more Laos: Luang Prabang, Pt. 3

Today we decided to rent bikes and check out our friend Sommay's village.

i liked how the driver was holding the umbrella, not the passenger..

Ban Hat Hein Village

kids in the village..when we arrived there wasn't much to see and we weren't really sure if we were in the right place. we parked our bikes, and walked down towards the river, but then someone started yelling at us back up in the village. we thought maybe we were definitely not supposed to be there, but it turned out it was our friend Sommay! the kids were running around yelling about how 3 foreign girls were here, and Sommay knew it must be us.

as we walked through the village the kids would follow us, and run about. Sommay, in Laotian, would make sure they all stopped to great us properly.

Sommay gave us a tour of his village temple, the school, his own house that he shares with his brother, and one of the houses where they makes knives (they are a blacksmith village). this is Black, the temple dog.

as always, beautiful temple paintings..

some more gruesome than others..

Sommay telling us the story of the paintings..

a seashell serpent...very cool!

more kiddies..

jacki, sommay, margaret and myself

sandwiches are all over laos...which is nice coming from Korea where i basically didn't each a sandwich for an entire year.

yum! that owl in the background is Margaret's purse..

Laotian barbecue...good, but nowhere near as good as korean barbecue

not spending the last year living in an asian country..margaret's chopstick skills weren't up to par with mine and jacki's..

tuk tuk to the waterfall!

entrance..i think the entrance fee was 3 or 4 times as much for foreigners as it was for locals..

kouang si waterfall..

there was also a sun bear park at the waterfall..?

margaret and the panda..

there were different levels of pools, all leading up to the source of the waterfall...breathtaking.

this pool had a rope swing..pretty funny to watch foreigners like us climb up the tree and grab the rope, and then watch the locals run up the tree..

top of the 'fall..

the 3 of us decided to hike up to the top of the waterfall...we got a decent ways, but ran into a few too many vibrantly colored snacks and decided it was time to go back down..

only temple in Luang Prabang with silver serpents (nagas)

monks robes out to dry..

night market..

sandwich lady

fruit or oreo shakes...

this was posted in our guest house room

our guest house...run by a very nice family, and we had a great room, probably the nicest bathroom of all the places we stayed...can't beat that @ $6/night!