Trip to Laos and Vietnam

During the last two weeks of October, 2006, Cris and Ollie took a vacation in Asia, this time visiting Laos and Vietnam. We started with a long flight from New York to Singapore, via Singapore Airlines, stopping briefly in Frankfort, then on a smaller plane from Singapore to Bangkok, then a hurried transfer at the new (and still messed up) Bangkok airport to a still smaller plane for the last lap to Luang Prabang, the old royal capital of Laos. Pretty tiring! (Click on the second small picture to continue.)

Laos, on the Mekong River, was the sleepiest and most backward part of French Indochina. Hard to get to, not much flat arable land, it got some French architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but was most noted for its many Wats, or Buddhist temples. The town was recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site so the central district has been pretty well preserved. The only hotels are small ones built within existing buildings.

With so many Wats, there are a thousand or so monks in a fairly small town. The big sight in Luang Prabang is every morning at 6:30 when the local people line up to make offerings of food, mostly rice, to the monks who move down the line collecting the offerings.

Here's a little boy who says 6:30 is too early to be up.

When their bowls are full, the monks dump some out in cardboard boxes held by little boys so that people ahead of them will still have the opportunity to gain merit by giving.

Most of the monks are young because it is a rite of passage for young men to spend a few months as a monk. Some are very young because poor people will send their sons to the Wats so they can get an education

Here are some pictures of people at work in Luang Prabang. This woman is patting out small rounds of bread.

Here they are, out of the oven.

On the second day we took a long boat up the Mekong River. Our destination was a cave filled with small Buddha statues. We had a boat all to ourselves; here it is at the front.

Along the way we stopped for gas; the gas station was another long boat.

Here is a boat being built along the bank of the Mekong.

Here is the cave.

And here is the view from the cave, out across the river.

At one point we went ashore to visit a village where they were having some kind of festival. Here they are at a little shrine.

This was the brightest spot in the festival.

And finally, some of the onlookers.

From Laos we flew to Hanoi, overnight there, then a four hour drive to Halong Bay where we had an overnight cruise on a ship like this, built to look like a Chinese junk.

Halong Bay is another UNESCO World Heritage Site with some 1200 rock outcroppings like these. If you saw the film Indochine it had many wonderful scenes there.

There are a number of floating villages in the bay where the fishermen and their families live.

Here is a closer look.

At night all the tourist boats gathered together in one cove for security.

Back in Hanoi, our hotel was in the oldest part of town where few streets are as wide as this.

Some are very narrow.

The main form of transport in Vietnam is the motor scooter.

They are everywhere and being a pedestrian is an art.

Much of the business is conducted on the sidewalk, so the pedestrian often has to walk in the street.

The streets in the old quarter are named for the trades that used to ply there, and in some cases still do. Here: bamboo.

And here is a scene on the paper street.

Some the business is actually conducted in the street.

This woman is "painting" a picture with thread and needle.

Here is an old Chinese clan house in the Old Quarter.

From Hanoi we flew to Hue, an old royal city near the line dividing north and south Vietnam. Here is the entrance to the citadel, where the royal families lived.

Because it was near the dividing line, Hue suffered a lot of damage from what we call the Vietnam War and they call the American War. This unrestored building in the citadel shows both war damage and tornado damage.

Here is a building that has been restored.

The citadel is the Vietnamese equivalent of the Forbidden City in Beijing. It probably was a more pleasant place to live because it is smaller and has more gardens.

This is one of the inner gates.

There's a lot to see. These visitors have decided that it is time for a rest.

We hired a car and drove from Hue, via Danang, to Hoi An which was an important port city in the 17th Century and today is another World Heritage Site. We stayed four days in this resort hotel, built on the river bank about 5 km from the town.

From our room balcony we looked out on the river with fishermen at work and farms on the other side.

The most amazing sight was the large flock of ducks which were "herded" down the river in the morning to where the eating was better, and then back again in the evening.

The hotel van took us into the old town. Here is a street that still needs renovation.

Among the old buildings were several Chinese clan houses like this one.

And this is called the Japanese bridge.

As a tourist town, Hoi An is filled with good restaurants and shops selling things to the tourists, like this art gallery.

But Hoi An is most famous as the best place in Vietnam to get clothes made, with more than a hundred tailer shops. Here Cris is being fitted for a new suit.

And here she is in an Internet Cafe, catching up on her email.

Finally, here are a few shots of some of the people of Hoi An.

Finally, we flew to Ho Chi Minh City, still often called, Saigon, for the last two days before flying home. We were surprised by the wide, tree shaded streets like this one.

To finish, here is the Opera. Thanks for sticking it out through our slide show of our trip.

Trip to Laos and Vietnam