disappear here: A morning in Luang Prabang, Laos

I cruised down the Mekong for two days to get to this little gem of a city.
Two days because I opted for the cheaper and safer slow boat. It takes literally a quarter of the time if you want to take the fast boat. I actually saw a few zoom past. The passengers wore motorcycle helmets. The fast boats only seated about 5 people, it's a speed boat. Meanwhile, the slow boats can squeeze in like 100 people- rows and rows of small wooden benches. Minimal leg room. Wooden, numb bum but at least you don't have to wear a motorcycle helmet, and if you were to crash into a rock, the whole boat would not crumble. A speed boat would, warned my hostel owner in Chiang Mai. Oh it would, he said. Safe! You can read about the slow boat journey here.

Once locating your backpack, and climbing up the small hill, you'll be greeted by a small group of tuktuk drivers. The city is a UNESCO world heritage site, making all big vehicles forbidden. It's a real religious city- about 90% of Laotians are Buddhists- and it's forbidden to be higher than a monk so no buses! It was really quite refreshing being in a town without heaps of traffic.

Monks do not have any possessions- although sometimes you see them in big cities with mobile phones, and shopping which I can't really understand... anyways, in Luang Prabang, every morning, the monks walk down to the main street to collect alms. They each carry an alms bowl which they use to collect goodies and which they all share out later in the temple, and that's their food for the day.

I was with my friend, Pete, and we got up at 530am to get ready to go hand out alms. There was already a lady there setting up a stall with baskets of sticky rice so we bought a couple from her. You can also buy packs of biscuits if you are into that. It was still dark at this point but a few people had started to gather. Once it started getting light, more people arrived, tourists and locals alike and we all lined up at the side of the road. Soon we saw the bright orange robes of the monks walking down the street in single file. They walk alongside us and open their bowls each time they pass someone with an offering. There was a local next to us, and she would pinch some sticky rice, and roll it into a ball before popping it into the monk's bowl, and whispering a prayer. They come by really fast so I probably only managed every 3rd monk but they all share the food anyway. It was a good experience.

There were a couple of homeless families on our side of the road too, and a lot of the monks would donate all their alms to them. One of the woman selling alms across the road had one of her kids with a box on our side of the road, and the monks would hand over all the biscuits and treats into the kid's box, and I guess the goods would get sold again the next day... huhh.

The only thing that annoyed me were the tourists that chased the monks down the road to snap photos! It was crazy, running after the monks like that. Very disrespectful, and embarrassing seeing falangs (foreigners) disrupting the morning ritual like that. I took a photo from afar...