Friday, February 1, 2008

local markets, waterfalls, wats, and wine




1. view of luang prabang
2. photo of the night market courtesy of kurtjohnson.net

today we had a fun adventure with our slow boat crew +1, sophie from france, alvin & andrew from USA via Japan, and ilan from israel who we met last night at the vegetarian buffet for .50 a plate place. so far the food we've had in luang prabang has been outstanding, the vegetarian food, some of the best granola i've ever had from a bakery today (and good bagels, and good yogurt, and good tuna melt sandwiches, and a good cappuccino (falang food, for sure))...sticky rice, herb grilled fish & sauteed vegetables at the waterfall food stand, and french wine and bread and cheese and watercress at the wine bar tonight, a highlight, drinking wine for the first time in 2 months under red paper lanterns, sitting on the porch of the restaurant in large red beanbag chairs with candles burning all around.

i just love spending time with these perfect random groups of people we meet on our travels, sharing jokes and food and exhilarating experiences like hiking through a jungle to the top of a waterfall, through trails of ants and tall trunked trees and wild poinsettias and leaves bigger than my body and smells of maui jungles, watching the gentle stream up top and knowing how far the water is about to fall, swimming in the blue opal colored blue water pools halfway down, climbing over stones and backwards walking behind the falling water to the little cave behind it, feeling the pressure of the water as it falls into our outstretched hands, refreshed and renewed by the ions in the air, arms open, smiling. it was phenomenal, the most perfect waterfall i've ever swam in. now it's raining buckets outside and the sound is so refreshing but i can't help but worry about flooding or global warming setting in (it's supposed to be the dry season here, no rain at all for months, and it's been raining straight for nearly 24 hours and is supposed to the next 3 days).

today we walked up old stairs through gnarled trees to the wat on the top of the hill with a 360 degree view of the city, and down to two supposed original buddha footprints, golden buddhas for every day of the week, empty bamboo cages that once held songbirds now released on a wing and a prayer, bundles of flowers and incense and a baby candle to offer the buddha held together by banana leaves , a moth as big as my two palms outstretched resting on a rock, a wide deep drum beat from an enclosed room, the lingering smell and sticks of incense, little golden buddhas sitting under rock crevices, orange robed monks walking up and down the stairs, the city alight, wats in the distance golden and tall, the green and the mountains, walking down into the market streets, such quality handmade wares and the sweetest older women selling them.

this morning we awoke early to go to the local morning market, herbs and lettuce and limes and tomatoes and tamarind and oranges and buffalo hooves and whole fish and grilled intentines and mystery sauces and buckets of rice to cook and sugar cane and honeycomb and cucumber and galangal and coconut and pieces of meat and hopping frogs and fried pastries and handfulls of red chilis and life there displayed on banana leaves on the sidewalk, spread out by those hands, grown by those hands, sewed by those hands of this land, rich and beautiful and strong and weathered and smiling kap jai lai lai.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Happy journeys. What an adventure! My heart leaped when i saw that you bought tickets home...until I realized it was the same old time line. Still...I want to be on your "need to visit" list okay? Carson. I love the hats. Didja buy any of them? Sorry to hear about all the rain. But at least it;s tropical rain, yah? Still SO cold here. I think of you guys though and at least my heart is warmed. I live you. mom/debi

Unknown said...

um-m-m lOve you too.
(mom/debi)