Luang Prabang

Luang Prabang is right in the middle of Laos.  The brick colored Mekong River runs through it.  It's a busy waterway carrying supplies and tourists.  The width in front of the hotel is about a quarter to a half mile wide.  A boat trip to sight see and fish was on the agenda this morning.  As we moved downriver, on each side of us there were many small gardens very near the water.  Lots of cucumbers, corn, cabbage, carrots...staples of the food stuff around here.  The different water levels are evident above the rivers edge...so it looks as if the river rises during monsoon season then washes all the gardens away, renews the soil and everybody starts over the next year.

There were a few water buffalo along the way.  The Laotions raise water buffalo instead of cattle for a couple resons, one, they're suited to the environment but they don't chew the roots out of the areas they graze and cattle do.  Cattle kill off a grazing area while buffalo leave enough of the plant and root to regrow.  I didn't know that.  There were no other animals along the river....except a couple of chickens.  No ducks, no seagulls, no geese, no birds of any kind flying over or swimming in the water.  It's kind of like viewing a picture of the Seattle waterfront with the Space Needle nowhere in sight.  Weird and it seems a little impossible, but hey, this is Laos not Seattle.  

Every morning Moon and I have coffee on the veranda.....the minute one of us opens the door it smells of smoke.....like when you're camping.  Everybody here, locals anyway, cooks over some kind of open fire outside, whether charcoal or wood.....and that means so much smoke that it's hazy in the valley most of the time.  You can see by the picture below...a typical day of campfire smog.

Butterflies....that's what I noticed first when arriving in Luang Prabang.   They're all over the place and they never seem to light on anything, they just keep flying around, sometimes chasing each other for a couple of minutes at a time...like seagulls only not as obnoxious.  We visited a butterfly exhibit, where in a netted area we were surrounded by hundreds of butterflies....all different colors and sizes. Very unique.

It's just as hot here then in Bangkok, but it's not as humid, that makes it much more tolerable.  When the humidity gets to 87% Moon gets "sphitzy", which is a word she coined to mean sweaty, humid, and hot accompanied by mild delirium.  And if you've ever observed a delirious Moon...it ain't pretty....it's time to cool off and hydrate. More later.