An early start is required in Labang
Prabang if you want to participate in the alms-giving for the town's
Buddhist monks. 5am to be precise.
So up early and out the front of the
hotel at 5:20 while it was still dark. You take your place on a small
stool (those tiny kindergarten plastic chairs again), purchase your
container of sticky rice and wait for the town's 200 monks to parade
past. As they do you drop a small bite-size morsel of the sticky rice
into each monk's container. More atmospheric than a religious
experience but heart-warming at least.
There was no point going back to bed
after that so a shower then breakfast and then waiting to get picked
up by the guide for the next instalment in our Laos tour, the trip to
the working rice farm.
We were shown the full rice process,
from ploughing the paddy field, to planting and harvesting the rice, to
thrashing and winnowing, to cooking. All manual labour for 80% of the
rice farmers in Laos which would tend to utilise just about every
part of their day.
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| Robyn chooses rice to plant |
As much as the tour was informative the
company we had was also a pleasure: two architects from Brazil, a
young man from Holland travelling solo through Asia towards Australia
and a retired couple from Kansas City. All were well-seasoned
travellers and everyone picked everyone else's brains about their
relative countries, the places they had been to, and what
recommendations they had.
Last item for the day was a drive out
to the Kuang Sii waterfall. An excellent site with lots of people
swimming and families having picnics.
We ended the day with a stroll down the
river, some final purchases in the Night Market and then, as usual,
early to bed.
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