Thakek, Laos

Sorry for the long delay in writing! Last time we wrote, we had just arrived in Luang Prabang.

We ended up spending about 3 days in Luang Prabang, just hanging out, drinking Beerlao by the Mekong, walking around the city, eating Indian food and French food...it's such a lovely place, expect for the fact that it's completely overrun with foreigners! A lot of colonial architecture left, but a lot of beautiful temples and a main street like Hoi An, Vietnam, very quaint. We also went to the night market, where they sell fabrics, purses, etc., and gave alms to the monks. The monks aren't allowed to work for food, so they walk down the streets at dawn with their baskets, which the faithful fill with rice. I actually paid for some rice so that I could participate, and Ron stood back from a distance and took pictures. The monks came with their temple groups, and would go from oldest monk to youngest monk--sometimes the oldest seemed 80 years old and the youngest was 5 or so. It was really lovely. Unfortunately, I got a nasty case of something on our last night in Luang Prabang, and spent 5 hours in our bathroom. Oh, well! We really splurged on the room in LP (35 US) and it had two rooms, a little antechamber and the bedroom and was in a colonial building with a garden in the middle.

The next day, Monday, we took a bus to Vientiane, the capital. It was about 10 hours on pretty winding roads, but we got there. Vientiane is pretty unremarkable, however, so we decided to keep heading south the next day, and we've hit several towns since then, and are now in Thakek, a provincial capital on the Mekong. In Luang Prabang, the Mekong was not very impressive, and was not too much larger than the American once it comes out of Folsom Lake. Now that we are further south, the Mekong fulfils its promise and looks like the Mississippi. It appears to be about a mile wide here, and on the other side is, of course, Thailand! We gave some thought to crossing over, but then we would have to get new Lao visas to return, which is not a problem in terms of expense, but the time invested is considerable. Besides, we wouldn't go deep into Thailand and its unlikely that the other side of the river is really that different from this side.

Last night, we had a 'hot pot' dinner on a barge on the Mekong. 'Hot pot' is where a bucket of hot coals is placed on your table, a bowl is placed over it, and you then put whatever you want from a buffet into the boiling water. You add chili, ramen, beef, seafood, etc, and make your own delicious soup. It was really fun and yummy and it was very cool to eat on the river as the sun set on the other side.

Sorry for delay in posting and we'll write again soon!