We’ve had a really fun few days back in Luang Namtha. Our first day back we were here by ourselves and took Alek, a local Lao guy who works at our guesthouse to lunch at the nearby restaurant. He was so happy that he decided to cook us breakfast the next morning and also offered for us to accompany him to the temple celebrations on today, as well as visit his house in his village. We jumped at the chance to do this!
He made us an awesome Lao breakfast with 4 different vegetarian dishes and they were all awesome! We invited Tricia to come to the morning temple celebration with us too and so we all met at 6.30am and set out. It was amazing to be invited and we were the only white people there in amongst several hundred Lao’s and everyone was so friendly. When the ceremony was finished Alek asked the monks if we could have our photos with them and they agreed – it was such a cool morning. Then we went to his house and had sticky rice with some kind of yellow root vegetable. It was so interesting to see the village and inside a traditional home; the walls were wallpapered with newspaper articles and calendars and other various pictures, and they have 4 small wooden chairs for the whole house.
We’ve been running up to the temple each morning and also visiting some days for the sunset as well because it is just so spectacular. We’ve also found even more unidentified foods, some more fruits which we have never seen or heard of before, and the night market ladies basically know us now and we can order our ‘usual’ dish at a couple of places. Last night we saw a small boy looking a bit dismayed so Dre went up and bought him a blow up green dinosaur and the look of pure joy and delight on his and his 2 friends faces was totally unparelleled with anything we have witnessed before and was really priceless for us. His mother and friends were so excited and he ran around the market for the next 10 minutes or so totally elated. It makes us want to do that everywhere we go! It was awesome! Eric and Emma left today for Nong Khiaw, where we were originally going to go tomorrow (before deciding that we might stay here and go back to Muang Sing for another weekend) and Tricia is going there tomorrow, so they have convinced us to go with them instead of staying here and we have all decided to catch the same boat on Sunday down to Luang Prabang. Our photos of the past few days are here.