Pak Ou Caves, Mekong River, Laos written by Marvin

As Luang Prabang is on the Mekong River, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to cruise one of the world’s great rivers.  We booked a half day cruise that would take us to the Pak Ou caves and visit a rural village famous for it’s Lao Lao (rice whisky). 

We boarded our “slow boat” (that’s the term used by the locals) at 8-30am, via concrete steps down to the river then across a small bamboo pier.  The boat is narrow with one seat each side of a central walkway and a low roof overhead.  We shared our boat with a Norwegian couple (returning home from their Masters studies in Singapore) and a Dutch girl doing a gap year.  We were lucky to have one of the booking office staff (“Honda” was his name) on our boat, so peppered him with questions along the way.  The Mekong is estimated to be 4,350 km long, starting in Tibet, before heading through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and finally Vietnam. The boat heads north into the current, with estimated 2 hours before we reach the caves.  As it is the dry season the river is low and the captain has to navigate carefully through the mix of exposed rocks and debris.

The river banks are mainly covered in lush green trees and bushes with not a lot of activity for the first hour or so.  We pass the local prison which Honda referred to as “hell”, then we noticed a small dump truck stuck on the riverbank in soft sand as it tried to unload sand into a boat.  I was glad it wasn’t me shoveling in the heat.  First stop was the whisky village.  A short break to sample the local Lao Lao at 15% and 50% alcohol.  Just what you need to kick start the day!  And probably a good tactic so we wouldn’t be tough negotiators for the other wares on sale.  I came away with a silk scarf for 40,000 Kip, not sure what I’ll do with it, but the whisky sure was good.

As the boat cruised on we spotted a couple of elephants bathing on the banks of the river, then before we knew it the caves were upon us along with about 10 other slow boats of various descriptions tied up at the floating pontoons.  Ascending the white concrete steps reminded me of Portugal and the Algarve.   There are two caves Pak Ou (lower and upper), with the lower cave being home to thousands of Buddha sculptures and the upper cave (some hundred steps higher) carved out by the French, again with temple and Buddha.  Apparently the lower cave was carved out by the river when it flowed a lot higher some thousands of years’ ago.  In more recent times it was used as a place of refuge, and for hiding the various Buddhas in place.

Heading back down stream we stopped off at a local village where the captain dropped off sacks of empty plastic bottles, which we were informed were recycled to be for anything from buoys, filled for net weights, water storage and scoops.

After an hour we were back at Luang Prabang and we happy to have cruised the Mekong, explored some caves, and sampled a slice of local life on the river.  If you have kids, be sure to take some books for entertainment.