Laos Love

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Hey hombres!

Just a flying visit this time.I wanted to let you know that we're loving Laos already and tell you about our highlights so far (in 4 days!) So from Thailand we had to take a two day boat trip up the Mekong river. Quite a beautiful ride even though the Mekong itself is a milky coffee colour. The scenery is gorge and the boat pulls over randomly to drop off a local or two which makes for some good photos as they scale the riverbank! Anyway, my two fave bits...

Day 2. We treat ourselves to a slightly more expensive dinner than the 80p night market. We go for a traditional Laos barbecue which consists of us sitting down at a square table then the waiter literally popping a slab out of the middle and replacing the missing slab with a bucket of fire. Literally a bucket of flaming coals. He returns moments later and places a dish on top like photo A - essentially an oversized lemon juicer. Around the edge we ladle in a few spoons of stock, then drop in veg; pak choi, green beans, spring onion, leafy greens, and an egg which we tap on both ends first then thrust our chopstick through, poking the egg through and dribbling it all over the veg. We let this bubble away and placed a lump of pork fat on the hump and allowed the juices to dribble down to add to the flavour. This would later become our soup. In the meantime a plate of thinly sliced meat was delivered to the table: buffalo, pork and chicken. We draped this onto the hump, left it for a couple of minutes then chowd down once we'd added a splash of lime and some spicy peanut sauce! The soup was delish. They give you a side of fresh chilli, fresh garlic and lime to flavour the soup to your taste. Great fun!

Day 4. Yesterday we did a bit of a walking tour around Luang Prabang. We wandered up to one of the temples on a hill which is located very near to a Buddhist High School where young boys go to learn to be Monks. We stopped to take some photos of the view from the hill and a novice monk started chatting to us. Novice Oun is only 16 and has only been learning English for 7 months but spoke to us for an hour about anything and everything, we chatted for so long that he ended up inviting us to his temple today. We met him in the same place at 2pm today, jumped in a tuktuk and went to visit his temple. He told us all about Buddhism, it's origins, his beliefs, the stories, his way of life, his aspirations, his family. We felt so blessed getting this insight into the monk way of life. When we arrived in Thailand we soon learnt how well respected and revered monks are - they get reserved seats on trains and buses, they get free bus rides, they are not allowed to touch women or be handed anything directly from a woman. They wear bright orange robes and carry matching umbrellas everywhere to keep the sun or rain off. Not quite knowing the exact etiquette we tried to catch photos of them at every opportunity...we didn't know if we were allowed to talk to them so were surprised when they struck up the conversation with us.

Interesting things we learnt!

*Although they're not supposed to kill anything, they're not actually vegetarians. As they have most of their food donated to them, they tend to eat just what they're given.

*There are 7 levels of heaven and 7 levels of hell. Which level of hell you go into depends on which sins you have committed in your life eg. If you're a n adulterer you'll go to a different level than a thief. *They're not allowed to do sport.

*They have to pay to go to Buddhist high school.

*They aren't allowed to eat after midday.

Tomorrow we head to Vang Vieng, sit tight for more exciting treats!

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