Elephant Festival
Short version (for those not interested in the immensely long version): We took an 8-hr slow boat from Luang Prabang to Thasuang, then an hour long jeep ride to Hongsa an d finally a last jeep ride 15 minutes to Viengkeo, home of the 4th annual Elephant Festival. We stayed with a local family as part of a homestay program (we paid for it so the family could generate some income out of the whole deal). The next morning the festival started with a parade of local groups and then elephants decorated with ribbons, headdresses and fancy covered seats. We did stuff on and off throughout the day and then reversed the trip back to Luang Prabang the next morning.
Long, long version: I had been seized with a passion for attending the elephant festival in Hongsa ever since meeting up with the drunken, bandaged American guy at the bars of Vang Vieng. It took us several days and countless stops into various travel shops before we were able to determine that the travel shops’ allotment of homestays were booked up which meant package deals were out of the question. We were able to get a homestay after emailing the organizer directly but we still needed conveyance to Hongsa.
After many more stops into travel agencies and a walk down to the boat launch, we determined that we could get to Hongsa in the cheapest manner by taking a slow boat to Thasuan which would take about 8 hours and then catch a truck/jeep or something similar to Hongsa which would take an additional 1 to 2 hours, depending on who you decided to listen to. The whole cost of the trip was a little less than $25 per person each way so we decided to move forward with our plan to attend the festival but to attend only the first day and to return on the second, giving ourselves a day’s leeway to get back to Luang Prabang in time for our flight to Hanoi on the 23rd.
The day of departure to Hongsa came and we awoke extra early in order to pick up extra cash, waters and some food and still get down to the boat launch in time to purchase our tickets, which were sold day of only. When we arrived at the boat launch, having accomplished all our other errands, we were behind a few groups of people including a French couple with a wailing baby.
The French man left the woman and baby to go smoke a cigarette, leaving the woman to negotiate fares, which were nonnegotiable, with only the baby’s assistance. The French woman told the ticket seller woman that she wanted two adult tickets and her baby would be, of course, free. The tickets seller replied that the baby would cost 30% of the adult ticket price.
The French woman interpreted this, in her abject stupidity, to mean that the baby would cost 90,000 kip (or about $11) which was the same as an adult fare instead of 27,000 kips which was the 30% the ticket seller had indicated. As a result, the French woman flew into a loud rage against the idiocy of the Lao ticket seller and entire nautical pricing system and tried to get her husband interested in the transaction. He continued smoking his cigarette and looking dirty as only the French can.
The ticket seller condescended to step outside the ticket booth and point to a phrase in Lao to the French woman that she explained meant that babies cost 30% of the adult fare. By this point in time, Amir and I were in raptures of giggles at the French woman’s expense. She eventually realized that the ticket seller wasn’t trying to rip her off and that her obnoxious brat (who was also trying to silence his mother by smacking her in the mouth with his bottle) would only cost her 27,000 kip and she finally forked over the money and walked away letting us have our turn to purchase our two adult tickets.
It is moments like that that make Amir and I truly glad to be childless and not French.
We were thankful to be one of the first few people on the boat once we realized that there were comfy padded seats in a very limited quantity made even more limited after we had secured two of them. Pleasantly seated and on the boat by 8pm, we proceeded to wait another 2 hours before the boat decided it was ready to start its engine and depart the dock. At that point in time, the engine realized it was low on battery juice and decided not to run over at all.
Thankfully, there were about 15 other slow boats lined up along the dock and our slow boat’s nearest neighbor kindly traded its new looking battery for a fistful of kips and we were at long last on our way to Hongsa.
The occupants of the boat were amusing in and of themselves, although we were pleased to note the crazy French lady (as she became henceforward known) was nowhere among them. I noticed an old white man bring his Harley on board the boat via a tiny little plank only vaguely secured to the boat and to dry land. Once his baby was safely on board, he assumed a plastic lawn chair next to his other baby, who turned out to be a very young Lao woman with a scarf or shirt wrapped around her head to keep off the chill.
I should mention that the weather was unlike anything we had experienced thus far on our trip. It was basically frigid and we sat shivering for a good hour and a half before Amir remembered that we had brought our sleeping bags and we pulled them out, opened them up, and climbed inside. The old Harley man had put on two or three of his button up shirts before long and was snuggling next to his very young girlfriend who was wearing several more of his button up shirts in addition to the scarf around her head.
The boat had a little bar in the back that served a very limited selection of food items and beverages. We had brought with us only a bagel each with some butter for our breakfast, banking on the fact that Asian people need to eat at least 5 times a day and the boat would most likely stop somewhere along the way for meals and snacks. As it turned out, the boat never made a stop between Luang Prabang and Thasuang, but we didn’t care being able to order a noodle soup and a bag of potato chips to share throughout the journey.
By the time the boat docked at Thasuang, it was nearly dark and we hopped onto the back of a truck with open air seating along with some other Westerners and a few people claiming Hongsa as their homes. The ride to Hongsa was not exactly comfy having to traverse a mountain road that was as full of holes as Swiss cheese. The road was also dirt and as dry as a bone. We were all covered in a film of dust before long and thankful when our hour’s journey was over and we were safely delivered to the festival headquarters in a small village 5km away from Hongsa called Viengkeo.
We did meet a few fun expats while on the truck to Hongsa. One Australian guy, about our age if not a few years older, was working in Vientiane as a doctor on infectious disease projects. He was in between projects at the moment but was about to start work on a tuberculosis study upon his return from the festival. His name was Irwin and he was Korean in appearance and had an eye tick that consumed the better part of his facial movements. He was exceptionally friendly and told us that tuberculosis is a relatively unexplored field as yet in Laos. No one knows what percentage of the population is affected by it so part of his work will be to survey 40% of the population as a sample to apply infection rates to the country as a whole. Fascinating stuff, really.
Sitting next to Irwin on the truck was a middle aged woman name Sylvia from Guatemala traveling with her Swedish husband who must have been in his later sixties and extremely silent. But Sylvia talked enough for the two of them. She worked with Irwin on his most recent posting. They both said that Vientiane was an extremely small town when it came to the expat community.
Back to our arrival in Viengkeo. We were let off only a few feet away from a tent advertising festival information and homestay check in. There was a young French guy at the tent who, according to Irwin, was running the entire homestay program. He checked us in quickly by giving us a map and circling our homestay house, number 11, and said we should see the number on the door. By that time it was easily 7pm and we knew there wasn’t going to be any food opportunities at our homestay so we decided to grab some dinner nearby and invited Irwin to join us, which he did.
The three of us walked across from the information tent and sat down at a roadside restaurant that apparently only served noodle soup. We ordered three bowls and a beer for Amir and I. The noodle soup was very delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Afterwards, we walked down the road toward our respective homestays and bade Irwin good night when he veered down the lane his house was located.
Amir and I counted off streets and took a right down the fourth one. Our homestay was the second house down the road. The front door was open and two little girls around age 10 were visible hanging out just inside. They greeted us warmly and brought us inside to their living room area and then found their mothers for us. There were smiles all around and then one of the mothers led me to their bathroom area to make sure I knew the location of the facilities.
When I got back from that little expedition, Amir and I tried to introduce ourselves by pointing at our chests and saying our names very slowly. They seemed to understand that and repeated our names after us as “Meeer” and “Jeh”. Close enough. But when we pointed at them to find out their names, they basically gave us nothing. Oh well, I guess names aren’t exactly crucial when neither party understands each other anyway.
After sitting around for 10 minutes or so saying nothing to each other but the occasional comment amongst ourselves, Amir and I decided it was much too early in the night for going to bed so we had better go out for a beer if we wanted any action or level of comfort. After pointing to Amir’s watch and resting our heads against our hands to find out what time they intended to go to bed, they pulled out a giant wall clock and pointed to somewhere between 9 and 10pm. We promised to be back before bedtime and left the house intent on playing cards and drinking beer somewhere.
We were able to stretch out the card playing and beer drinking until about 9:30pm before heading back to our homestay and retiring to the little private room they had given up for us during our stay there. The room was no bigger than the elevated bamboo platform on which some mats, blankets, comforters and pillows were resting. There was also a mosquito net covering the entire structure in spite of the fact that the room was fully enclosed by concrete and wood making the chance of mosquito infestation rather unlikely.
The weather hadn’t gotten any warmer from the frigid temps on the boat trip to our arrival in Viengkeo so the woolen blankets and stuffed comforters came in decidedly handy that night. We slept fairly soundly until the household awoke around 5:30 or 6am and started making a ruckus. Sometime around 7am they knocked on our door indicating that we should get the hell up. This was a little confusing as the first event of the festival wasn’t slated to begin until 8:30am. But, what the hell, we got up anyway and headed over to the concrete bathroom which ended up being occupied.
Standing to the side of the bathroom waiting for its availability, a young guy walked out of it and greeted us in good English. He asked us a few short questions and then left with some girls and a camcorder and stand. We looked at each other with the question in our eyes, “If he speaks English, why couldn’t he have properly introduced us to our host family whose names we don’t even know??” That was a question never to be answered however.
The bathroom was a small concrete room with an elevated platform containing an Asian style toilet (squat) and an even more elevated rectangular water holder for flushing and bathing. We took turns using the squat toilet, brushing our teeth and bathing the necessaries over it. It wasn’t until day number two in the bathroom that we realized our family had considerately placed a roll of toilet paper suspended from the ceiling for us. Good thing we brought our own TP as well.
Our ablutions done, we headed back to our room to fold up our blankets in case they family intended to use our room during the day. We prepared a day pack consisting of TP, camera, cards, wet wipes, sunhat and sunglasses and headed down the street for a cup of coffee and tea (for Amir and I, respectively). We knew that we had no intentions of heading back to our house at any point during the day so we made sure we had enough clothes (sarong for extra warmth) and provisions (toilet paper and cards) to last us.
The little restaurant we had tea and coffee at was run by a youngish couple that had a toddler girl who was running around in the world’s cutest little red slip on shoes. She was an absolute doll with two pigtails sticking out from each side of her head. While we were there, a French family with a 1-year old (or so) and a 3-year old sat down at a nearby table to have some juice and baguettes. The doll with the pigtails made her way immediately over to the clothing for sale rack, found a white baseball cap to put on her head (it was huge on her) and then sat down at the French family’s table as if they were her new best friends.
She seemed to be much more outgoing than either of the two French children and she didn’t make much headway communicating with them. Nevertheless, she stayed at their table through at least half of their meal before her dad realized what she was up to, started chuckling and came to take her away.
The first event of the festival was to be a parade of the elephants at 8:30am. It was getting close to that time and there was quite a crowd of Lao people lined up on either side of the street in full parade gear with foreigners wielding giant cameras interspersed. We paid up and took our place on the road watching the musicians play their bamboo instruments and children run around the adults’ legs as excited as if it was Christmas Day (which obviously means nothing to them).
When something or other signaled to the paraders lining the streets that it was time to line up in the middle of the street in their ranks, we realized that we were going to miss the beginning of the parade unless we moved quickly in the direction of the front. This we did and found the front of the parade right next to the parade grounds where the parade was headed. I guess it was a short walk for the people at the front.
A few minutes after we arrived at the front, they started marching and we gradually lost our front row view as more and more tourists crowded their way in front of us. Amir complained about this but I reminded him that it is far better for us to have a few rows of people separating us from the elephants (who are known to occasionally whip people with their rough tails or kick out if they are surprised) than to be only inches from the giants.
Loads of groups of people dressed up in their own costumes (traditional dress) walked by before the first elephant made an appearance. The elephants were dressed to the nines with various hutches on their backs bearing flowers, fabrics and other garnishments, elaborate headdresses hanging down their trunks and mahouts sitting behind their great heads carrying large bamboo umbrellas. A few of the elephants were even painted with pretty designs in bright colors.
The whole thing was quite a sight to behold and we enjoyed it thoroughly. It was definitely my favorite part of the festival. The parade must have lasted about an hour with the entire group, elephants included, standing in row upon row in the parade grounds. We figured that it wasn’t worth hanging around to listen to a Lao guy speaking Lao while everyone just stood around getting gradually warmer so we walked back toward the tent area in search of breakfast.
I had my heart set on sticky rice and some traditional Lao food so we landed ourselves at a place that had both and ordered a barbecued duck with sticky rice and a beer. After all, 10am had become our new 5pm cocktail hour. The barbecued duck came out chopped up into gnawable pieces with another bowl of sticky rice and a small dish with a chili sauce that was delicious. We added to the mix some soy sauce and the overall effect was marvelous. We both enjoyed the heck out of that duck and left not a morsel of meat remaining amongst the bone debris.
After breakfast, there was some free time until the elephant logging show was scheduled to begin. We wandered around the festival and looked at all the vendors selling everything from a new variety of Lao beer called Namcong to clothing or food to dart and balloon games boasting giant stuffed animals as prizes. We were also pleased to note the location of two different popcorn vendors.
At about the time the logging was to begin, we headed in search of the show (nothing was very clearly marked on the festival maps). We found it sometime after the show finished and were left to enjoy reading some signs about the evolution of elephants since prehistoric woolly mammoth times to present day Asian elephants and to watch a bunch of tourists getting rides atop the backs of elephants. Neither activity held our attention for long so we were back to wandering around until the elephant baths were scheduled to begin around noon.
The day seemed to drag on from minute to minute but eventually it was noon and we found our way to the bathing area which was no more than a large pit of murky water with a dirt edge positively packed with tourists. We chatted with a British couple while waiting for the elephants to make their appearance. The Brits had been to Nepal and were furnishing us with some travel advice.
I looked around us and wondered to Amir, “Where do you suppose the elephants will enter the water from? It looks like it might be where we’re sitting.”
Sure enough, a few minutes later the first elephant and mahout arrived and headed directly for us. We leapt out of the way and the elephant climbed up and over the edge to immerse itself in the muddy pool. Most of the tourists failed to remember that elephants positively love to spray water from their trunks at high velocities and a good number of them got a bit wet when the first spray hit.
It was a lot of fun to watch the elephant squat down in the water and duck its head under and then come up with a trunkfull of water that it sprayed across its back. The elephant didn’t have to duck its head under to get the water but seemed to enjoy full submersion for its cooling properties.
Aside from the trunk water spraying and the submersion, there wasn’t really anything else to observe so we didn’t stay much past the second elephant’s arrival with its mahout and subsequent submersion in the water. The whole bathing process lasted about 10 or 15 minutes for us.
According to the festival program, there wasn’t anything going on between the elephant bathing at noon and a dance show and circus performance beginning at 5pm so we went back to wandering around and people watching. Our wandering assumed a bit of a pattern that went something like this: walk around the vendors and look at their wares and at the people looking and buying, get a cold beer and walk around drinking it, head over to the grove of bamboo behind the parade ground to pee or poop (refusing to pay the 1,000 kip boy and 2,000 kip girl public toilet fees on principle), wander back toward the festival for more watching, find a place to sit and play some cards and then start the whole process all over again.
The weather had greatly improved and was now sunny and boiling hot so the sarongs were consigned to the day pack and the sunhat and sunglasses made their appearance. We tried to drink a lot of water but definitely failed as evidenced by the diarrhea we contracted the following evening as a result. By the time 5pm rolled around, we were exhausted, hot, sweaty and wondering what the hell the festival organizers were thinking by leaving a 5 hour gap in entertainment.
The circus and dance performance was to take place at the main stage located to the side of all the tents. There was not a chair in sight so we parked ourselves at a restaurant that had a good line of sight with the stage. There was a group of American expats sitting down and they invited us to join them. The guy who chatted the most with us was married to a blonde sitting next to him with a rather impressive display of diamonds on her wedding ring finger. The guy explained that he worked in venture capital and we decided that line of work pays extremely well. The girl worked for a telecom company that had sponsored part of the festival.
There were also a few other people around, including the Indian boss of the telecom girl who both Amir and I decided separately was a real prick and Amir thought was also a womanizer. It was one of instances to appreciate where we exactly in tune with each other’s thoughts. To justify our poor opinion of the Indian guy, here is an example of his behavior.
The group had ordered some food items including barbecued meats on sticks and what looked like laarp, or ground sautéed beef mixed with chopped spring onions and other herbs. The food had been on the table for some time and people had seemed to stop picking at it signifying that they were done with it. A Lao man walked up and pointed to an empty chair next to the Indian and made motions asking if he could sit in it. No one opposed and he took the seat.
He greeted us and sat with a giant smile on his face for 10 minutes or so while the Indian completely ignored him. No one offered him any of the food. Now, I think this is pretty dickish behavior when you consider that Lao people go out of their way to be generous to foreigners. Just a few hours earlier, Amir and I sat ourselves down in a shady patch of grass by the side of the road to have a beer and play cards and a group of guys in the neighboring yard beckoned to us to come take their chairs (there weren’t any extra ones for us) and drink their beer with them. We politely declined, but it was a very generous offer.
The Indian guy motioned to the waiter to clear away the food and bring him the bill with the Lao guy sitting there practically drooling. He managed to grab a few barbecue sticks before they disappeared and I applauded his efforts.
We largely kept to ourselves after an initial chat session as it appeared we had alarmingly little in common with the rest of the group. Just as the show was getting started, Sylvia and her silent husband showed up and joined us for some beer.
Right on Lao time, the circus and dance performance started up around 5:45pm with a succession of some of the worst performances I have ever borne witness to. Broadway would roll over and die if it had to sit and watch what we did. There were three guys who dressed up in sheets and folded them in a way that only vaguely resembled elephants. Then they lumbered around the stage. That was act one. Following this were various other elephant related performances sometimes featuring three guys building themselves and a sheet into a single elephant and sometimes featuring one elephant sheet creation per person.
Maybe half an hour into the show, a guy walked on stage making various bird and mammal calls loudly into the mic. Both I and my ears felt that performance was particularly unfortunate. I can’t even remember what else followed the bird call man as I gave up paying attention at that point. Now, I generally have low expectations where performances are concerned, but this was so far below the mark as to be properly buried. I convinced Amir to leave with me and walk around in search of a snack before the next event began.
The next event was Cinema Tuk Tuk which is basically a French guy who travels around Asia with a projector, laptop, speakers and a projector screen and shows movies for free in outdoor locations. We parked ourselves on a sarong and got comfy in preparation to watch Horton Hears a Who which is the Doctor Seuss film that came out a year or so ago (maybe longer, who knows). It had just gotten dark and the French guy was fiddling with the screen and trying to find the location where he had saved the movie.
I walked over to a nearby bug vendor to purchase spring rolls. Yes, a bug vendor. Apparently, sautéed cockroaches, silk worms and beetles make tasty dishes in the Northern Lao people’s eyes. I was tempted to try one or more of the above but couldn’t fathom the quantities I would be required to purchase in order to get a taste. They were only sold by the bowlful and I was sort of grossed out thinking about holding a bag full of bugs. If I could have had one each, I would have ventured a taste.
Anyway, I bought the spring rolls and asked the vendor what was inside, thinking that there was a reasonable chance it was bugs. Unfortunately, she didn’t understand what I was saying so I left it at that and walked away with spring rolls in hand. Amir and I started dipping them in the delicious sauce they came with and eating as the movie was just getting rolling. It was just light enough for me to catch a glimpse in my spring roll of something resembling an antennae but I couldn’t be sure and kept eating rather than stop to check.
As soon as we had finished five of them, I broke open the last one that neither of us had enough appetite to finish to check for bugs. Fortunately for Amir, there weren’t any and I told him how I had purchased them from the bug vendor not being 100% sure whether or not they contained bugs. He was a little less than pleased and promised no good would come if it if I ever decided to pull something like that again.
The movie ended up being one of those pirated DVDs that you find in Thailand. It was actually in Thai and for whatever reason, the French guy decided not to show the English subtitles. Before long, half the crowd had gotten up and walked away finding it impossible to determine enough of the storyline to make viewing the whole movie worthwhile. Westerners and Lao people alike walked out. Next time, French guy, play the English subtitles so at least some of us can understand what the hell is going on in the film.
After that, we wandered around some more and eventually landed ourselves at a restaurant for dinner. I had seen a menu earlier in the day that proclaimed “traditional Lao food” for only 15,000 kip, or a little less than $2. It also had fried rice which Amir loves so we went inside, ordered and began a card game.
Amir’s fried rice was delicious and he really enjoyed it. I imagined that traditional Lao food would be a serving of sticky rice and either fried morning glory (kale) or some kind of meat dish. I was definitely wrong. Traditional Lao food is actually barely edible and had very little in it that I even recognized as food in the traditional sense of the world. There was not a morsel of sticky rice to be seen. I got a bowl filled with murky brown liquid and chunks of bamboo and animal bones, most likely duck. Amir took one taste, grimaced, and went happily back to his fried rice.
My dish was also a bit spicy but I am able to eat just about anything and stuck it out until I had eaten several pieces of bamboo, gnawed off a few teensy scraps of duck meat and had a few spoonfuls of the “broth”. Then I gratefully accepted Amir’s offer of some bites of his fried rice and sadly admitted that traditional Lao food sucks and if I never see or taste it again it will be too soon.
After that culinary fiasco, we headed back in the direction of our homestay, arrived, looked at Amir’s watch and immediately turned right back around to find another place to have a beer and pass the time remaining before bed. We found ourselves at the same restaurant we had tea and coffee in earlier that morning and it honestly seemed as though a full week had gone by between then and now.
We played a few rounds of cards and headed back to our house when 10pm rolled around. We went straight to bed and intended to roll out of there bright and early the next morning.
Throughout the day, we had heard rumors that the slow boat was not running due to a reduced water level but we refused to give them credit since we had just come via slow boat the day before and the water level was fine. As it turns out, when we left the next morning, hitched a ride on the back of a truck to downtown Hongsa and made it to the ticket seller’s to get our slow boat tickets, the rumor was true. We bought tickets instead for a truck passage for only 10,000 kip more per person and went off to have some breakfast at a restaurant in the market under instruction to return at 8:30am in case the truck was to leave early (between 9 and 10am was the intended departure time).
The restaurant in the market served noodle soup only so we both had a bowl and enjoyed it very much. We were back to the ticket stand before 8:30am only to find a large group of Western tourists already sitting in trucks just like the one in which we traveled from the port at Thasuang to Hongsa. I ran over to the ticket seller’s and showed him my truck passage tickets. He shook his head no and said he would give us our money back as the slow boat was now running.
We got our money back and hopped on the back of a truck that had but a few seats left. Another couple hopped on with us and we all sort of breathed a collective sigh of relief at being fortunate enough to make it back in time to realize our change of travel arrangements. However, only a few moments later, the group of people standing at the back of the truck not yet boarded turned out to be none other than the crazy French woman, man and obnoxious baby and the other group of French parents and two children (the ones that attracted the attention of the pigtailed Lao girl).
The crazy French lady with the baby pitched a stink fit and immediately started yelling at the four of us to get out of the truck because there wasn’t enough room now for the four adults and three children and they had already paid. She asked us whether we had already paid and Amir responded in the affirmative even though we had done no such thing. We basically refused to budge and I suggested that we all just move down a bit to make room for everyone.
Crazy French lady would hear of no such thing and managed to bully the other couple into getting off the truck. They tried unsuccessfully to find another truck going to Thasuang before giving it up for lost and heading back to our truck with an entreaty that we all scoot down a bit as there were no more trucks going that day. We all obliged, crazy Frenchies included, and fit them on with very little discomfort to anyone. Was that so hard, crazy French bitch?
The trip was gross. It couldn’t be over soon enough. We had to witness the crazy French bitch breastfeed her baby (who was old enough to eat bread and boiled egg so why exactly he was still nursing was beyond our comprehension), then the other French lady breastfeed her baby, then the evil frenchy’s baby kicked the other baby repeatedly in the head while she slept and in general the whole group was annoying the entire trip. We were so excited to get on the boat that we actually ran down the hill away from them all as soon as the truck stopped moving at the Thasuang beach.
Amir and I make a pretty good team at this point when it comes to securing travel arrangements before other people. He ran down the beach to secure us the best seats possible on the slow boat and I ran to the ticket seller’s where I was first in line to purchase our tickets. On the down side, this slow boat didn’t have the luxury seats but on the up side, we each got our own wooden bench with two butt pillows each, both at front of the boat away from the loud noise of the engine.
Once settled, we looked around the boat in search of the food and drink bar. Finding none, Amir went back up the hill to purchase us some snacks to get us through the trip. He came back bearing a bag with two bags of potato chips (seaweed flavor and cheese flavor), a packet of wannabe Oreos and a Coke.
After about an hour of waiting, the slow boat set off and we got comfortable, we with my Dickens and Amir on his back sleeping on the bench, having finished reading his book on the boat ride to Thasuang. About an hour later, the boat docked and we were instructed to switch to a different boat.
Like lightning, Amir woke up, realized we had to switch, grabbed his belongings and made it over the side into the neighboring boat where he secured for us two of the comfy seats. I was a little slower in making it there but as he had done all the dirty work, my speed was of no consequence.
The boat was nowhere near full as it was on the way up so we ended up making stops about every 45 minutes to pick up people, sacks of food and animals and drop them off farther down the river. We were headed downstream at this point and expected the trip to be closer to 6 hours rather than the 8 it took upstream, but all the stops counterbalanced our increased speed and we ended up at about 7 hours to Luang Prabang.
The boat docked in Luang Prabang as night fell and we made our way in the darkness back to our hotel on the other side of Phu Si. Feeling rather disgusting by this point, we both showered and changed before heading out to find dinner.
We were walking to town through the night market when a light rain broke out. The vendors rapidly began repacking wares they hadn’t even yet fully unpacked. We made it through about half of the night market when a loud clap of thunder hit and the vendors let out a collective shriek of terror. We both burst out laughing and continued picking our way through the confusion to the restaurants in town.
So ended our elephant festival experience.
