day 4

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Day 4
It was a 9am we were all abroad our mini-bus Chang Mai - Laos (pronounced Lao) here we go! Within one hour I was rudely awaken from my slumber to be told to get out, our mini-van had a slash in the type the required it to be changed. 3 men and a new tyre later we were on the road again. Next stop a cashew plantation, which was good cos I love cashews. At home I don’t buy cashews as much as I would like to because they are so expensive, well I now know why. The cashew comes from a fruit on the tree, each tree on produces about 80 nuts in total. The cashew is grown in a shell similar to that of a chestnut, but pear shaped. The thing is that to open the shell you have to manually do it with the aid of a cutting machine, then using a skewer you pick it out of the poisons insides of the shell, if you get the black poison on your hand and you allow it to dry your hands will be very itchy for a long time. Since there is still a residue of the black poison on the cashew nut itself, it has to be roasted in the sun before it can be eaten.
On the road we went again towards Laos, although we had one final stop. When I heard it was another temple in my head I was like ‘not another temple’ BUT this was no other temple. This was a Disney style temple. First of all is was all blinding white and the lead up to it you crossed over a bridge, but instead of water under the bridge there was sculptors of beginning hands and skulls. The inside if the temple looked like all other temples with a big gold Buddha and a monk crossed leg facing in prayer to the Buddha. But looks were deceiving, the monk was something out of Madame Touasea in London and when you turned to your back to leave the temple you were shocked by the massive painting on the wall. It was a gold painting that looked like a big Buddha, but on close inspection you could make out that the eyes of the Buddha were actually drawings of Osama bin laden in one eye and George Bush in the other eye. Below the eyes were drawing of the twin towers and a plane going into one of them, and a fighter jet. It was so bizarre. It was like something out of a comic book, but this was no comic book, this was in the middle of a Buddhist temple in Thailand.

The border crossing out of Thailand was very easy, and then a short 50meter boat crossing across the Mekong River had us at a small village called Huay Xai at the Laos boarder. For $35 plus an addional $1 extra payment because it was Saturday I had a Laos visa in my passport. This brought my country tally to date to 49countries so far.
We spent the night at the very friendly Aramid Guesthouse. Our host was a really sweet elderly Laos man and he joined us for a beer when we arrived telling us about his travels with his wife around the World. He was even telling us of his forthcoming plans to go to San Francisco for December with three of his grandchildren! Well I tell you it must make good money to run a Guesthouse in Laos. I suppose my breakfast and lunch the next day did cost me 66,000 it total!! It does sound a lot, and I wish I really had that much money, but in actual fact it only works out at a mere $7.50.




 

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