Besides the elephants, I found the morning Mekong view from the hotel quite inspiring, and I was excited to get back on the Nagi.
Here is a video of our departure. You can see the Mekong Riverside Lodge up on the bank as we putter by.
Shortly out of Pakbeng we passed this boat, which apparently offers multi-day trips on the Mekong with cabins on board for sleeping. It was much, much bigger than our boat, and set us rocking dramatically in its wake.
Sometime around 10:30 or so we stopped at another Indigenous village. This one had a pretty, colourful Buddhist temple (the village yesterday was exclusively shamanistic).
Another interesting spot in this village was the rice whiskey (called "lao lao") "distillery"! The guide explained that water is boiling beneath fermented sticky rice. When we first arrived there was only an occasional drip dropping into the glass bottle.
But, as we were leaving, the whiskey was flowing much faster!
In this village, there were ladies selling some handmade textile products.
I am pretty sure I have literally never done this before, but these siblings were so cute that I asked to take their picture. Despite older sister's facial expression in the photo, I swear she seemed to be okay with being photographed!
As yesterday, I felt fairly uncomfortable touring the village (and obviously photographing children is exactly the type of behaviour that makes me most uncomfortable!), so in some sort of attempt to feel better about it, I peeled off from the group and walked in a different direction, down and up a hill, and past a school (you can see the school in the picture below).
I found this fairly random sign interesting:
And close to the school was this fellow, who did not seem excited to see me, or perhaps excited in the wrong way!
Before leaving the village some of my fellow tourists and I started playing with a group of children, kicking around a water bottle and such, which was a lot of fun. Even though we couldn't speak to each other, it felt like a small chance to get to know them. I was struck with how remarkably different their lives are than mine is or was as a child.
Many of the kids followed us down to the riverbank as we left, and I tossed an orange out to one of the little girls that I particularly connected with. As we sailed away I saw her showing it off to her friends.
After the village we were served another delicious lunch.
The afternoon went by (too) quickly, but it was very relaxing
Here we passed by one of two railway bridges we saw under constructed. The railway will run from Kunming, China to Bangkok, Thailand, through Laos.
At probably 15:30 or so we had our final tour stop of the trip, at the Pak Ou Caves.
The Pak Ou caves are two caves, the lower of which is a short flight of steep stairs up from the river. It is where Buddha statues "retire." Apparently Buddhas have been brought here for centuries, and the collection has grown to thousands.
Much further up, the upper cave has fewer Buddhas, but it is a much bigger cave, and tremendously dark. At one point I was the only one in the cave, and I turned my flashlight off and was in pitch darkness. Later some people lit candles, which actually made it very beautiful.
After the caves, it was only about an hour more to Luang Prabang. As we came around a bend in the river, we passed the second railway bridge.
And just a few minutes after the bridge, we were at the eastern end of Luang Prabang, where the port is.
I was super sad to have the trip end--I felt I could have continued on the Nagi for another week!
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