The main thing I wanted to see was the Pak Ou caves with thousands of Buddhas inside. I did not want to go by long boat as it takes about two hours of upstream travel. I thought I would find it too painful to sit on those boats for that long. These tours include a visit to a rice wine makers’ village and a weavers’ village. I read that they are tourist traps. I decided that I must at least discuss how to get to the Pak Ou caves with a tour company instead of saying I can’t do it. After a long discussion, I settled on a private tour by car then a river crossing on a small boat; around 80km round trip. Also visiting a weaving village about 8km away from Luang Prabang. K$400000 (AUD$65) with lunch and English speaking guide.
Friday, my best day so far. Young Mr Kham’s idea of picking me up from my hotel was to meet me there and carry my camera bag as we walked to the car outside his office. We drove north through the countryside on a sealed highway towards a Limestone karst mountainous area. Then we turned into a dirt road with no sign post. Kham (not his real name) said “there used to be a sign there” after a while we passed one of several elephant tourist parks and saw an elephant following a man along the road. As we passed I saw the elephant was carrying a long heavy chain doubled up across its neck. We passed through several villages including Ban Pak Xeuang, and saw some terraced rice paddies that had not been ploughed as the rains are late this year. Most of the land was covered in young teak trees, they have very large leaves.
A farmer with a herd of about 12 water buffaloes and calves met us on the road. No, I did not get out to take a photo, they spook too easily. Later I saw a farmer with a two-wheel tractor ploughing a wet paddy. There were a few signs of logging the teak forests on the mountains. Up on the tops of some mountains there were some areas of slash and burn farming by an ethnic minority group. Kham said that they do to know how to do any other kind of farming and they live on the top of mountains. The marks of soil erosion were evident in those places.