Self indulgent Asian travels post #2

And my fascinating 2nd instalment from Luang Prabang...

Dear All

Marni & I have very much settled into the pace of life in Luang Prabang and will be sorry to leave (for Southern Thailand) on Sunday. We're having a great time, although yesterday I relented and shaved off the beard I'd been cultivating. I now look less like a terrorist (apparently that's a good thing).

Although it's hard to pick 'events' as highlights, given that so much of what is so great is slowing down and just living a life that involves wandering around town, observing (and occasionally interacting with) buddhist monks, eating, drinking, etc, a couple of higlights have been:

- a slow boat up the Mekong for 2 hours, just sitting and watching life pass slowly by - the river is a rich brown, the land vivid greens, occasionally interspersed with tiny villages and/or grazing livestock. Of course also plenty of insects, debris dislodged by recent storms, plastic bottles, etc. The purpose of the trip was to visit some (very very crappy) caves; irrelevant that they were totally uninteresting, given how great the boatride was

- dinner at a great French restaurant - The Elephant - felt like we could have been anywhere - an out-of-place experience

- trip to Waterfalls (about 30 mins drive by minibus along a road (ie.a dirt track). An incredibly muddy 45 mins clamber to the top was a lot of fun and even more fun when we both made it down alive. The waterfalls were running at full-strength given all the rain, so quite dramatic

- the monks we can see from our room - just watching them going about their daily life is possibly more fun than I used to have watching the daily bustle down Carlisle St

- food: chicken noodle soup (much more impressive and flavoursome than it sounds), black sticky rice with coconut and banana, everything with lots of chilli until my eyes water and i sweat profusely (then just a little more). Lving the sticky rice, though I needed a .ittle break after 3 serves in a day on Wednesday.

- walking everywhere around the town, includnig the little back streets -constantly fascinating

- how beautiful the people are - laotians are a very very attractive petite race. I am feeling extremely lumpy and indelicate in comparison.

- temples, colours, sounds, smells, falling over (again) due to incredibly wet muddy roads, wandering aroudn town holding hands, sweating, having unrecognisable insects land on me, getting very wet again, rain at least 50% of the time, street markets selling raw meat covered with flies, wearing horrendous outfits that i bought for about $3 (and for which I probably overpaid), getting our washing (approx 80% of our clothes) back and finding they have a mysterious vomit-like mildewy smell, avoiding the open drains in the footpaths of main street, being impressed by the wonders of modern technology whenever I walk down a made road...

- the feeling of superiority watching fat, loud middle-aged italians have a domestic literally at the door of one of the major temples *during* evening prayers.

Hope all is well