Early morning in Luang Prabang

Brent and I rose early yesterday, at 4:40am to be exact, to the sound of rain on the roof. I wanted to bail, but B pushed me out of bed and said it was lightening up, which it actually was. grrrr. So, we crawled out of bed before 5am on our honeymoon, grabbed our 5:00am tuk-tuk which we had arranged the night before and headed to Mount Phousi. This is a temple in the middle of Luang Prabang that we had visited the night before around sunset. We heard that sunrise was even more beautiful though, so we decided to check it out.

We hiked up in the dark before sunrise (all 328 steps to the top) and got up there to find it completely empty, which was great. It was fairly crowded the evening before. We wandered around, but it started to rain while we were there and we never actually saw the sunrise due to the clouds. But we got a great early morning hike in and enjoyed it all the same. Then we hiked down the other side of Mt. Phousi (and, just to be completely accurate, you do not pronounce the "h" in Phousi...hehehe) to see the monks taking their daily alms from the faithful people in the village.

They proceed out from their temples in long lines and walk the streets of Luang Prabang and receive offerings from the local people. We weren't exactly sure where to stand and we saw a line of monks about a block down from where we were, so in order to see them, we ran down an alley. Then we caught ourselves and laughed because you're not even supposed to look directly at the monks, or take photos of them too close to them, and here we are chasing them at 6 in the morning down an alley!!! Whoops. We walked quickly instead. And eventually we did get to a perfect viewing spot where we sat down (in the rain) and watched them walk by and receive the offerings. We saw hundreds of them, ranging from about 6-7 years old up to very, very old and wise looking.
It was an amazing sight and we're very glad we witnessed it. Even if we had to get up at 4:40am. Honestly.