Luang Prabang, Laos

In my first trip to Laos, I went to the city of Luang Prabang, a religious capital of sorts, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a reprieve from the din of Hanoi's rivers of motorbikes. Click here for photos (about 30). World Heritage status has removed the sleepy veil from this peninsular town on the muddy Mekong and Kham Rivers in central Laos, but has also protected it from highrise concrete hotels. Instead, it's a tourist-friendly, open city with dozens of Buddhist temples, deck cafes over the river, and gorgeous green tropical views from the top of Mount Phu Si, almost all accessible by bicycle or foot.

Two highlights: Every morning around 6:00 a.m., monks and their novices (boys 13-19) process through town to collect alms--usually direct donations of rice and other simple foods. But Friday Sept 4 was Boun Khao Salak, a festival to honor the dead, and so, in addition, to the spartan rice, the community added candy bars, crackers, and other treats and snacks, so much that some novices' alms-collecting metal bowls were overflowing. Then, for the holiday, each household in the community took a tray loaded with steaming stews, rice, vegetables, and desserts to the temple, lining the main hall as the novices pound the giant drum. Women from the village sat out on the covered veranda around the temple while the men sat at the back, chanting, as the monks and novices filed in, sitting among all that delicious steaming food (the novices get up at 3:30a.m. for meditation, drum-pounding, and prayers/chants, no breakfast yet!). After the main service, while the monks and novices feast, the village men call out names of the deceased, written on strips of paper, to match up with gift baskets that the women are minding, each one a kind of care packet for the novices containing more treats and practical items like toothbrushes and toilet paper.

The other highlight for me was taking the local ferry, a long power-canoe across the Mekong (our motor died, but we were towed by another boat before being washed too far downstream), fee $0.80. The temples there are more serene, less visited by the tourists, with views of the river, mountains, and Luang Prabang. I was wary when the monk started telling me I needed a key for the third temple, Wat Sakkalin aka Wat Tham Xieng Maen, but I followed as he led me to the temple, which was actually a cave, several stories down into the rocky hills along the Mekong, lit only by flashlight. It wasn't as ornate as the other temples, but nice and cool, and a quiet place to rest.

Short video of grounds while monks play the drums before the service: