A first-person travel video by Nate Buchanan documenting Day 2 of a Mekong River cruise in Laos. The narrator describes village visits (a riverside village of 45 families without electricity or running water), temple and cave visits (a cave found in the 8th century considered home to the Mekong spirit), cultural observations about Lao temples and people, and personal reflections on the trip and food (mango sticky rice). The tone is experiential and reflective.
Questions this video answers
45 families
8th century
Chapters
Not a bad view to wake up to.
I didn't think it could get any better, but they had my favorite mango sticky rice for breakfast. I am so sad to leave this lodge. I could seriously stay here for like seven more nights.
Sam.
Here we go. We just stopped off at a little village where they make rice whiske. So we're going to learn more about the process.
This village only has 45 families that live here and there's no electricity or running water. And we've mostly just seen women and children in the village because most of the men are out gathering food. Little kids are so cute. Just this completely different style of life that we've never been exposed to. I feel like you maybe see it on TV or something, but it's crazy to experience it firsthand.
Sam.
We just stopped at two caves on the side of the river. I can already feel the cool air coming down from the cave. This cave was found during 8th century. During that time, it was the time the Lao people immigrated from the south of China by the river. It used to be a very holy place by the enemy's people, which is they believe that here it is the home of the Mekong spirit.
We just went through the lower temple and now we are climbing to the upper temple because apparently there's more Buddhas and we didn't see enough in the first one. There's a lot of Buddhas here. These temples were originally made special because every year the king used to come here during the Lao new year and worship the Buddhas. But they haven't had a king in like 30 years. So now people just come see them. Oh. We learned that a temple is only a temple if there are monks. If there are no monks, it's not a temple.
We have to get off the boat now. Welcome to Laos.
Well, I'm zooming over. Me too. I could have done that for a long time. Back to the real world. I'm gonna miss our tour guide. Yeah. He was so nice. He was awesome. The food was so good. Yes. Everything was so pretty and so quiet. That was our first ever river cruise, but I have a good feeling it's not gonna be our last. Hope not. Thanks. Long say cruises.
We're about to go up 240 something steps. And as usual, Kara is super excited. I learned the correct pronunciation of Lau and Laos yesterday. Apparently Laos is the country and the people from Laos are Laos and the food. And the food is Laos. So that settles that. And now won't seem as ignorant. How you doing?
