Posts From Laos

Today was a noteable day as we had our first ride on the Laos-China Railway. It is a new joint venture between China and Laos and runs a new high speed railway line from the Laos capital Vientiane, via Luang Prabang to the Chinese city of Kunming. Today we travelled the 230km section from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. It was an impressive experience from the enormous new terminal buildings at Vientiane (unfortunately it had holes in the roof so they were mopping up water in various places) to the new station at Luang Prabang. The speed; which regularly reached 265km/h meant we completed todays journey in under 2 hours with a few stops along the way.

We were on our way at 5:30 this morning to watch the walking monks. There are a number of Buddhist monestaries in LB and every morning the monks from these monestaries walk along the local streets collecting food. The locals, and now tourists also, sit on the side of the streets and place food (usually boiled rice) into the begging bowls of each monk that passes by. The monks periodically unload their collection into large communal bowls and then continue their walking. Nina noticed that in a few places the monks actually also distributed food to some local people from their begging bowls. We assumed these receiving locals are identifiable as poor or in some other way deserving.