The Temple on the Hill

I've noticed this temple for years but I never figured out how to get up there until today. It turns out it one of the entry paths was right by my friend's house. I've visited him many times but he never mentioned this beautiful temple was just up the hill. It has a nice view of the town and I'm glad I visited because now I know a few shortcuts that will make for a safer path for my dog when we go on walks.

Phou Kway Temple or the temple of the buffalo ranchers is an ancient temple in Luang Prabang, but I don't know anyone who's ever gone there. It kind of felt like entering into a different dimension when I was up there. It's one of the largest temples in Luang Prabang and is a monastery for many young monks learning about Buddhism. They were pretty friendly and were eager to practice their English with me but they had no idea about the history of the place. There wasn't any information on Wikipedia or Google about it either and I didn't see any old people to ask so its origins remain a mystery. Many other temples around town are up to 700 years old, but I imagine they were places of worship long before there was Buddhism.

Just like how aspects of Paganism found their way into Christianity, parts of Hinduism have found their way into Buddhism like the statue of this lady here who is supposed to bring you good luck and fertility. The best translation I could get out of anybody was that she is similar to Mother Earth. You'll see lots of statues here in these parts.

They say it's bad luck to cut off the top of the roof of a temple when taking a picture, but it's hard to do because they're so tall and you want to get a good shot of the architecture. I had to lay on my back and got completely soaked for this shot because it was raining.

You would think that taking a picture of a snail would be easy because they're slow-moving, but this little guy seemed like he was moving around pretty quickly, and was hard to shoot.

I had a good laugh when my dog froze in fear when he saw this statue of an elephant. He has a pretty large vocabulary and understands a lot of commands but I wonder if he knows when I'm laughing at him.

I recently started appreciating the art of making GIFs. It's harder than you would think. You don't want to have too many pictures or too high of a quality or some platforms won't be able to display it, but you also don't want to make it look so low quality that it looks like it came from 1999.

Thanks for checking out this quiet Temple in Luang Prabang, Laos with us today. I wish I had more information to share with you about it, but it made for a nice Wednesday walk.