Laos Day 03 Pak Ou Caves & French Cuisine Delights

My next journey will be an interesting one. I'll be visiting a place where the infamous giant catfish calls it home. These giants are known to grow to a mammoth size of 2.5m in length, thus earning them the title of the biggest freshwater fish. Coincidentally, they also share this very same place with the world's biggest stingrays, with the heaviest recorded being close to 450kgs, that's equivalent to the weight of 5 adult men! If that is not enough, it is also a place where many other giants roam including the giant river carp and giant Siamese carp, each able to grow to a size of 1.5m and 2m long respectively.

Now, how's that for a portfolio? If you think this is still not good enough, then what about this...

The Thai, Lao and Khmer believe that the mythical creature, Naga Queen lives underneath this place in a magical kingdom. She is described as a half snake and half fish with immense appearance. It is not uncommon to see statues of 9 Nagas surrounding Buddha in a meditation post in the wats. So have you managed to guess which place I'm referring to? Yeap! if your guess is the magnificent Mekong River then you got it right there.

See map here.
For starters, I got myself in the queue to board the boat to Pak Ou caves as early as 830am. The caves are located 1.5 hrs boatride upstream of Mekong River. A crowd of strong 50-60 tourists were waiting eagerly at the station that morning. This actually got me thinking if the crowd size is typical every morning or particularly for this morning. Nevertheless, only 6 persons are allowed in a boat per trip and it is based on first come first serve basis.

Ta-daa. I managed to brave the mud and rickety wood planks to board the boat.

Some ol' school docking system used by the fishermen to secure their boats. No, no what you are looking here is not the boat that I used to get to Pak Ou.

Half way through the journey, the boat stopped at the rice wine village. The village itself is interesting but if you have seen one village in Indo-china, then you probably have seen it all. I took the opportunity to do the touristy thing - I tried the rice wine. It was alright. The taste is sweet and alcohol content is moderately high.

The boat is finally approaching the opening of Pak Ou caves. Pak Ou is divided to two caves, the lower and upper. The lower cave is the opening that can be seen from the river whereas the upper cave lies behind the hill. A short tracking is required to reach the upper cave and as the name suggest, upper cave is located at higher ground so expect steps - many steps.

The photos are taken inside the lower cave which is brighter. The main attraction of the caves is the old Buddha carvings of many shapes and sizes. I was awed by the sight of hundreds, if not thousands of carvings filling up every nooks and crannies of the cave.

The photo above is entrance of the upper cave. Torchlight would be thoroughly recommended here because it is very dark inside. Besides being dark, it is also damp and the combination really gave me the goosebumps. To make things worse, my torchlight can't seem to shine to the ends of the walls so basically I can't see what  lurks at the corner. Burrrr. The upper caves would be the last place to visit before leaving. The ride back would be much quicker since we are going along the current of the river. By the time we reached town, it was already 230pm, a perfect time for a nap because I was dead tired.

That night we rewarded ourselves with dinner in a French restaurant after a day of hardwork. One of the best in town is the L'Elephant restaurant. Our first taste of the chef's food is the amuse bouche, a pastry with fillings and cheese toppings served on banana leaf (1st bottom). The next dish we had is Salade de Riz Frit à la Noix de Coco et au Porc en Salade or locally known as Nam tadieu. It is a great starter dish of mashed deep fried pork mince and peanuts served with fresh vegetables of mint leaves, rockets, spring onions, coriander and banana flower (2nd bottom).

                      

                     

For main course, Huey ordered the Estouffade de poisson du Mékong à la Moutarde à l’ancienne or Slow cooked Mekong fish with old-fashioned mustard (1st bottom) while I had the Braised pork chop with French Mustard (2nd bottom).

                    

                    

In the end, we both unanimously agreed that we enjoyed Nam tadieu the most. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed at all with L'Elepahant and would give maximum rating for it's food and close to maximum rating for its deco, service and price.

Likes:    The cosy deco of L'Elephant.

Would be nice if ... if there are less Mozzies around

Link:

Laos-Day-02-Kuangsi-Waterfall-Lao-Cooking