Boats and Temples. Many temples.

Today was a very full day of sightseeing.

Before going into the details, here is a picture of the hotel. The hotel is not only very nice but also conveniently located near the night market.

The first event of the day was the dreaded 2 hour boat ride on the Mekong River.

I'm sure no one will be surprised to learn that the Chinese are funding and building a high-speed train across Laos.

Our destination was the Pak Ou Caves. I admit that I freaked out a bit when I heard the word "cave." My claustrophobia does sometimes get the best of me. I was delighted to learn that the caves are quite wide and not very deep.

Each cave is filled with Buddha figures. The lower cave, Tham Ting, has over 4000 Buddhas and the upper cave, Tham Theung, has fewer.

Video of lower cave

Inside the upper cave

I learned that there is a Buddha posture for each day of the week. Since I was born on a Saturday then my Buddha image is "Protected by the Naga." Some would argue that is the best Buddha posture. (Spoiler alert: It was probably only me who was arguing this)

After the caves, we boated over to the whisky village. In Laos, they make whisky out of sticky rice. There are 3 kinds, lady boy, lady and gentleman, each with an increasing percentage of alcohol content. There is a non-zero chance that Angela and I called Trevor "Lady Boy" for the rest of the day.

The sticky rice distillery.

After the whisky village, we drove to the paper village to see how they make paper out of the bark of the Jute tree. As a bonus, we saw how they make silk from the silkworm. Another spoiler alert: it does not work out for the worm.

After a quick lunch,

we visited the Royal Palace Museum, Wat Xieng Thong and climbed Mount Phousi.

Our guide is excellent so we learned a lot so I'll just cover the highlights.

The Emerald Buddha that we saw in Bangkok was stolen from Laos. And, Yes! They are still bitter about it.

Laos is a communist country and our guide made it clear that he cannot speak badly about the government. We learned that the last King of Laos and his family died under nudge-nudge wink-wink "mysterious" circumstances.

When the government is done with a building then it becomes a hotel. The old prison, hospital and last royal residence are all hotels now. One of them is an Aman.

President Obama (sigh, remember him?) visited Wat Xieng Thong. In order for a temple complex to be a "Wat" then it needs 4 things: the temple or sim, the monk house, the drum room and a stupa.

Wat Xieng Thong