat's (monasteries) in the town. So around 6am each morning the monks walk around the streets, in a single file, each carrying a gold pot, and receive alms from the locals sitting on the pavement. We emerged sleepy eyed one morning to watch and saw monks receiving rice, bananas and some other food. It seemed to be mainly old women sitting on tiny stools and holding wicker baskets stuffed with the rice, they murmured some blessings in honor of the food they presented to the monks.
It was interesting to watch the ceremony and we stood back at a respectable distance taking a few discreet photos. Then a bus full of tourists pulled up, the tourists jumped out, and all tried to stand in front of the line of monks, posing and smiling, for their photo to be taken. It quickly turned into a scene from a movie that could be titled: How to be as culturally disrespectful as possible. People standing in the monks way, holding cameras in their faces and laughing at jokes in their own language. The ugly face of tourism for Laos culture.
We cruised around the streets on a slow two day walking tour. I mean slow, we averaged 2.5km each day, and checked out most of the Wat's which are beautiful buildings. Along the banks of the Mekong sits one of Laos oldest Wat, Xieng Thong built in 1560 that over the past 500 years has survived invasions from all sides . The mosaic around the back walls are excellent and depict scenes of local village life in Laos.
At night time the streets were invaded by market stalls selling handicrafts, from mocasins to duvet covers, opium pipes to paintings of monks. It was a shoppers paradise. No tourist left the market without buying a BeerLao t-shirt. Beerlao is good, it is made using local jasmine rice, but the hops and barley come from Germany. It has a 99% market share of all beer drunk in Laos.
We visited the Royal palace that is now a museum, the royal family were kicked out of the country in 1975, never to be heard from again. Communism doesn't take to favorably to the concept of a Royal family. The family line continues, probably somewhere very pleasant in France. Who gets the better deal, working the rice fields in Laos or drinking Merlot outside of Bordeaux.
Cooper Out
Love Dan & Kat
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