Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 120

This is just a quick picture of the main building of the hotel, which is the reception area.

We headed just next door to our hotel to the Wat Xieng Thong, the city's most magnificent temple. It is a Buddhist temple whose name means Temple of the Golden City. It is one of the most important Lao monasteries and remains a significant monument to the spirit of religion, royalty and traditional art. There are over twenty structures on the grounds including shrines, pavilions and residences, in addition to its gardens with flowers, ornamental shrubs and trees. It was built in 1559 by the then Lao King Setthathirath. We were lucky enough to catch a day when monks from the temple were out working, building a large structure in the courtyard.

These are close-ups of various buildings that have mosaics on the exterior walls. The pictures really don't do it justice ... these buildings were simply magnificent to view with all of the gilding on the outside.

In one of the buildings was a ceremonial barge with multiple naga's holding up the barge platform. While the barge itself was really beautiful, the interior of the building is really what caught my eye. The walls were all red (royal color) and almost every inch was decorated.

More temple buildings, some of which we could go in. As you can see, the majority of the temples were decorated in Gold, which goes along with the name, the Temple of the Golden City.

This was our first "new experience" in Laos ... washing the Buddha. To celebrate the Buddha's birthday, Buddhists perform a ceremony in which scented water is poured over a statue of the Buddha. In Laos, this seemed to be a quite involved process. There is a long trough where you pour water scented with flowers. You can see Susan here (with the tour guide in the first picture) as she takes her pail of water and pours it into the trough. The water travels down and showers down on top of a Buddha statue.

The Wat is directly on the Mekong River, and from right here, we caught a traditional long-tailed boat up the Mekong River. We took a LOT of pictures from the boat, trying to give views along the river and of the landscape along the Mekong. I will note here that the water was quite low and that a majority of these houses or "roofs" (not really with walls in alot of cases) would be totally under water during rainy season when the river rises

We stopped here and came ashore to walk up to a typical little village. As we walked up, you can see livestock as well as chickens around. In the middle of this village was a small temple. The houses were quite poor, most of them mostly open, 1 story on stilts. We did note that at least one house had their own satellite dish :-)

A bit further down the river, we saw all of these large animals just hanging out on the beach! And then just more river pictures...

We stopped at this rock face (isn't that amazing?) We climbed out of the boat and up to the opening halfway up the cliff. There, we entered the Pak Ou Caves, made up of the Tham Ting (lower cave) and Tham Theung (upper cave). Over 6,500 sculptures of Buddha are now in the caves (2500 in the lower cave and 4000 in the upper cave), left here by worshippers. They take many different positions, including meditation, teaching, peace, rain, and reclining (nirvana). Most are carved from wood or molded from a tree resin, then coated with red or black lacquer and covered with gold leaf. There are 3 common poses, which depict important stages in the life of Buddha. First is 'Calling for Rain' where the figure is standing with both arms pointing downwards towards the Earth. Second is 'Calling the Earth to Witness' where the figure is seated with one hand extended downwards. The last is 'Meditation' where the figure is seated with both hands crossed in front.

As we walked down, our guide pointed to the line on the opening of the cave where it indicated the water level during the 2008 rainy (flooded) season.

We then walked around to one side and up a small path to the other part of the cave. This had a door at the entrance as well as another trough so that you can wash the Buddha. This one I tried to get a good picture of the Buddha at the end where the water flows down (Tom washed Buddha this time).

These are going to be hard to see, as there was really no natural light back in the cave and we were just using a flashlight. You can see cave paintings if you look really close.

And now back down to the boat and just down and across the river to lunch. It was a nice open restaurant where we had soup, chicken with onions, vegetables, and fried fish. The pictures look quite simple, but the flavors were quite nice.

A few cows were feeding nearby ... boy are they skinny ... they need to eat more!

We then stopped by a village where they make Sa paper. Traditional Sa paper is often decorated with flowers, petals and leaves. The bark of the Sa tree has been used traditionally to make good quality, durable paper in SouthEast Asia. Here you can see the frame and the Sa tree bark fibers that have been cooked, pounded and now into just little fibers, floating in water. They then decorate with various leaves and flowers, then when ready, they lift the frame up (there is mesh in the bottom that holds the paper pulp) and let it dry.

We also stopped by these two small buildings, both which were decorated with lovely, very colorful murals.

At the end of the afternoon, we headed to Mount Phou Si, a 100 meter high hill in the middle of the old town, right between the two rivers. It is a local religious site and houses several Buddhist shrines. Unfortunately .. there is no elevator!

As you go up, you pass various little shrines and buildings and alot of Buddha statues. As you get tired, you just turn around and rest a minute while you get a great scenic view of the river valley.

At the summit is the gilded stupa of Wat Chom Si, which we failed to get a good picture of.

We then made our way back down the other side. Our dinner this evening was at a little French/Lao restaurant called the Couleur Cafe. The picture isn't that great but it was dark by the time we got there for dinner. IT is in a nice old building on a quiet corner in the Old Town.

This time, we started with a few cold fruit juices. We again tried a few traditional Lao dishes including spring rolls, chicken with vegetables, and another type of fish cooked in a banana leaf.

We took a leisurely stroll to the night market. This probably is really interesting for alot of people although for the most part, it was much like we'd seen in night markets all over asia. The unique thing, I guess, is the alcohol that you can buy complete with a snake or scorpion (ewwww).