Luang Prabang

Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang have been connected by high speed rail since 2021. The Chinese funded the railroad, which runs from Vientiane in the south all the way into southern China. It was an impressively fast train. My ears kept popping because of the speed at which we climbed elevation and dropped off again. The local passengers haven't quite figured out train etiquette, though. It took forever to board because while the foreign passengers looked for their assigned seat, the locals sat wherever they pleased. Half of the train's passengers were still standing and arguing about seating arrangements when it departed the station.

Luang Prabang is one of the largest cities in Laos, but its population is still under 60,000. It's a lush and verdant hilly city with a mix of French and Asian architecture surrounded by mountains, rivers, and tall trees. The center of town is just south of the Mekong River, but the minor Nam Khan River winds through the city and there are beautiful river views everywhere you go.

Luang Prabang was the off-and-on ancient capital of the various kingdoms that historically existed in what is now Laos. I researched the history a bit in an effort to give a concise overview, but it was too complicated and not terribly interesting. Most areas of Laos have been a part of Thailand or Vietnam at various points in history, and the culture reflects that. Lao restaurants have enthusiastically introduced me to Pho Lao (identical to Vietnamese pho) and Pad Lao (identical to Pad Thai). I'm told the Lao and Thai languages are mutually intelligible with a bit of patience.

My visit to the former royal palace was interesting. It was built by the French for King Sisavangvong in 1904 when Lao was a French protectorate, however the royal family was sacked by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party in the late 1970's. I've always imagined that socialist revolutions afford the victors with renewed sense of moral attachment to their cause when poor foot soldiers storm the castle and witness the opulence of the monarchy first hand. The Lao monarchy was certainly not the Qings or the Romanovs, though. Their house felt like visiting a retired schoolteacher's stately home in Sierra Madre, CA. Like, maybe it's worth two million dollars now, but they bought it when it was eighty grand and never really had the money to renovate or update it. The Royal Palace was a handsome house, but it was hardly a palace. Even the occasional gold ornamentation was gold the color not gold the metal. It's a shame there was no photography allowed in the exhibit because I would have loved to show the three badly preserved Lincoln Continentals in the Royal Garage that were received as gifts from the US Government every seven or eight years. I always thought that only countries with unsettling extremes in wealth and poverty were prone to communist upheaval, but in Laos, the royals didn't seem to have a particularly unfair advantage.

MandaLao Elephant Sanctuary

I've avoided animal attractions because of the obvious mistreatment of animals in captivity, but I wanted to do something more along the lines of a wildlife safari. Southeast Asia doesn't have a lot of national parks, though, so your options for this kind of thing are limited. There are a few elephant sanctuaries in Thailand that have their act together and treat the animals ethically, but Laos has an awful history of abusing the animals in their attractions. They're on the right track, though. They've banned elephant riding and they're starting to understand that informed tourists do their research before signing up for a tour. I wanted to spend my money in a poorer country with more to gain from growing an industry of ethical tourism.

MandaLao Elephant Sanctuary rescues elephants from the logging industry and introduces them to an environment that more closely resembles the wild. It's like a halfway house for elephants. The elephants rescued from logging camps probably will live the rest of their lives in the sanctuary, but their children have the opportunity to be repopulated into the wild.

Our group tour started with a Q&A with MandaLao's director who shared his experience with another organization growing the elephant population in Thailand over the past thirty five years before moving to Laos. He explained the group's goals and challenges in broad strokes. First they need to rescue a group of older females and give them time to form relationships and establish a hierarchy. The bedrock of elephant society is the matriarchal herd. Next, they can start breeding, rescuing pre-pubescent male elephants from logging camps, and trading elephants with other sanctuaries to ensure stronger genetics. A young male elephant requires about fifteen years living in proximity of a matriarchal herd to be well-adjusted enough to function in a herd. Males who reach sexual maturity (around age twenty) without the influence of a matriarchal herd don't have the social skills to reproduce outside of captivity. They eventually become sullen and destructive.

After the Q&A, our group of five headed across the river to meet the two elephants we'd be accompanying on their trek. We fed them bananas so that they would feel comfortable with our presence, and then the elephants started their walk. The elephants are accompanied by mahouts who worked in the logging industry, but they're not led with ropes, chains, or hooks.

The trek was an incredible experience. The elephants mostly follow an established path, but they freely walk around and graze wherever they like. They require 300 kg of food per day and an extremely diverse variety of plants to maintain healthy gut biomes.

The elephants are in control of their own pace and their own path, so they were often out in the woods where we couldn't quite see them. When the elephants were out of sight, we'd stand around and talk to the guides, Tanh and Noi, who were wonderful.

Tanh spent three years as a monk and plans to return to the monastery when his kids are grown up. He spoke wonderful English and he was the first person I've been able to have a deep conversation with about Buddhism. Despite the prevalence of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, only the monks are knowledgeable about its basic tenets, and there isn't much reason for a monk to learn English. English learners, on the other hand, are aspirational. They learn the language because of the opportunities it will afford them. I'm discovering that there's a big split between the types of people who find promise in Buddhism and the types of people who find promise in English.

Even when the elephants weren't near, the forest we trekked through was beautiful and peaceful. Noi showed us how to cup our hands and slap a leaf in a manner that made a loud sound. Hunters use this technique to call out to a friend when their voices would scare the animals. Tanh showed us how to make a whistle out of a bean pod. Noi rubbed teak leaves together to produce a blood-red ooze that the local women use as lipstick. Often the elephants would wander back happily flapping their ears and walk right up to say hello.

When one of the elephants nuzzled me with the tip of her snout, the mahouts all laughed and Tanh explained that the elephants choose their mahouts. For some reason this one really liked me. The tip of snout nuzzling is a rare form of affection. Tanh asked whether I'd ever considered volunteering at an elephant sanctuary and now I'm having trouble shaking that idea loose.

We talked a bit about the relationships between the elephants and the forest. Elephants only digest a small portion of the food they eat, so they leave behind uncommonly nutritious feces. Whenever you spot a few day old elephant pile, there are plants sprouting out of the undigested seeds. In nature, they aid in the replanting of the environment that feeds them. MandaLao spends enough time guiding the elephants on grazing paths that they're able to obtain two thirds of their calories from grazing, but they still require extra calories from local farmers.

Next stop: Chiang Mai. I took a two day slow boat on the Mekong River to get there. I'll be posting a blog about that experience, too. It's been a struggle getting decent WiFi to upload videos.