Gill Oriental: Cycle Trip through Luang Prabang

This is where we pretty much started our cycle trip. This is where the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers meet - you can see the difference in colour in the water.

First temple: Wat Sop Sickharam. Now, Laos is famous for its beautiful temples and monks etc, but no one ever expects to see things like this. I was completely overwhelmed by many of the temples we entered. It is a humbling and spiritual experience.

Such attention to detail. Everything is so beautiful done and kept.

The main colours of all the temples are red, gold, black and blue or green.

Three Buddhas - look closely.

Absolutely amazing - so beautiful, so detailed, so prefect, its incredible.

In absolute awe as I gaze upon these temples - Incredible. Look at the symmetry in everything.

Inside the temple - really my pictures just don't do it justice, it was sensationally superb, overwhelming and breath taking.

You can see the tiny paintings on the walls in background - everything is hand painted. AMAZING!

All the doors and window shutters are intricately decorated with pictures. A lot of the pictures tell stories as well as the pictures within the temples.

Next stop - Wat Pah Ouak. This Temple is 150 years old and has not been restored with the lavish and bright colours of the other temples. It is untouched.

The paintings on the walls of Wat Pah Ouak.

It is so beautiful inside. Completely different from the other temples we saw.

These pictures are everywhere!

Phu Si is the central mountain in Luang Prabang and everything is situated around it. Now, the top of the mountain is 400 stairs away....its 39 degrees outside, its at 94% humidity - did we do it........

Of course - we are die hard tourists!

By this level we were drenched and pretty bleak though!

But the view of Luang Prabang from the top was way worth it!

You can see the entire city from the top of the hill. From the airport to the Mekong....perfect 360% view.

This is the Luang Stupa at the top of the mountain. It symbolizes Laos nationalism.

Big kiss at the top of the mountain in the most beautiful city i've seen. So exceptionally happy right now!

Love your face....HUGE!

Then as you walk down the mountain you go past all these Buddhas, I didn't put them all up, but they have a different Buddha for every day of the week. This is Wednesday Buddha.

Here is Tuesday Buddha.

This is a HUGE gold Buddha. It fascinates me how Buddha often has his hands in different positions. The most common being this one or the one with the hand hanging over his leg and the other curled on his lap.

Sleeping Buddha - this one is also enormous!

The detail is incredible. It was so beautiful.

Temple in the far background...from the top of the hill.

This is within a cave - they call it the Buddha Footprint. You can sort of see in the photo. The heel is to the left and the 5 toe imprints are on the right.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

Beautiful views of the Nam Khan River from the top of the mountain.

Monks hard at work.

As you get to the bottom of the hill, this is the temple as you walk out. Also very beautiful.

Now this museum is amazing - WOW! I totally loved it! But they don't let you take photos in the museum which is just the most awful news i'd ever heard, so i'll leave it up to you guys to Google and see what its like! But this is what the temple looks like at the National Museum.

The most superb temple known to mankind! This place is home to the Prabang Buddha - the Buddha after which the city was named. The real one is locked in a Vault somewhere in Vientiane or Moscow, but they don't let you take photos of it anyway!

Naga

AMAZING! BREATHTAKING!

Everything is either painted gold or made out tiny pieces of cut glass that are made into beautiful designs.

This is the photograph before, but on a large scale!

Absolutely amazing.

Look at the walls and how they are painted. This must take years and years and years to do.

The huge Temple doors.

The window shutters

The National Museum - was the home of the King and Queen but is now home to a bunch of beautiful relics and the history and culture of Laos.

The vehicle that the King and Queen (obviously way way back in the day) used to be pulled around in! The had a whole vehicle show of all the cars the King and Queen had (of course we were NOT allowed to take photos), but they consisted of a couple of Lincolns, a Toyota Landrover, a boat, a Citroen (obviously the best car) and a couple of vehicles.

This is the Floating Buddha art exhibition. Of course you were not allowed to take photos but by now I have really developed serious disregard for rules and regulations - so I just go for it and pretend I didn't see the signs and if someone says no photos - I just apologize!

Photographs from the exhibition. The most wonderful thing I read in this art exhibition and we should all apply it our lives was: That there is a passage in the Majihima-nikaya in which someone approached Buddha and asked if he could summarize his teaching into one phrase, what would it be - to which Buddha responded "Sabbe dhamma nalam abinivesaya" - nothing whatsoever should be clung to.

The Royal Pond! Lots of fish in there too!

Vatmay Souvannapoumaran - gorgeous temple. Its 190 years old and home to Sangharat, Head of Laos Buddhism.

Buddha in the temple - imagine that!!!!!!!!!

The incredible doors on the temple.

Incredible detail

Some great Buddhist life lesson nailed onto the trees around the temple.

Vat Xieng Thong - we definitely saved the best for last. This place was beyond anything I can even try and explain. This is the post box - so cute!

All the temples are decorated with tiny bits of glass made into pictures that tell a story. It is ridiculously beautiful.

The inside of the main temple. When you are in a temple you need to kneel or sit with your feet facing away from Buddha. In order to go into a temple, you have to take off your shoes, you have to have long pants on, you need to have your shoulders and chest covered as well. They are very strict and you can rent pashmina's at the temple before you go in. You are supposed to also not greet monks or make eye contact with them and because I'm a girl I may not touch them and I have to be covered all the time. Thank goodness its so "cold" here and wearing a pashmina or jersey is just a wonderful experience.................

Incredible, Incredible, Incredible...I mean, look at the detail....

The Tree of Life - A way of summarizing life using nature. Its done so beautifully.

The exterior mirror shard mosaics depicting local village life and the exploits of Siaw Sawat - a hero from a famous Laos novel.

Attention to detail and colours....

Too amazing. Overwhelming to look at.

Sensational - I'm running out of adjectives to describe this place, in fact the whole of Luang Prabang.

SUPERB! Hundreds of them all over the wall of the temple everywhere you look. It is heart wrenching, you can't actually believe what you are seeing!

Lying Buddha

The main temple is the middle and there are smaller shrines around the temple.

One of the shrines around the temple.

The monks were making rice cakes!!! That's how they do them here - cooked rice made into round, flat circles and dried in the sun.

Such intricacy - this is gold with millions of shiny purple pieces of glass...like I said its kind of hard to give you the impression of what its really like!