Luang Prabang, Laos: 5/30-6/3

We spent 4 relaxing days in Luang Prabang! The city has beautiful views of the Mekong river, charming french style cafes, and great markets to explore.

 Hotel breakfast area overlooking the river 

 We took an awesome cooking class through one of the restaurants in town. The teacher is giving us a tour of  local morning market before we set off to cook. 

 Tons of local herbs and greens 

 City view from Mount Phousi 

Sunset from the top  

 

                                    Lizard enjoying some bananas that were drying on the street.  

 Bear rehabilitation center by the Kuang Si waterfalls 

 Beautiful falls! 

 Evening boat ride on the Mekong 

Early morning alms giving ceremony. The monks gather their daily food from the locals.    

Myanmar/Burma: May 20-29

Yangon 

Yangon is the capital of Myanmar.  It's pretty busy but was a good place to spend 24 hours.

Synagogue was closed when we got there :(

Lonely Planet recommended this Biriyani-wasn't that good. We only trust TripAdvisor.com now

Schwedagon Pagoda- the holiest site for Burmese Buddhists. Obama visited here and a lot of people thought we were part of his entourage.

Bagan

Bagan is a huge 30 acre temple complex with more than 3000 temples, pagodas, and monasteries. We explored it on foot (hard with 105 degree weather), horse, bike, and car.  We saw maybe 50 temples. The guy who took us around by horse was doing it for 50 years and said there are many temples he has never seen.  

The best views of some temples were from the top of other temples.

We agreed to buy a coconut if Robbie could try to open it himself.

very refreshing!

Sunrise and Sunset were really cool with all the temples in the background.  They were also the only times you could walk around without sweating through everything.

Trek to Inle Lake

We did a two day, one night hike through villages on the way to Inle Lake.  Though the scenery was not as striking as Nepal, we had a great time and seeing all the local villages and agriculture was interesting.

Babysitting

Rena got a little lazy.

We made some good friends.

The village guest house we stayed in for the night.

Inle Lake

Inle lake was our favorite part of Burma.  It is a huge lake with lots of agricultural villages around and on the lake.  There are plots of land or soil all over the lake that are very fertile and used to grow tons of produce.  Most people live in stilted houses like the one below.

We rented bikes from our hotel for the day to ride around and see some of the sites, including a winery with decent wine.  There are only two wineries in Burma.  We tried wine from the other one during a wine tasting in the local airport (we were very bored), it wasn't nearly as good.

Winery

Stilted houses

Preferred method of rowing in Inle used to be with your legs.  Now it's by motor and this is for show apparently.

Our awesome hotel.

Inde, ancient stupa ruins near the lake.  We had to take a boat up a canal through villages to get there-the trip there was really cool.

Garlic peeling party!

Mandalay 

Mandalay was our last stop in Myanmar. The area housed several former capitals of the Burmese kingdom.  And Mandalay now being on the trade routes to China has turned into a more important city.  That said, we found it to be kind of dirty and by the time we got there we were tired of seeing temples!

View from the Buddhist Pagoda at the top of the hill (Mandalay Hill).

We took a horse around one of the ancient capitals.

Impressive looking but we didn't go in!

U-Bein Bridge, the longest teak wood bridge in the world.

Getting a shave.