Luang Prabang, Laos, Day 1

We got up at a reasonable time and headed out into town. The plan was to check out the town and research the trip for tomorrow. Our hotel is not far from the Luang Prabang regional assembly and a few posh hotels. Right next door was also Wat Pha Mahathat. It's quite a nice little temple, much the same as all the other nice little temples around town. By the end of our time in Luang Prabang, they all started to look very similar, but the first one is always the most memorable.



One common feature of all the Laos temples is the Naga. It's basically a water serpent that features at the entrance to all temples and generally all over the place. The Naga appear all over buddhist temples in Laos, even though it is unrelated to buddhism. The best theory is that it is a relic of the local animist religions that predate buddhism. There is the story of the snake that grew 7 heads and sheltered buddha from the rain whilst he contemplated enlightenment, but come on - big snakes everywhere is a little weird!




The monks in Laos are a bit different from those in Thailand. They still wear the saphron robes, but the monks themselves are generally not full time monks. They usually check themselves in for a few months or even weeks to earn merit for their family. There's also a fair amount of kids who get dumped there by their parents during the slow parts of the year, so the temple feeds them and houses them. Not quite the same at all!