Journey to the World

January 21, 2007

An organized tour started an hour late at 10:30 AM because the organizers forgot to pick me and other people up. The way to the elephant camp isn’t paved. It takes thirty minutes getting there from the city. The elephant trek goes through a Laos-style jungle and is much better than the commercialized one in Kanchanburi. Its price is $20 USD and includes one and a half hour elephant riding. You can combine it with a kayak tour, a bicycle trip, a small waterfall and other stuff. You just have to pay some more money.

The elephant camp

The camp isn’t so big. There are a few medium sized elephants and a huge one that got acquainted with my camera before the trek.

Elephant trek in the Laos jungle

Before we started I met a nice couple. We photographed each other and exchanged files when the trek was over. This is the second time I’m able to do this in the field using my portable hard drive. I was offered in this trek to sit on the elephant’s neck as well. I agreed of course. I didn’t know then that the elephant’s leader only wanted to take a break from the hard work. The trek went through a jungle and a part of it went by a river.

After we came back we had some time to feed the elephants with sugar canes and bananas.

Kuang Si Falls

The park of the Kuang Si Waterfall is located one hour ride on an unpaved road full with holes from Luang Prabang. We went on a minibus ($4 USD) in the afternoon, and it seemed as if the driver tried his best to get into every possible pothole on the way. The driver drove like crazy 60 to 70 km/h on a field road without any care for the vehicle or the passengers. On the way we saw one of the other minibuses got stuck on bridge. Luckily we arrived without a flat tire. We entered the park and I started looking for the waterfall. In contrary to what I though, the waterfall was not the only attraction of this park. The trail goes through a jungle. On the way I saw a paddock of Asian black bears. Later on the same trail I found another padlock of an Asian tiger.

It’s an impressive park with beautiful natural pools. In some you can swim. The highlight of the place is the big waterfall from which water is flowing the all the pools in the park. Nearby there’s an hour walking trail that reach the top of the waterfall, tens of meters high. The ascend from one of the sides is very steep and not easy, but it’s worth it. The viewpoint at the top of the waterfall is amazing. In order to go to the other side you have to walk inside a pool, so you’d better bring sandals.

Padlock of Asian Tigers

On the way back I stopped at the Asian tiger padlock. He was probably released earlier from his cage. The rest of the trail passes through amazing turquoise pools

Overall, you shouldn’t miss this lovely place.

An unknown village of poor people

On the way back the driver drove as fast as he could. We stopped for five minutes in one of the villages. Poor but adorable children try to sell stuff made by hand. Tourists who goes by this village are accustom them to get stuff for free and beg for money. This is really wrong and educates them to become beggars. An eight years old girl carrying her one year old brother is a not a rare sight there. It’s not easy to take photographs because the kids are told to ask money for the pictures. Every photo you take is accompanied with those looks and requests for money. One of the women from our group handed out pens and tooth brushes to the children. Most chances are that eventually those will be sold for money, although the idea itself is not bad. You should not give them money, and if you want to give them something, it’d better be food or necessity products.

Inside the village the children are selling merchandise on the various stands. A small kids, no more than four years old, played with a huge knife. Right after I showed some interest in him and started taking photographs from every possible angle, his mother came and reprimanded him. For some reason I had a feeling that she did it only because of the camera, and that later on he’ll continue playing the same dangerous game.

We left the village accompanied by the faces of the curious kids and came back to Luang Prabang. In the evening I found a nice place to eat dinner in the night market. 5000 kip for a noodles soup and 1000 kip for a spring roll. You can have a full meal for a buck or two, and the food was tastier than the place from yesterday.

For the next day I already had a boat ticket to the Pak Ou caves.

 

This article was originally written in Hebrew and was translated at a later time to English.

 

This article was published at 21-01-2007 Time: 10:48 and belongs to categories Far East Travel Journal 2007, Villages, Laos, Luang Prabang, Pak Ou Caves, Kuang Si Falls, Waterfalls, Tigers, Elephants. You can follow comments to this article using the feed RSS 2.0. You can post a comment, or trackback from your website.