Heaven's in Luang Prabang

Let's see where I left off. We didn't go bowling last night, but instead walked around a bit and had dinner at Lao Lao Garden, which had some of the most amazing food I've had in my travels. I ate water-buffalo laap, which is a Lao specialty made with minced meat, fish sauce, lime juice, mint, and some other vegetables and herbs along with sticky rice. The restaurant also specialized in Lao BBQ, which Brian ordered. You cook a variety of meats on a grill at your table, and the juices drip down into a well around the grill where rice noodles are cooking with egg and other spices. Gluten-free gluttony.

After dinner the combined effects of tubing and sitting on a bus for 9 hours caught up with everybody and we crashed fairly early. Today, we woke up early, met up for breakfast with David and Naomi. I had a bowl of khao piak, Lao's version of rice noodle soup and very similar to Vietnamese pho. I can't get over how many gluten-free options I have in this country. But I digress. After breakfast, the six of us took a tuk-tuk about 25 kilometers out of town to the edge of the Mekong River.

Once we arrived, we then boarded a long boat to make the trip across to the Pak Ou Caves. Inside of the lower cave, Tham Ting, there are hundreds of small wooden Buddha statues and at the upper cave, Tham Theung, there is a much larger bronze Buddha. The caves themselves were a bit unimpressive, but the views of the Mekong and the longboat ride to the caves still made it a pretty good experience.

Next, our driver took us back through Luang Prabang and about 20 kilometers in the other direction toward Tat Kuang Si. After grabbing some lunch we made our way up the path towards the base of the waterfall, which is in such a beautiful area of the jungle. Immediately on arrival I felt like I was in paradise, just checking out the mist spraying up from the base of the falls and the spectacular plant-life all around us and feeling the sun shining down. And that was before we ascended the falls.

We hiked for about 30 minutes up a windy, at times muddy trail toward the top of the falls. Once we made it to the top, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "I'm walking into heaven right now". I can't properly give a description of the top of the falls, my vocabulary just fails me. We were wading through the shallow water, overlooking the edge of the waterfall down at the valley below. We could see far out into the countryside, which is quite mountainous and basically untouched. All around us was just a tropical paradise.

So yeah, if I had to guess, at this point in my life I'd say that heaven's in Luang Prabang. Just a stunningly beautiful place. I swear I'm not getting paid by the local tourism community to write this. True words. We're going to make a second attempt at bowling tonight, then leaving Laos tomorrow. I'll say it again: I love this country.

Location: Luang Prabang, Laos