Luang Prabang is very much a tourists destination. A night market in the centre of town becomes a gravity well for anyone looking for a Laotian souvenir, cheap food and cheaper beer. You can choose to dine under the smokey plastic coverings that fill the side alleys, where the locals offer a cheap buffet of every kind of vegetarian dish imaginable to the Laotians. You get one plate of food and depending on your levels of care and decorum you can pile that plate all the way to heaven if you so desire. Or you can choose to dine in one of the finer westernised restaurants and eat the closest thing to a western meal that you’ll get this side of the equator that’s not McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. 

Wandering the markets we ran into an old acquaintance who was traversing the country on a similar course. It was nice to see a familiar face and meet some of the foreigners he’d picked up on the way – an older, adventurous Northern British couple and a younger couple from Adelaide. We chatted for a bit and made plans to meet our old friend for breakfast or dinner. We then spent the rest of the evening meandering up and down the long lines of multi-colour tents examining the thousands of different things for sale. My favourite of the evening being bite-sized balls of deliciousness called coconut pancakes – I must’ve eaten ten of these scolding doughboys, burning my mouth in the process.

After a few days of exploration we joined a tour to visit the main tourist attraction of the town; a cascading waterfall with a ring of pools called Kuang Si. After an hour in the minibus we arrived and made our way to the first of the lower pools beneath the falls. Oddly, before you get to the falls you walk through a moon bear refuge, where moon bears have been rescued from Laotian farms where their milk is taken from them and used for local medicines. It’s a familiar story that pervades the entire continent; some poor animal is targeted for the magical healing properties of one part of it’s body or another. We spent a good deal of time studying these curious and cute creatures and tearing ourselves away finally made it to the first pool.

This is where most of the tourists are. It’s the biggest pool and in typical tourist fashion has accompanying rope swing. We lingered for a short time before continuing up and up to the main fall – a thousand tiered leviathan that was as beautiful as loud. We gazed in open-mouthed awe for a good ten minutes. From the advice of our new friends we discovered that you could climb to the very top, where you’re met with views of the entire landscape and an almost mid-summer nights like grotto of slow flowing pools, entangled roots and frolicking smoking tourists. 

Richelle wanted to go for a swim, but not up here, so we went back down to one of the bigger pools. After having lunch Richelle jumped in and I guarded our things on the shore. We spent the next couple of hours wasting away our time before we had to head back to the minibus for our strictly scheduled departure time. Everyone was back and waiting but the driver was nowhere to be seen. We kicked dirt and shuffled on the spot for another half an hour before he appeared, big grin on his face and without any acknowledgement of his shitty time keeping. Back in Luang Prabang we again went to the night markets and found a burger to devour. 

The next evening we'd agreed to meet The Cat in the Hat for dinner. I'm not mentioning The Cat’s real name as I don't want to condescend him specifically. This is in no way a reflection on the fictional character The Cat in the Hat, who I happen to like and think is a good cat. I just thought the name would be more visually entertaining than just calling our man X. Besides, the man knows who he is and that's enough.

Mr Hat had suggested (insert name); a great place suggested to him by a local that served great food for an even greater cause. The profits of the restaurant go into teaching young locals how to run restaurants by teaching them everything from cooking to management. It's a wonderful organisation that has restaurants all over Southeast Asia.

As for the good that came from the evening, sadly, it stopped there. Firstly, The Cat got excessively distressed about ordering a salad that he claimed he thought was noodles, although oddly Richelle ordered the same thing and wasn't surprised when the salad arrived. He then spent the rest of the evening sulking about it, and tried his very best to find faults in the meal, the spring rolls were too chewy or too cold etc. Oddly again, Richelle had no problems with hers, so we can only assume it was too feminine for his masculine palette without the 3kg of meat that a man like Willy Wonka requires in all of his meals.

Next, Mr. Hat, being as delicate as a bull in a china shop proceeded to bring up the plebiscite on gay marriage in Australia that is occurring at the time this was written. It's worth noting two important details at this point. One, Mr. Hat is an old white man travelling through Southeast Asia by himself, who conveniently calls himself Christian when the religions values match his own. And two, a gay couple were sitting directly next to us. We were all aware of this and the conversation should have stopped there. But sadly, The Cat felt the need to tell us all why he didn't like gay marriage. He started with the ever tactful comparison of gay marriage to ISIS, saying if we let this happen it'll overrun us and change everything about our lives. None of us could believe our ears and I swear I heard the people next to me stifle a cry. Richelle and I, civilly as possible, then took turns pulling him apart. This is where we went wrong. We should've paid our bill and left. But instead we felt the need to stand up for what we believe in, equality, and for all the gay people that The Cat in the Hat believes he's better than. Next Mr. Hat told us he once had a gay friend (and hence knows gay people), who “necked” himself because he found out he was HIV positive. Mr. Hat firmly believed that if he wasn't gay he'd still be here with us and he'd still have his one gay friend, who wouldn't be gay because he's still with us because all gay people are HIV positive. The level of ignoble stupidity has never been encountered before, folks. I struggled not to lose my temper. Trying to maintain composure Richelle and I continued to try to understand this very warped point of view. Unfortunately, no matter how many rational and fair points we offered, like so many others that don't believe in equal marriage and equality, The Cat would not budge and we were forced to end the conversation. Mr. Hat concluding that he's “entitled to his opinion”, which only proves what a waste this plebiscite really is when it asks the opinions of pontificating dotards that refuse to educate themselves about anything of importance and continue to use the daily telegraph as their main source of information. By the way, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to entitled to have your views treated seriously when you continue to view people as below you. 

We finished our meals in awkward silence, The Cat repeating one of his interminable stories about how great he and his family, that he never spends time with, is. Then still trying to be civilised, wished him good luck on the rest of his journey.

After dinner we went home feeling sick to our stomachs.

I wish I could say this was the last we saw of The Cat in the Hat. But it wasn't. After a few days without him, we felt bad about our behaviour and thought that there was no need to be rude to the man. Even coming to the conclusion that we can't just shun everyone that disagrees with us. And it's important to have friends that are different to us so that we don't form the insulated echo chambers that are so prevalent in our society. So we met Mr. Hat again in Vientiane. He was with some friends that we'd met previously, so we thought the chances of things going south were low. It was really awkward. The Cat in the Hat spent most of his time sulking about another meal gone wrong and then when the conversation wasn’t focussed on him attempted to give us all lessons in grammar. He even went so far as to make a point at showing us his diary entry for that horrible dinner. It seemed as though he was the victim and we were the attackers. A privileged white man that has his views questioned feels like the true victim and never can turn the light of personal growth on himself? Surprise surprise. We were happy to part ways at the end of the evening. Us to our hotel and he to his land of make believe bullshit.

I really hope you read this Mr. Hat. And perhaps you'll take a moment before closing the window in disgust and hiding behind your one-sided opinion to stop and actually think about who you are as a person. Really, stop. And think. How are you better than gay people? Really? What makes you better than them? Let me give you a hint, nothing. And how can you call yourself Australian when you hold back a minority from enjoying the same privileges that you have? Let me give you a bigger hint, you can't. It's time to grow up mate and just like rest of the creepy white men who come to Southeast Asia just to reinforce their male superiority complex by objectifying as many women as possible go home to your wife.

But I know you won’t. End rant. 

The next day, back in Luang Prabang, we did our best to distract ourselves and visited the many different temples that populate the city. It was our last day and we found a wonderful cafe on the Mekong called Saffron. Run by an Aussie it made the best coffee we’d had on the whole trip. And not only was the coffee grouse, but the operation was an ethical one, where local farmers are the only providers to the shop. Saffron then funds further farming operations with locals who are interested in becoming coffee farmers. The owner spent a generous amount of time explaining his process, which is all too similar to the one we’d seen at Conscious Impact in Nepal.

We had to get passport photos for our Chinese visas and I decided to get a haircut for the occasion. However my well cut hair offered little support when it came to putting on one of the gaudy business shirts that the photographer insisted we wear for the photo. Being much larger than the Laotian I struggled to find any that fit around my larger shoulders. Finally managing to squeeze into one, my neck then proved too big for the collar, straightening it out I was just able to unite button and hole. However the result was a severely tapered neck in the photo, making my head look like it was in the process of blowing up like a balloon. Richelle’s looked perfect.

For our last evening in Luang Prabang, we made the ever popular climb up the main hill in the centre of town, where a temple and allegedly brilliant sunset awaited. The sun had burned off most of the cloud cover and it was fair to give the scene the label of scorching. Surrounded by hundreds of like-minded tourists we clamoured and jostled for a prime position to capture the departing orb of light. It’s always amazed how readily people will fight for the chance to throw their camera bound hands in the sky just to capture the sight of a flaming ball of gas dip below (or above) the horizon. I don’t blame us though. For conscious beings as ourselves, moments amongst things too big for us to comprehend are humbling and awe-inspiring and offer us a chance however brief to let go of the wanton thoughts of our often oppressive lives.