Up early at 6am to see the monks do their morning walkabout collecting alms from the local people. A huge line of tourists lined on the path, locals frantically pushing orange flowers and punnets of cooked rice into our hands, selling us things to feed the monks. And then they came ... those monks in the mist, orange figures with bowls slung from chilly hunched shoulders. Little old Japanese ladies stood by with white gloves (as always) armed with tiny cameras in their handbags ... then, like gunslingers, they were drawn out. The tourist paperazie jumped out on mobbed the monks, cameras flashing in their faces, the dull blue glow of video cameras in the fog. The circus procession passed to the sound of shutters and sighs of wonder. There must have been over 150 passed ... and then that was it. Everyone climbed back into the tourist coaches waiting in the side-lines ...
Itinery
6.30 am - Pick up
7.00 am - Feeding the monks
8.00am - Breakfast at traditional Wat restaurant
9.00am - Opium farm and craft shop etc etc..
Later we hired a jumbo (a little truck with benches in the back) and went off into the countryside. Stopped off at a village where the local women beckoned us over to look at their hand embroidered bags and pillow cases. Children and chickens running around (one kid scratching his back-side with a hooked machette).
Next some waterfalls cascading down into turquoise pools. Had a picnic at the bottom and were soon adopted by some of the local children who gave us a little dance. In return we gave them menthol sweets and ... a surprisingly big hit ... we gave them a few drops of perfumed waterless hand cleaner.
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