Laos, 2017: Temples

Temples, Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, whatever, are usually beautiful examples of human craftmanship. They are also a window into humans' ability to deceive themselves. Case in point, "That Dam Stupa" (not a joke) located in a quiet roundabout in Vientiane. Legend has it that this stupa is/was inhabited by a seven-headed naga, mythical water-snake, whose job was to protect the Lao people and all the gold that covered the stupa.


I know what you're thinking: where's the gold? Thai invaders took it in 1820.

Anyway. I woke my first morning in Laos, had a decent breakfast in the charming garden of the Hotel Lao, and ventured forth. I almost immediately stumbled across a temple, Vat Inpeng. It is quite nice.


Near the bank of the river, I found Vat Chanthaboury, largely elephant-themed.


I'm not sure who the guys are on the small stupa detail, but they seem quite modern.

But the temple I wanted most to see was Hor Phakeo. It was built in the mid-1500s by a certain King Setthathirath when he moved the capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane to house the storied Emerald Buddha. The Lao, the Thai and the Khmer (Cambodians) have had war after war, invasion after invasion, over this two foot tall carving, that's not even made of emerald (refer to sentence #2 of this post).

Still, it spent about two hundred years in Hor Phakeo (or Haw Phra Kaew or similar) before the Thais won it back. Today it resides in a similarly-named temple on the grounds of the Royal Palace in Bangkok. Although the Cambodias claim to have it too.


Luang Prabang has its own non-gold coated stupa, across the main drag from the Royal Palace.


But the town has some other temples, including the famously "active" Wat Mai, from whence the monks decend before daybreak to the riverbanks for alms-giving every morning. I never managed to wake up in time to see this spectacle, I did get some interesting shots of the temple itself.


Actually, I may have mixed some of those up with the other Buddhist temple just down the road, but I'm sure the ones below are from Wat Mai.


There is also Wat That Luang, apparently the best of the lot, but it was quite a long ways up a hill and I was pretty much templed-out by the time I heard about it. Next time, Luang Prabang, next time.

Tuttle Travels To Buyeo 부여

... with his pal The Stumbler. Our bus departed from Nambu Bus terminal at 9:30 on the dot and arrived in the small town south of Seoul a little under two hours later. The first site to visit is Jeongnimsa Temple in the downtown area, fifteen minutes from the bus terminal.


There are two key things to see at Jeongnimsa, plus a lotus pond--the lotus is a key flower of the area, and the Buddhist culture of the Baekje 백제 era (one of the so-called "three kingdoms" of Korea's ancient times).


The five-storied stone pagoda was built in the sixth century, and represents the epitome of Baekje pagodas, repeated throughout the period and found all around Chungcheongnam-do. Inside the temple sixty meters away is situated a large stone Buddha that faces the pagoda. It was constructed for the temple originally built in the sixth century and reconstructed by Goryeo four hundred years later.


Down the street and to the left of the temple is a very nice (free) museum, the National Museum of Buyeo. The museum has artifacts from prehistory to the Baekje period and the Buddhist culture of Baekje. Here are some tools and pottery, including a you-know-what-shaped jar handle, and a piece of "found art", scratched onto a roof tile by a worker. The last is a mold of a giant Buddhist frieze, with The Stumbler to provide scale.


Pottery is a key artifact of any society, Korea being famous for delicate blue-green Celadon, for example. The piece de resistance of the Baekje period in Buyeo is this beautifully detailed gilt-bronze incense burner in the shape of a lotus blossom beginning to open.


Speaking of lotuses, as I have twice, the famous food of Buyeo is a dish called yeonnipbap 연잎밥, seasoned rice cooked in lotus leaves. By now it was around two o'clock, and we made our way back into town to partake in this much-lauded nourishment. For being so famous, it was actually a challenge to find a place that specialized in yeonnipbap, but we hit the jackpot, with an awesome spread for 13,000 W, polished off with a lotus blossom tea.


We took a taxi about six clicks out of town to Neungsan-ri 능산리, site of Baekje era royal burial mounds. Most of the mounds and their artifacts were destroyed during the Japanese colonial period, but there is a nice interpretive center. In the second two shots, The Stumbler is again providing scale.


Busosanseong 부소산성 was the last site on the agenda, but it was approaching 4:00 and our bus was departing at 5:00--on the dot. Everything was uphill at Busosanseong, the ancient fortress of Sabi (the old name for Buyeo). One element of the site was 250 m from the entrance, and every other one was at least one kilometer away. It is Samchungsa, built as a shrine to three loyal subjects of Baekje, the period that lasted from around the time of Christ to the seventh century.


One lesson to learn from our otherwise fun and interesting visit to this fine little historical town is a matter of order. I had actually debated which direction to go, since both Busosanseong and the Jeongnimsa temple/Buyeo Museum were within walking distance of the bus terminal, just in opposite directions. I would do it the other way round, now, since we simply ran out of gas/time by the time we got to the fortress area.

Cambodia, Kampot: Tuk-tuk Tour

I took a five-hour tour of the Kampot area with a guide named Cha, who was informative and kind. The tour cost $25 (100,000 riel) not including a tip.

I really only got interested in Kampot when talking to a French/Australian couple I shared a cab with from the airport at Sihanoukville. They wanted to go to the Kampot pepper farms. I had had some Kampot peppered ham in Siem Reap so I shortened my stay in Phnom Penh a bit to detour to Kampot.

I did due diligence in the LP, picked a hotel--frankly, in large part for its name, Rikitikitavi, one of my favorite Rudyard Kipling tales--and hired a tuk-tuk immediately upon arrival. The first stop I wanted to see was a relatively inaccessible shrine called Phnom Chhngok, which has 203 stairs, about 180 of therm going up, leading to a cave.


Dripping water has formed a stalagmite recognized as a linga. Various other rock formations and sediment stains are deemed to look like elephants, a crocodile and a pig. The elephant I can get, but t takes more imagination than I have to see the pig, even if you pump up the brightness.


There is a nice view of the countryside from atop the steps.


Speaking of the countryside, most of what we did on the tour was ride around it. And that was fine, because it was lovely, mostly rice paddies and sugar palms.


There was a time when no Parisian bistro or restaurant would open its doors for business without a supply of Kampot peppers in the larder. Sadly, the Khmer Rouge infested this area even long after their ouster (even until the late 1990s), so the peppers are only now coming back, as it takes four or five years for a plant to produce.

Journal: "I admit complete ignorance about black pepper plants, though it has been erased today: they are vines that grow very tall, and take about four years to mature into productive plants. The corns grow on strings and take about eight months to be ready to harvest, though when you harvest them determines how spicy they are: remove the skin from the green ones and you have white peppercorns. The Kampot variety is mild yet aromatic..."


The Kampot region is mainly agricultural, and a lot of our trail was alongside irrigation ditches stemming from a dammed lake called "Hidden Lake" even if it is anything but. Eventually we made our way to Kep, which is a seaside area east of Kampot. I had some nice prawns there and visited the "Crab market", where I didn't actually see any crabs--I suspect they had all been snapped up so to speak by the dozen or two restaurants down the street.


You can see that the weather was brilliant but it turned rainy in the evening. I still managed a nice bar crawl, and I think Kampot is a lovely place deserving of more time than I gave it.