Pak Ou Caves, Mekong, Laos.

There are places in the world that bring you up short because they turn out to be so impressive and/or important and/or so beautiful you're astonished you've never heard of them before. Shamian Dao, you'll recall, was one of these places. Another is Pak Ou Caves in Laos.

Tham Ting from the Mekong!

Pak Ou Caves are THE Sacred Site of Lao Buddhism, two hours by longboat from Luang Pabang, and consist of the Tham Ting (lower cave) ...

Tham Ting.

... and the Tham Theung (upper cave) ...

Tham Theung

... connected by a brutal set of stairs through the jungle ...

The Brutal Stairs!

... which gives locals plenty of space and scope to sell you stuff , and the kids are so cute you realise you do indeed need to buy yourself a wish-bird!

Noh buys us wish-birds!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. First comes Tham Ting because you can only reach the stairs to Tham Theung through that first cave.

They say Tham Ting is famous because someone (I'm thinking an unknown Outsider Artist from many centuries back) carved the limestone into statues supposedly representing Buddhist mythology. However, a number of them have obviously been butchered - also many centuries ago - and I suspect it was done to hide the fact that they're really illustrating Hindu stories. I mean, just look at this pose on this headless statue:

From this this pose is this
Hanuman, the Hindu Monkey God,
or what?

Luckily, Buddhism is based on Hinduism and they share a lot of mythology, which means very few statues had to be butchered this way.

But Our Supposed Hindu Outsider Artist didn't just carve statues. He also did altars and staircases and lots of interesting decorative bits. In fact, everything in the caves that has been white-washed were done by this guy. Why don't I show you a sample:

The Palisade.

Through the gods and
up to another altar.

Past the Guardian Lions
towards yet another altar.

Random gecko carving.
Jane, do you love it?

Acorn-esque bits
around another altar.

Although no one will ever thank me for saying so, I think this place is even older than Lao Buddhism. That started in about 700AD, but this place, I strongly suspect, is even older.

But I actually think Pak Ou's even older than our suspected lone Hindu Outsider Artist. There's too much age and resonance in those caves for them to ever have been anything other than Sacred. In fact, I think I'll do another post about my suspicions and the discoveries I made based on those suspicions.

But, in the meantime, back to our Artist: it's like he died before he finished the entire cave and everyone who ever came after said "Sod it! This is too difficult." and so all the Buddhist bits are wood or metal or even glass.

And then there's The Brutal Stairs to negotiate before reaching Tham Theung. Totally love that ancient doorway. And loved even more that you can't see a thing inside these caves ...

Looking back at the entrance.
Pitch black without the flash.

... so there are locals hanging round outside ready to rent you torches. Talk about recognising a need and going all out to fill it.

There's also a mystery about Tham Theung, namely what happened to the giant seated Buddha that legend says was once deep inside this cave? Apparently, it was another version of the very large one immediately outside the doorway.

The Other Buddha.

The Giant Buddha inside has vanished, but there's no question that it indeed existed, and in very recent times too.

In the French Society building in Luang Prabang, there's a tribute to French explorer Mahout ...

Explorer Mahout
(an unfortunate name in these parts)

... which has lots of reproductions of the drawings done on his expeditions in this area, and he explored these caves as late as 1865. And I think this is a picture of Tham Theung (these thumbnails are very small so hard to make out) as his accompanying artist, Garnier, saw it:

If this is indeed the drawing, you can clearly make out the giant seated Buddha ...

On the right?

... which means it was still there as late as 1865. And the plinth is still there, forever tripping up unsuspecting tourists and pilgrims as they stumble around here in the dark.

The base of the missing
Giant Seated Buddha!
Now holding more of those Odd Gods!

So what happened to the Giant Seated Buddha? Did missionaries remove it? Or did some French Museum help themselves to it? Or was it that Australian charity that came in to clean up the caves back in the 1980s so tourists could visit? They are supposed to have removed 60 tons of rubbish from Tham Theung, but, as a proudly atheistic nation, perhaps they didn't know the difference between a giant seated Buddha and bat droppings!

In fact, there is a lot of stuff missing from this cave. Look at this other picture from Mahout's expedition:

Mahout's Tham Theung.

And here's a photo I took looking in that direction:

My Tham Theung

The domed structure you can see in Mahout's artist's rendering is definitely still there but the larger Buddhas have gone.

And here's my shot of what's now to be seen in the left of Garnier's drawing:

Missing stuff?

Anyway, although there are clearly a lot of things missing, it isn't like they didn't already have more than enough. Last count, there were about 6,ooo offering of Buddha statues in both caves.

Small sample of the
thousands of Buddha statues
throughout the caves.

And if you're wondering where all these thousands of statues came from, some so old that they've rusted away to nothing? Well, the big ones came from the Laos Royal Family, who did an offering here each year for centuries, until their untimely demise 30 years ago ... and the smaller ones come from Just-Plain-Folks.

It's a Pilgrim thing: Come to Pak Ou, leave a Buddha statue as an offering, light incense, pray, shake the fortune sticks ...

Shaking the fortune sicks.

... buy a wish-bird ...

"Wish-bird, sir?"

... to release at the Upper Cave for Good Karma, and that's your Pilgrimage.

Do you love it? Now want to go yourself?

To get there, you have to go by boat. No other way, but ...

The Mekong River.

... how difficult is two hours of this?