Palace, temples, monks, and Lao theater

What a day! We were really busy today :-) we started out with visiting a couple of important buildings in Luang Prabang: the first was the former Royal Palace which is a nice wooden building with teak flooring and all sorts of items from the former king’s ruling time.
We then continued to visit a couple of the many temples around town. They are all very impressive from the outside with a lot of wood carvings, multiple roofs, and gold all over - the inside is mostly the altar with a lot of Buddhas :-)

During our lunch break on a park bench overlooking the Mekong, we met two monk novices who study at a temple school. One of them (the older one - 17 years) asked us whether he could practice his English with us - so nice! Bertram talked for a bit and exchanged contact details. In the afternoon we then decided to actually pay him a visit at his temple. We arrived just in time for the evening prayer and meditated with the monks for ca. 45 minutes (real meditation was probably less as the sitting position still becomes uncomfortable after some time... ;-))

The evening had another highlight coming. We went to the traditional Lao storytelling theater where an old man with a flute-like instrument and a young man with a drum performed storytelling for ~1 hour. Conveniently enough the young story teller performed his stories in English. We listened to a total of 6-8 stories which mostly represent Lao mythology to explain the existence of certain natural landscapes such as rivers, mountains, the hill in the city of Luang Prabang, etc. It was very entertaining and fun!

Now, however, it’s time for bed as we have a 6-hour Laocooking class tomorrow :-)Read more