Stroll around the town

Good evening (or morning wherever part of the world you are at)

Today was a relax day (sort of?) Got up this morning and got caught up with the world , funny how your on the other side of the world where you usually see this side on your television at home but yet here you are on that side and catching up with the rest of the world, good ol BBC.

Anyways off to the bakery for breaky fresh croissonts and fruit yum yum. Then we started our stroll. We found a stupa/wat/giant stairs to climb up to get a view of the mekong and the town. What a better way to start your day with some stair climbing :). The view was peaceful and relaxing it was about 9:00 am and in Laos things are laid back, no one is rushing to open shops or anything everyone kind of lazes the day away .... my kind of place. On the way around the Stupa we found some monks who spoke some english and wanted to talk to us. So we talked to one of them for about 10 minutes or so and he showed us what was apparently Buddhas footprint... Tyson was not believing it, it pretty much looked like big foots footprint... but you never know i guess. The monk was kind of enough to tell us how he came to Luang Prabang to study english and that it was expensive to study english here. He kindly asked us for some money .. i really couldn't resist i highly doubt it a monk would rip you off and so we gave him some money, plus monks are a higher class than normal people so i would not want to offend.

He showed us where he studied at school and then we needed to be going because we had to pick up our plane tickets to bangkok at a travel agent. After we picked up our tickets we went back to the hotel to switch rooms to a cheaper room and then decided to see if the morning market was set up along the river... to which it wasn't.. Tyson is not sure if there actually is a market there. We then proceeded to keep walking before picking up our laundry (yay clean clothes ) I decided that I needed a nap, still recovering from all the activities we did in Vieng Vang. So i took an hour and a half off to relax and nap. Tyson continued to stroll and he can tell his tale.

So I left Sara to her rest and headed out on the town. I decided to try and find a quiet bench beside a busy corner where I could grab people pictures. I went around looking without much success, so I decided to wander into a temple. As I entered the grounds a group of monks were studying something. As I was walking right by I decided to ask if they were studying english which they were. The one had a number of questions for me, so I sat down and helped with some grammer. We had to choose from on/for/to. Plus I helped explain a number of words such as cruise, and jogging. I sat and talked with them for the better part of an hour being tormented by red army ants at the same time. Those little buggers, once they start bitting they don't let go. At this point it started raining quite hard, so I agreed at their request to come back later (we agreed on 3:30pm to help some of the novices with english).

After than I checked out a couple of shops and headed back to Sara, because I was getting really hungry. Still need to find a busy corner for people shots. I choose to eat at this little place that always seemed to be busy. It was a Lao food place run by a Lao man and his white wife. The menu was very informative of the culture of the city and the food of the Lao people. We decided on two sampler trays (top shelf kinda place) and the food was good, I thought, very complex layering of flavors. Sara was nervous about eating off lettace but enjoyed half of the sticky rice samples. Sara didn't enjoy the flavors.

We headed back to the temple to talk with the novices, but when we got there the monk I had spoken with earlier had forgotten I was coming back. Oh well, at least we came back. Then we went over to another temple with mirrored stucko picture stories all over the outside walls. There we heard the monks sound the 4pm drum, quite a nice sound with the large drum and the brass dongs sounding.

After that we walked down bought our tickets for tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going on an elephant mahout training course. Where after being driven around on the elephants in the morning, we get taught how to drive the elephants in the afternoon, wash the elephants in the river, and then get to drive the elephants ourselves into the jungle where they sleep. We are both very excited about tomorrow.

Then we went shopping in an outdoor evening market that they set up by closing down the street. It is all tourist stuff, but if you look hard some of it is nice, and a little bargining and the price is reasonable. We got hungry before we finished the market and went for pizza, spring rolls, and beer. Now we are here catching you up with our day's activities.

See you tomorrow.

Tyson and Sara