No, your eyes aren’t deceiv­ing, that is indeed a mass of Bud­dha stat­ues hang­ing out inside the Pak Ou Caves. The stat­ues have been left over the years by believ­ers hop­ing for bet­ter times, although the caves are now more of a stop-off on a tourist jaunt down the Mekong riv­er than a pil­grim­age site. The caves have a curi­ous posi­tion over­look­ing that famous riv­er, mean­ing boats stop near­by and vis­i­tors actu­al­ly have to climb a stair­case to get in. Makes a dif­fer­ence from tak­ing a brave leap into the abyss, that’s for sure.