Getting dirty & elephant poop-y with Green Discovery

Green Discovery is a tour company that operates throughout Laos and is supposedly very "fair trade" / eco-friendly/ sustainable. It's also one of the more expensive tour companies ($60-80 for one day of elephant activities, per person), but it came so highly recommended that I organized a day of "Elephant Riding / Trekking" for my family as a Christmas present.

We met downtown at 7:30am (or 8am?) and then took a tuk-tuk-ish van up to a nearby weaving village, where I'm pretty sure all of us all of us WAY overpaid for scarves that were probably just imported from China.

 (With our guide on the right, Kia)

Then we stopped off at the "Tomb of Henri Mouhot". Henri Mouhot was the French naturalist who was off exploring butterfly species in Cambodia when he accidentally stumbled upon Angkor Wat. (How an entire civilization of people forget about a massive stone city in the jungle for 400 years is beyond me... but well done Henri.)

Anyway, he apparently caught malaria and died just outside of Luang Prabang. Rather than move him, they just built a tomb around him.

It's seriously in the middle of nowhere.

Then back in the tuk tuk van which took us to a village even further outside of Luang Prabang. Kia (our guide) explained a lot about animism, taking care of the ancestor spirits and some cultural/ religious beliefs of the Hmong, high land Lao and ethnic groups in the village area. Twas fascinating stuff.

We got to walk around the village and see all the homes, people farming, chickens running around...
then we saw this:

I didn't get to close up, once I figured out what was going on. There's a pig in the middle of that group. It's being... prepared for dinner. Very disturbed once we realized what all the wheezing sounds were.

Also, this:

("This" being the massive knife that those children are playing with. How old are they, 3?! If that?!)

From the village our hour-long trek commenced. It was pretty leisurely. 

The trek ended at another spot along the river (not the Mekong River, a smaller one). Then we got in some small longtail boats and headed upriver.

(Ze boys)

The boats dropped us off next to the Tad Sae waterfall, which is one of the main tourist hot spots in Luang Prabang (it also has an elephant camp).

Really way too excited about feeding the elephants... they're greedy little buggers though. I gave my elephant one sugar cane and she tucked it inside it's trunk (not mouth) and asked for another. And another. And another. And then she had seven pieces of sugar cane and she tried to eat them all at once and dropped all of them.

Parents heading off on an elephant ride.

Cute.

Then we got to parade our elephants around the waterfall.

Lunch was a Lao "picnic". It was kind of sketch, not going to lie. Stewed vegetables and indistinguishable meat is even worse when it's cold.

Our schedule was apparently a bit different than the normal "Elephant Riding and Trek" schedule. Normally, there's a tour of an elephant camp before lunch, then you ride the elephants after lunch. For our group, though, we weren't able to go to the elephant camp (it's being turned into a Highway?) so we did elephant riding before lunch and elephant BATHING after lunch. And elephant bathing is 342879923659823748029348 times cooler than elephant riding.

(Mom and Dad refused to go. The water was cold, but sitting on the neck of an elephant as it dips it's head into the water is just the coolest feeling)

One downside of the elephant bathing: The elephants poop. In the water. And then the poop just floats alongside you. No one picks it up, or pushes it away from you. Then it disintegrates, into the water. Where you are.

Note the little brown thing in the water behind our elephant? That's poop. (You can disregard my face)

I didn't mind the poop so much, but Nick (clean freak that he is) kept saying "God I hope the poop doesn't come this way. It's in this water. The water that you are getting in your mouth RIGHT NOW."

Anyway. We had the option of zip-lining around Tad Sae for $35/person but it was only for like 20 minutes and that just seemed ridiculous. So we dried off, packed up, and went on our merry way back to Luang Prabang.