First off, amazingly, I got my bank card back! I can still hardly believe that when I called the number on the ATM, I spoke to a real live human, and they retrieved my card and I just needed to pop by the local branch the next day with ID. Would that happen at home? Unlikely.
And my derailleur… After a few false starts, I left my bike with So at Tiger Trail tour company who said he didn’t have the tool but knew a guy, so I came back the next day, and they had bent the derailleur back and adjusted the shifting. Such a relief! ຂອບໃຈ (“Khobchai”) thank you!
Currency here is the Lao kip, which is measured in thousands. $1 CAD = ₭15,700, so I withdrew millions from the ATM and have a wallet stuffed with ₭100,000 ($6.5CAD) bills.
Feeling like millionaires
People here are friendly and helpful, and not at all pushy. Tourist infrastructure is plentiful. In Lao, ສະບາຍດີ (“Sabadi”) is hello. Traffic is courteous… as well as trucks, cars, vans, and rickshaws, there are people buzzing around on mopeds, motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters, often doubled up, sometimes side saddle, sometimes with babies, sometimes playing games on phones on the back seat, sometimes triple up, and hardly anyone (except us) wears a helmet.
By far the largest street cat we’ve found yet!There are many markets – the famous night market, fruit market, and plenty of roadside stalls of all kinds.
The town here has no highrises, and is quiet despite the throngs of tourists (no booming bass or sirens).
There are many wats (temples).They are beautiful in an ornate, gilded way. We visited Wat Xieng Thong,which has incredible glass mosaics.
You cover your shoulders and knees for modesty when you visit, and take off your shoes and hat when you enter the temple buildings themselves.
Felicity and I both managed to make the gong reverberate beautifully using only our hands. Jeannie was understandably pretty jealous.
Favourite impressions:
Jeannie: French colonial architecture in various states of repairAlice: Lamps and building lights provided fabulous evening lightingFelicity: Watching noodle man at work (hand pulled noodles, so you can order dinner and a show). Ok, Jeannie and I might have enjoyed that too.
Amongst our exploratory wandering and errands we visited Ock Pop Tok, a living craft center where we observed local craftspeople and learned about local textiles:
silk cocoons being reeled togetherDyes and their mordantsLao weavingIt was really impressive to watch the master weavers – just watching someone do something they are so good at is really satisfying.
Sadly, we missed our chance to take any workshops as they were fully booked for the day.
We went for a fabulous fancy lunch……and realized part way through we were going to be tight on time, so we ended up scarfing the third course and absolutely hoovered in our desserts and blasted back to our hotel (Jeannie and Flis by bike, and me running) just in time to be super sweaty for our pickup to visit the elephant sanctuary.We spent the afternoon with elephants!Mandalao has a dozen females – each requires her own mahoot companion as they are not contained by fences.Before feeding and visiting with the elephants, we learned some elephant facts and crossed the river.
Asian elephants are smaller and have smaller ears than African elephants, but a baby still weighs about 80kg, so they’re not exactly small. Elephants in Lao are struggling as a species; there are only 400 in the wild and another 400 in captivity, and for each 10 that die, only one is born. The two we spent time with were a 31-year-old and a 40-year-old who had been mistreated in logging and riding (tourist) industries, respectively.
They seemed to be having a pretty good life here, though. Jeannie is feeding her a banana stuffed with rice, salt, and tamarind.
Questions we explored with the tour guide included: do elephants experience menopause? Why don’t elephants like eggplants? What is the point of religion?
Applying elephant sunscreenWe met up with some folks Jeannie had met…… for a sunset boat cruise, where we shared a few Beerlao beers and snacks.Mike had a bottle of Lao whiskey in a water bottle – exactly the homebrew type stuff we’d been warned by all the travel literature might contain deadly methanol.We all went for dinner and then some of us continued to the local bowling alley, which was silly fun.By the time we were ready to pack it in, it had become a bumping spot full of young tourists most of who seemed like they were underage. Maybe thats just our ageing perspective though!
You’re supposed to carb load before a riding day, right? Probably carbs in the form of beer isn’t optimal, but we’ll find out how that goes tomorrow…
Alice (with photos, editing, and cheerleading from F & J)
Yes, pulling each section of colour through by hand, and cutting it off when the section ends and adding new colours (she spooled off several stands of the new colour and looped them through themselves around the warp) to start new sections as she went along.
BC by Cycle 
Wow those textiles, Elephants, temples, noodles. ❤ ❤ ❤
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Is the weaver adding the coloured bits by hand? Like tapestry weaving? Wow!!!! XoX Mom
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Yes, pulling each section of colour through by hand, and cutting it off when the section ends and adding new colours (she spooled off several stands of the new colour and looped them through themselves around the warp) to start new sections as she went along.
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I especially enjoyed that she pulled down the pattern with her toes 😊
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