And I thought I had seen a lot of Buddhas by now.

We started today with a brief walk through the morning market where everything, our guide told us, can be purchased.  (Except diet Coke – ed.)  Entire plucked chickens – heads and feet still attached – and both live and barbequed fish as well as huge quantities of produce and some household goods were on offer.  Most of the produce was displayed on the ground as in this photo.  The market was a hive of activity with tourists generally getting in the way of commerce.

We boarded a river boat for a two-hour trip up the Mekong to the Pak Ou Caves. Along the way we passed market gardens cultivated below the high water mark.  As soon as April comes, these gardens will be completely submerged. Since only 4% of Laos’ land area is arable it’s important to use every available square foot.

At the Pak Ou caves, our local guide Somlit explained that a long time ago, a king was making his way from Burma down the Mekong toward Luang Prabang with the Emerald Buddha.  He saw the caves and decided to hide the Buddha there for safekeeping.  Eventually he moved it to Luang Prabang, and then successive kings moved it to Chiang Mai and then to Bangkok (and probably to a couple of other places as well).  Meanwhile local folks came to believe that the cave had spiritual significance.

There are two caves, one lower and one higher. Families take images of Buddha to their temple to be blessed by the monks and then deposit them in the caves as offerings to the spirits.  The caves are packed full of Buddha images on every level and some not-so-level surfaces.  Once a year the families come with water and clean the images. I visited only the lower cave but I understand the upper is just as jam-packed full as this one.

We stopped for lunch across the river.  Once ashore we were greeted by several children selling little key rings with small dolls attached.  I relented and purchased a few after lunch, though I know that only encourages begging and keeps children from going to school. But I couldn’t resist this sad little face.

Happier faces met us at a local school in Ban Mouang Keo village.This village is quite traditional with houses built on stilts.  The lowland Laos live off the ground because of the humidity and the threat of flooding while the highland Laos have homes on the ground.

Road Scholar supports this village school by bringing supplies on each trip through and encouraging donations during the visit.  This small village is quite poor, but has been the focus of a weaving revival project and many of us, myself included, supported their local economy with purchases of their handicrafts.  The children sang quite a long song for us – the video contains only a short clip.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/64513024@N07/21130723751/in/datetaken/

We reciprocated with Happy Birthday, Take me Out to the Ballgame and Row, Row, Row Your Boat in perfectly harmonized rounds. Happily there is no video of our performance.