On the Road and on the River - outside Luong Prabang

This morning's breakfast was NOT the usual buffet of tropical fruits, Asian foods, yogurts, eggs and pancakes, but it WAS on this terrace right on the Nam Khan river.

Peggy and I decided to take a biking and kayaking trip, and while we waited for our guide, we looked at this old house that was built during the French period in Laos.

Here is a little Buddha straddling the top of some part of the roof on part of a Buddhist stupa.  I thought he looked pretty silly, splayed across that roof!

This is a very young monk I saw who was on his cell phone, but as soon as I tried to photograph him with it, he ducked down and tried to slink away; an interesting issue about education here is that the poor people cannot afford the minimal fees and sometimes join a monastery or a Wat in order to receive an education, as our guide in Vientienne did for 12 years.

We rode mountain bikes along the construction of a new highway/road which was really a mess - full of big stones, gravel and rocks, but the countryside was pretty sublime as the following photos testify:

We stopped at bought three pineapples for 5,000 kip, which works out to less than one U.S. dollar, and boy, were they delicious!!

After about a two hour ride, we got into our kayaks and paddled to this waterfall, which was gorgeous - so gorgeous, in fact, that this hot, sweaty cyclist jumped right into this cool green water with her clothes on!  It feel grand.

This is the Nam Khan that we kayaked down for about 3 hours after our stop at the waterfall.  We encountered some pretty decent rapids but mastered them with great aplomb.  

Sorry, these are out of order, and this is one of the wee rice paddies that lined the road as we pedalled up to the kayaking pick-up.

When we got back into Luong Prabang, we saw this little fellow who caught my eye, stood up and with no prompting whatsoever, just waved as if we were old friends.

 These are coffee cups that must be drying after the lunch crowd ate at this restaurant along the river.

This was our view from the little restaurant we went to tonight - very early because we were pretty bushed.

Loads of activity was going on across the river, keeping us entertained as we ate our vegetarian fare.

Finally, another photo out of order, but from our biking expedition, this is a little house tucked back behind the delicious green of a little working farm.

We are off to Thailand tomorrow - Chiang Mai.