Ban Xang Hai

A full 60+ hours after stepping off the slow boat, I was finally ready to step into a boat again. I signed up for a boat tour to Pak Ou Caves upstream on the Mekong. The Pak Ou Caves are famous for having thousands of Buddha figures. The people who signed up for this tour were bundled off into several boats that were much smaller than our slow boat.

It took almost two hours to go upstream. I greatly underestimated the time it would take because the slow boat passed those caves about 45 minutes before arriving in Luang Prabang. Granted, we were going upstream, but for reasons I can’t fathom, our boats kept very close to shore and wove around instead of going straight up the river. Along the way, the boats stopped at Ban Xang Hai, also known as whiskey village as a local whiskey is brewed there. I wasn’t interested in the whiskey or the handicrafts on sale, but the village did at least have a decent wat.

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