Idyllic

That evening in Luang Prabang, we went to the night market. I thought there would be a million more markets just like this, but looking back, I wish I bought everything there, because we didn’t see any markets like it again! Everything was so beautiful. I did buy paper lanterns with flowers pressed into them, a bejeweled puppet of a prince for friends, and other gifts. During the day, the streets had been filled only with passersby, but at night, blue and red tents sprung up everywhere with goods laid out beneath them.

The next morning, we found four other travelers to join us in a tuk-tuk to the Kwang Si waterfalls. This was another magical place; my pictures from that day don’t even look real—they look photo-shopped or constructed somehow. Even being present there didn’t seem quite real. It was too beautiful.

At the entrance to the waterfalls, we watched the Asiatic Black Bears, or “Moon Bears” that had been rescued. We then walked past gently cascading waterfalls that formed glacial-blue pools. Each level of waterfalls seemed more beautiful than the last, somehow. The vegetation was rich and colorful—it was the first time I felt like we were actually in a rainforest. The small waterfalls led to one extremely tall and powerful one, and we climbed a steep path to the top, where we walked through cool pools to see the view and cross to the other side. The climb down was easy, and we followed wooden steps back to the bottom.

The butterflies were more beautiful than ever. I saw a pair with orange on the wings nearest the body and the deepest, iridescent purple on the outside. There were butterflies of many shades of blue, small orange ones, black ones, white ones. I wished I had a butterfly guide! The place was so idyllic—a monk taking a photograph of a spinning waterwheel, another meditating at the top of a short but wide waterfall, water falling into shaded pools of crystal. When we got back to the bottom, we went swimming in the numbingly cold water and sat in the sunshine.

 
That evening, back in town, we had dinner on a porch overlooking the Mekong, where the sun set and lit the whole world orange.