Monday 28 March 2011

A strange encounter at Wat Xieng Thong





Friday 4th March hot hot hot..............
Lhuang Prabang Laos
Got on my push bike this morning and headed of to explore a beautiful place. The first thing I notice if the hundreds of butterfly's the ones you seen in dreams and books, that you never think real but they are here.
I had long wanted to visit Wat Xieng Thong it really was like walking into paradise, a pristine yet crumbling temple of clover pink, turquoise, white and as always saffron orange. The temple is home to around 40 monks who can be seen all around getting on with their days. I do love that there was a washing line in the middle of their sacred place where all their saffron robes were catching the very small breeze. We had a strange encounter with a very talkative monk shading underneath a bougainvillea tree he was there practising his English so we sat for a good while talking about Buddhism, Laos, and then world language Wayne Rooney and how Liverpool had got on. It was monk Pau's very guilty pleasure. He is not permitted to play or watch it. So he lives out his games through the people from all over the world who visit the temple. The faded temple with it's sun drenched colours only add to its infinite beauty, the room with a 1000 Buddhas, the smell of incense who's smoke plums above the temple and the heady intoxicating smell of the frangipani flowers makes for a giddy environment of sensations. There was hardly anyone there and it felt that the temple was all ours. As we left the temple when we thought we couldn't be anymore inspired, the mighty Mekong river stood before us, and we were quiet with it's beauty.

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