Temple steps and backstreets: a few days in Luang Prabang

Andy Hill

For me, Luang Prabang was backstreets, used books on front stoops, and waking up surrounded by protective stray dogs on the steps of temples.   

I was at the farm a few more days before getting down to the last allowed by my visa. Wresting myself from its bucolic environs, I hitched up to Luang Prabang. I would remaining three days of my Laos visa there.

Luang Prabang is known as one of the most spiritual places in Southeast Asia. Many would say the world, and for good reason. There are Buddhist temples everywhere, and one of its most iconic images is the early morning procession of monks through the center of town to receive alms and rice from villagers, chanting hypnotic blessings upon them. It is these elements of the very traditional and very Buddhist Laotian culture which bring people to Luang Prabang, and however this may affect it in the future, its vibration must evoke appreciation from even the most foam-mouthed atheist. It is arrestingly peaceful.

I wasn’t in the most peaceful of inner straits, however. Several different things had happened which had creates a perfect=enough storm within me, that I had spiralled into a fairrly heavy existential funk. At the bottom of it all was the fact that I did not want to go back to America. After the way of living that I had witnessed over that past year rambling around Southeast Asia, it seemed like the States were a death trap for my soul, that if I returned to reside there I would be miserable beyond repair. It may sound hyperbolic, but I couldn’t help it.

The problem was that I was close to running out of money, and it was getting easier to smother the sharper edges of these fears in Tiger Whiskey, only to wake up to more of them in the morning.

I would walk along the markets and the river, contemplating how I could return to my native country, how I could perhaps work in another restaurant, another bar, another office. It didn’t seem to be very evolutionary. I wanted heaven and hell, not 9 to 5.

I would spend the afternoons in a small used bookstore called L’estranger, which would allow me to sit and read books all day on their front porch.

In the evenings I would find the smaller side streets, away from the tourist throng, sipping Beerlaos on the front steps of living room-cum-convenience stores.

The environment around me was so bright, so life-affirming, so radiant. I tried to suck as much of it up as I could, to mimic that presence, but internally I was torn and smothered in grief and the worst kinds of uncertainty. I felt myself far out to sea with no boat, no harbor, no lights, nothing. And I felt a sadness of oceanic proportions that the people I love the most couldn’t be with me.

I decided that to save some cash, I would just kind of very politely trespass, and sleep at one of the many temples in the town. I found one back away from the main roads, crept up the steps at the entrance, and fell asleep easily, my head on my bag, trying to absorb a little of my enlightened surroundings as I slumbered off.

I woke up at dawn. It was strange at first, but I came to appreciate the fact that about a dozen stray dogs had gathered in a circle around me while I had slept. It made me feel like a very loved and protected bum. I looked around and a monk who was sweeping nearby smiled at me, put down his broom, disappeared inside, and came out with a small cushion for me.

These small actions; the dogs keeping me company while I slept, the monk, going to get something for me to put my head on, coalesced within me as an almost unbearable kindness. It was probably the perpetually-intoxicated sadness I had been stewing in for days, but I almost started crying.

I got up, put my backpack on, and bowed to the monk, who had resumed sweeping, stooped over, one hand behind his back. I wanted to stay and join him. Unfortunately, my visa was up in a matter of hours.

We smiled at one another, I patted the dogs on the head, and slowly descended back to the street.

I got a bus to northern Thailand. I figured I had a couple weeks there to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.