Well we've been busy today. We cycled over 60km across bumpy beautiful Laos countryside. It was fantastic! Our bottoms and unprotected hands are paying for it now though.
There were just the three of us including our guide who enjoyed listening to randomly selected tunes on my mp3 player. In fact, so much so, that as soon as we got back in to town I burnt off a DVD of my entire collection for him. He was ecstatic. He'd never heard of Led Zep and The Rolling Stones let alone The Guillemots and Arcade Fire!
We got caught in the rain, roasted by the sun, covered (and in Ric's case stuck) in thick red mud and laughed at by kindly villagers along the way, well we were pretty funny looking.
We even had a quick dip in a river once we were all covered in thick mud and couldn't keep our shoes on the pedals. Bliss!
Things I'll never forget aside from the magnificent rolling landscape:
tiny children riding motorbikes,
black butterflies as big as babies' fists
a massive snake I nearly squished,
oh and some dogs in a van on the way to market!
Such a nice guy our guide. While breaking for drinks, we chatted for ages about this and that; him and Lao mainly. He comes from one of the hill tribes in Northern Laos and used to be a Buddhist monk. He has never even left this province. He tried to go to university and did for a while but it's shockingly expensive for them here and the fees increase every year that they study. He now earns a measly US$60 per month working as a guide and yet typically for the people of this part of the world he seems very content with life and in fact told us how fortunate he was.
Again I feel so lucky to have what I have, education included, and I'm humbled by the grace and generosity of spirit shown by someone with so much less material wealth than me.
Thinking that I was safe from hard sellers here in Luang Prabang, I was ambushed by a group of wee children as I ate my dinner earlier. I'd felt so mean for not buying anything off them in Angkor that I relented. I ended up buying a little something from all four off them! See picture...
Tomorrow we will be kayaking and riding around on elephants at the sanctuary, if we can move in the morning.
I really think I could live here.
There were just the three of us including our guide who enjoyed listening to randomly selected tunes on my mp3 player. In fact, so much so, that as soon as we got back in to town I burnt off a DVD of my entire collection for him. He was ecstatic. He'd never heard of Led Zep and The Rolling Stones let alone The Guillemots and Arcade Fire!
We got caught in the rain, roasted by the sun, covered (and in Ric's case stuck) in thick red mud and laughed at by kindly villagers along the way, well we were pretty funny looking.
We even had a quick dip in a river once we were all covered in thick mud and couldn't keep our shoes on the pedals. Bliss!
Things I'll never forget aside from the magnificent rolling landscape:
tiny children riding motorbikes,
black butterflies as big as babies' fists
a massive snake I nearly squished,
oh and some dogs in a van on the way to market!
Such a nice guy our guide. While breaking for drinks, we chatted for ages about this and that; him and Lao mainly. He comes from one of the hill tribes in Northern Laos and used to be a Buddhist monk. He has never even left this province. He tried to go to university and did for a while but it's shockingly expensive for them here and the fees increase every year that they study. He now earns a measly US$60 per month working as a guide and yet typically for the people of this part of the world he seems very content with life and in fact told us how fortunate he was.
Again I feel so lucky to have what I have, education included, and I'm humbled by the grace and generosity of spirit shown by someone with so much less material wealth than me.
Thinking that I was safe from hard sellers here in Luang Prabang, I was ambushed by a group of wee children as I ate my dinner earlier. I'd felt so mean for not buying anything off them in Angkor that I relented. I ended up buying a little something from all four off them! See picture...
Tomorrow we will be kayaking and riding around on elephants at the sanctuary, if we can move in the morning.
I really think I could live here.
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