Wat Xieng Thong

Yesterday I went up to Wat Xieng Thong to have a look around. There's a 20000kip admission on most places here so I figured I'd go to the biggest first. It was built in 1560, and has been renovated many times. There's a sign up there now about current renovations financed by the US embassy in Laos.

Panorama view

Normal view.

This was built into the west wall. I don't think there was a matching one on the other side...

The mirrored tiles. These ones are new I guess, the older ones are not so reflective anymore.

On the back of the temple.

A door!

On the smaller builting behind the main temple (don't know what it's called)

The main doorway into the temple.

After that I went to the bakery and got a really good cheese and ham croissant... Then I went back to the guesthouse because of this stupid cold.

The street closer to Wat Xieng Thong

A building.

Then eventually it was time to feed again, and it was conveniently time for sunset.

From where I ate my fried rice last night.

Yesterday when I was looking at google maps for somewhere else to go I found this nice easy straight road west to Hongsa. This would be easy enough to deal with while I have this stupid cold. I found a guesthouse to stay at all, everything looked good, except the directions on the guesthouse never mentioned coming from Luang Prabang via this road, which is odd because looks like the easiest way there. Then I zoomed in to google maps to see if the road was dirt so I could guess how long it would take to get there and found that the road doesn't actually line up properly with the satellite image. So I checked the other map that I bought, and that clearly shows there are no roads in that direction... Lucky I didn't just set off. But after researching this more I find out there is a road under construction, maybe.

But anyway, I'm staying here until this cold goes away.