lao day 6 - 7
part I: alms and the sunrise

we woke up at an outrageous time to watch the monks collect alms. if you're wondering if i got any sort of spiritual enlightenment out of it, i can honestly say no. i guess i was a little jaded on monks and i kinda walked away from it with the feeling that i was just kinda impressed that they woke up so early all the time. i was so uninspired that i have no pictures to show you...

but since we were up, we decided to walk up the big hill to a monastery to catch the sunrise. that was by far one of the best memories i have of lao and i have about 50 pictures to show for it. i can't choose favourites. i really had a pretty amazing time just sitting quietly and looking out over luang prabang. i dunno... the mountains, the trees, the mekong, the mist... *sigh*

part II: pak ou caves and a hmong new year party

it was our last day in luang prabang and we still wanted to drive out to see the pak ou caves. obviously obsessed with caves and our overall determination to see as much as possible led us to drive kinda far away to see what ended up being kinda silly. i'm not trying to take away anything from the people who actually went on pilgrimages to this place. in fact, if the place were more famous for that, it'd have been a much more positive experience. however, it's lauded for its beauty. and i can't speak too much for that. to explain: from far away, the lower cave is pretty amazing looking. it is a hole in a cliff to which a white stairway has been added to get up into it and around it to the upper cave. when you near it, however, it's just not what you expected. the lower cave is filled with a LOT of buddha statues. i believe they were gifts from those who made the pilgrimage. i was a little weirded out by this whole thing. i guess i couldn't see it all in context. i s'pose what i did like was that people still do go there and there was a lady who almost seemed in a trance-like state praying at one of the several shrines... there was also a staircase in the cave that was very lord of the rings... y'know... if that story had taken place in lao... during the daytime.
after leaving pak ou, our driver stopped at a hmong new year celebration. the hmong are a minority group i had previously associated with southern china but apparently live all over s.e. asia. the new year party consisted almost entirely of children standing in lines facing each other throwing tennis balls. we (myself, alexis and tai) watched for what felt like 3 hours and then joined in. these were our teammates/opponents (because i'm still not really sure what the actual point of the game was...)

part III: luang prabang - vientiane

oh what a terrible night/day this was... we thought we were being smart by showing up at the bus station early to choose our seats. we thought we'd take the back seat for the three of us so we could try and sleep. here's what happened: the window wouldn't close and it was freezing so alexis couldn't sleep and had to move. then i tried to cover it with bags/clothes but it kept opening so i woke up every 20 minutes to close it. needless to say, we didn't sleep. we also thought we were being smart by choosing an overnight bus where we could arrive in the morning and hang out before catching the train to bangkok. well, apparently the driver was driving at the speed of light and instead of arriving at 6am, we arrived at 4am. this left us to walk around the darkened streets of vientiane knocking on hostel doors hoping someone would have a room. no luck. we ended up hanging out with a bunch of australians at a bakery. awesome. moving on, instead of finding a hostel to sleep in for a few hours when theh city woke up, we decided we were just going to walk around and make use of our day. we also found out that train tickets were fully booked and that we would have to take another bus to get to bangkok. by this time, i discovered that the previous bus ride had given me a cold. we ended up meeting said australians and going out in vientiane before our bus left at 5pm, of which all happenings have completely escaped my memory.