Day 52 Stupid Caves......

My final day in Luang Prabang was an early one. I arose a little later than I wanted to see the monks receive their alms for the day. It was quite the sight as 100 or so monks lined up taking food and money from the townspeople for their days meals. Afterwards I meandered around a few of the temples again, taking pictures. This time however, I met a monk who spoke great english and a bit of Korean as we talked about my job and such. I spent ten or fifteen mintues chit chatting before heading off to sort out my day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with two Dutch travelers I met on our quest to the waterfalls wandering the town in hopes of visiting the Pak Ou caves. Boy was it a process. The tuk tuks and boats in Laos seem to work together and won't deal with the same customers knowingly. So when we didn't like the price quoted by one boat captain we were unable to get competing offers as they would say talk to my friend......annoying. Finally we found enough people when I asked a few guys walking by if they wanted to join. An hour or so later we were not on a boat but in a tuk tuk on a dusty hour long drive to the caves!

The caves themselves were boring shit. There were supposed to be 1000 buddhas. We were baffled to put it politely. After paying a small laotian fortune we decided to get our money worth by hunting the treasures at the top of a hundred or so stairs. It was even more shit. It was a cave with nothing of interest or importance where men continually asked for donations and held off on letting us use the working flashlights until we did. Did they think we were really going to give them more money? One of the Danish guys left an offering of busted flip flops which were greeted with confused looks. We adequately saw the pathetic display with the little torch we had and our camera flashes in a stubborn attempt to keep our kip.










The type of boat that we took to the caves after a dusty and long tuk tuk ride.


The "amazing" caves.


The 10,000 buddha images...