The French left Laos in 1953, but they did not take their window shutters, architecture, nor cafe culture with them. At night the streets are lit with glowing stings of bulbs. Modest pubs, French and Laotian restaurants murmur but don’t bustle— at least not now, during the hot, hazy season. In the morning, at first light, drums sound and monks take their morning walk to collect alms. Cafes open and whir, the morning market bustles for a few hours, but then goes away before afternoon. Two rivers converge— the Nan Khan and the Mekong. It’s cooler than Cambodia, cooler than Bangkok. Traffic is light, the food is excellent.
I could stay here for much longer than I have time for at the moment.
My first morning I woke before dawn to see the monks take their alms walk around the block. This is a ritual called Tak Bat. They leave the temples, and come out by the hundreds in a single, silent line. Buddhists sit along the path and offer alms— usually in the form of sticky rice. The monks take the rice and every block or so there is a basket where the monks deposit anything extra, to return what they’ve been given.
It is quite a beautiful site.
As I understand it, ill-informed tourists are starting to disrupt this ceremony. You are supposed to dress appropriately, keep a distance, stay silent, if you photograph you cannot use a flash. And if you are not Buddhist you really aren’t supposed to participate in giving of the alms.
But some townspeople have turned this into a cash opportunity. They sell baskets of sticky rice to tourists so they can sit and give alms. Apparently sometimes the sellers are giving away rotten food and monks have been reported sick. To do this appropriately you really are supposed to ask your hotel to prepare sticky rice the night before or else make it yourself. As for myself, I just observed,