Luang Prabang: giving of alms

Happy Thai New Year! We just arrived to Bangkok this morning on an overnight train from Chiang Mia. I am sorry that I have been so behind on blogging this week! Ahh! So I am going to share some highlights with you from the past week, which took us from the northern hills of Laos to the urban madness of Bangkok at the beginning of the New Year celebration (commemorated by millions of people all over SE Asia squirting each other with water guns for a week! We haven't been squirted yet, and might make it out just in time as we are taking an early flight to Istanbul this coming Wednesday.) We hope that springtime has sprung and plants are beginning to bloom wherever this post finds you!

Photos: Luang Prabang at 6am. Being a city filled with temples, the daily giving of alms is a beautiful thing to see: Monks in saffron robes stream silently through the streets at dawn to collect their daily rice. People in the community line up along the road to offer rice and vegetables (and candy!) to improve their merit and karma. Although it's become kinda touristy, it's still cool to be there for it. Women sell big bamboo bowls of sticky rice for like $2, and Jon participated by placing it into the monks' silver bowls as they pass by. All Laos men are expected to spend time as a monk at some point in their lives and most do- anywhere from a week to perhaps the rest of their lives. Many of the monks we saw were very young boys.