Hmong village & Tat Kuang Si

Actually the variety of tours you can undertake here in Luang Prabang is not very big. All Tuk Tuk drivers want to take you to the waterfalls so I did it one day with Alison, Julie and Dino. On the way our driver stopped at a native Hmong village. The Hmong are one of the many ethnic minorities in Laos. Most of their villages are in the mountains of northern Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, but pressures for land has driven some villages down to the valley floor. The Hmong are traditionally farmers, growing sticky rice in the wet season and corn, garlic and other hardy crops in the cool, dry season from November to March. Their main cash crop government was, until recently, opium, mostly used for the production of heroin. Officially outlawed by the Laotian government in the last decade, it's suppression is not yet complete. They would clear an area of forest by controlled burning and plant their crop. This is actually happening at the moment, see the pic of the fire in one of the last posts. They practice the oldest religion in the world, animism, a belief in sentient spirits in all things. Their priests, or shaman, can communicate with this spirit world and with the ancestor spirits of the Hmong, to ensure a harmonious existence through sacrifices and prayers. I bought a package of Mentos candies before we went there and I gave them to the crowd of kids that was suddenly around me. It was most remarkable how they were pushing me for more candies.
After this we took off to the waterfalls that are located 32 km south of Luang Prabang. It features a wide, multitiered waterfall tumbling over limestone formations into a series of cool, turquoise-green pools. For us a great opportunity to jump into the cool water after being heated up by the hot weather.