Luang Prabang
Day 7
Today I went on a mountain bike ride with a guide while Tarli rested. My guide Kone picked me up at our hotel at around 8:30 am and to my surprise we drove to the elephant sanctuary that we stopped at on our day trip to the waterfalls and caves. It’s called the Manifa Elephant Camp. The company of the namesake apparently runs quite an operation and offers other activities such as kayaking, among others.
Kone and I both got on Trek bikes. The mountains bikes were of good quality. The guide knew where to go off the beaten path and we saw very few cars. It was awesome riding through the Laotian countryside. We even stopped at a very old historic temple. There were a few climbs but most of the ride was rolling hills, at times muddy. We rode along the Mekong river for several sections and that was really cool.
We rode about 16 km (10 miles) with an approximate elevation gain of 600 ft. We got very muddy! But it was a very satisfying ride and when we got back to camp I was ready for lunch!
They asked me what I wanted and they offered up a fish soup. It was delicious! I also had some beef larb. Needless to say I recovered my calories. I also had a large Beer Lao – it was well earned after our ride. Kone dropped me off at the hotel, about a 45 minute drive away.
This evening Tarli and I had a cooking class and a Baci ceremony. A Baci ceremony is a ceremony to usher in a new era, celebrate a graduation or a birth of a child or any other auspicious event. Tonight’s ceremony would be to celebrate our presence with our hosts.
But before we went to the location of the cooking class and Baci ceremony we stopped by a local market where our host bought some fresh ingredients.
It was such a hot day, that I was drenched in sweat just from walking around the market!
After that we were invited into a local home and we had the Baci ceremony. The Baci ceremony requires a monk and there is a lot of chanting. We all followed along as the monk (in this case one of the neighbors was trained as a monk) chanted. Other elders along with the monk then came around and tied little strings around Tarli and my wrists. Hopefully the ceremony brings us all good luck down the road!
After the ceremony we got busy cooking. Unlike the cooking class we took in Bali, this one was very hands on. We basically cooked along with all the grunt work. To give you an example, I was tasked with tenderizing the chicken and grounding it! We used all kinds of spices and we cooked several dishes. Of course we cooked Chicken Larb (hence the ground chicken) and what was eye opening was that the chicken is cooked by itself with some oil and the spice are added after it’s cooked! Who would have thought? We also cooked chicken soup and some egg rolls. Everything turned out really yummy.
Day 8
Today Tarli and I had a special tour booked – it was a Rice cultivation tour at a special farm called “The Living Land”. We basically went through the whole process of how rice is produced from the beginning, including planting the rice plants and before that leveling the mud. Oxen are used for that and Tarli and I even got to guide the Oxen in circles to level the ground. There are several steps involved, I think about 13. Several of them involved getting in the mud and getting dirty. We rolled up r trousers and got busy! At some stage, weeds need to be removed. We pulled up big chunks of dirt with weeds and rolled it up – this is put back in as fertilizer. When the sheathes are dried they are basically fanned in a very articulate way that lets the rice fall out. It was quite an experience and Tarli and I love it!
It was truly a wonderful experience and I am glad we opted for this. Tarli is the one who saw the flier in the hotel lobby. We had originally planned a kayaking trip for this morning, but we decided against it because we would be repeating a lot of what we did on the Waterfalls and Caves Tour. It was also cool to see local craftsmen whip up cool items using the leftovers such as sheathes.
Once back Tarli and I got a nice lunch at My BanLao Hotel and I got us a bottle of Penfolds Shiraz Cabernet (Australian wine). It was really good and Tarli is always happy when she’s offered a glass of Shiraz, connecting her to her homeland.
We got our last massage and swim in the amazing pool and then headed off to the Night Market to explore and to have dinner.
First stop was coffee at Indigo Cafe.
After strolling around the market a bit we got dinner at an authentic Laotian restaurant that supports locals by training them to be servers and waiters. It’s called Kaiphaen Restaurant and I highly recommend it. We got Beer Lao battered fish and Green Curry and for desert we got banana fritters and ice cream. It was the perfect last meal on our fourth and final day in Luang Prabhang.
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