Friday, February 28, 2003

Gone Swimmin'

AFter the internet last night, I was waiting for Courtney outside the internet place with my 2 hour old Beer Lao (now warm), and one of the locals asked me if my Beer Lao was cold or warm. I remarked it was warm, I'd been drinking it for 2 hours (I'm not a beer drinker), he asked me where I was from, told him Canada, then he asked where in Canada, I tell him Saskatchewan, then we asked where in Saskatchewan (he could pronounce it!), and I said Moose Jaw, and he says to me he knows Moose Jaw, he has a girlfriend in Moose Jaw. He spent many years in Canada, and travelled across the country, although he was never in Moose Jaw himself. It's a small, small world, sometimes. We got talking some more, he now does trekking tours, but not organized ones. If you want to do some trekking somewhere, you tell him where, and for how long, and he'll arrange one for you. I asked him about teaching English in Laos, and he said that what he does, and he could arrange something like that. We made arrangements to meet up with him on Friday at 7:00 or so, and we could talk.

AFter the internet, Court and I went back to the guest house and sat around the lobby, and the guy (boy...16 years old) working the "night shift" at the guest house was there, along with a guy from Japan. We sat around, and talked with them, Courtney is trying to learn as much Laos as possible, so is getting his help on how to say certain things. This boy can speak Lao, Thai, English, and more French than Court and I know, and he's only 16. He goes to school in the morning and afternoon, then comes to the guest house to work for the night. We finally went to bed about 11:30 or so.

Our room is in the front of the guest house, facing the street, and it's a very busy street, and there's a school right across the street too, so there's all kinds of racket in the morning, and Courtney couldn't sleep. I was already awake. So, we went for a jog for about an hour, it was actually very invigorating! We jogged through some residential areas of town, there are some nice houses. One street we passed along was freshly paved, and the kids were out there on their roller skates (the old fashion kind), skating up a craze.

AFter the run, we found some breakfast, a nice place not too far away from us, but less touristy, so a little cheaper, and it was very good. We had an American breakfast.

AFter that, we walked around for a while, then back to the guest house, and sat around the lobby for a while, and Jay and Lizzy, a couple we met on the boat were, moving in to our guest house. We had told them about our Siam Hammock we had bought, and they were very anxious to see them, so I opened mine up and set it up in the lobby of the guest house. I think they like them, sounds like they might try and get some.

AFter that, we started walking around again. It was frickin hot today. We walked by a temple, and some monks started chatting us up. They said hi, asked us how it was going, and we asked them what they were doing. They were building a concrete wall (I got a picture). We talked with them a while, then continued to the end of the street, and went down to the river (Nam Khan), and found a swim spot, where a all kinds of kids and monks were swimming in the river, having a great time.

A word about the monks. When I say monks, you may think old men. Not true. There are TONS of monks in Luang Phabang, and 99% of them are young, I'd say between 10 and 20 years of age. And they speak awesome english, we were shocked. It's almost perfect english. They must get put through some real english classes in their monkhood. It's nice.

Anyway, Court and I debated about going back to the guest house and getting our swimming stuff and swimming with them. There were no foreigners at all swimming, it was all locals, so we kinda felt a little unsure about it, but decided to do it anyway. We walked back to the guest house (took us about 25 minutes, it was a long way!) got our stuff, then decided to take a small tuk-tuk back to the swimming hole. This tuk-tuk was a motorcycle with a small carriage attached to the side, barely enough space to sit Court and I. He wanted to charge us 10000 baht to go that short distance, we got him down to 5000 baht though. Still, he made good money off of us that time. Court is also respectful of the Lao culture, and wore a t-shirt and shorts over her bikini, which is the right thing to do. The monks down there were very friendly, saying Hello (Sabadee in Lao) and asking us how it's going, and where we're from. The really young kids swimming were also very friendly, I don't think they get too many foreigners swimming in the swimming hole with them. They may have been mocking us though, as they would sometimes throw seaweed at us, and start spashing us for fun, but it may have been more of a friendly gesture than a mocking gesture. We think the older kids were definately laughing behind our backs at us. One monk asked us if we were married, to which we replied yes...it seemed like the right answer at the time. :-)

The current in the river was very, very strong. It was fun. And it went into some small rapids, that you could float/swim through. A lot of the kids had inner tubes, and were going into the water way up around the bend and innertubing down the river.

There river was kind of dirty. Not polluted dirty, but mucky dirty, probably partly because of all the activity, plus the fast current. And we found some pretty strange things floating down the river. First was an apple, I grabbed it, and Courtney and I started playing catch with the small kids, who really enjoyed it. Then a half eaten watermelon slice, came floating down. A little later, a piece of styrofoam. It was all very fun, though.

We went back to the guest house and had cold showers. ONce again, the there's no power in most of the city. It went off about 7:00AM, and it's now 7:10PM, and still no power in most of the city. This internet place I'm using at the moment is in the "wired for business" part of the city. Anyway, after the shower, we exchanged some more money, because it's the weekend, and we won't be able to until Monday now. Then we ate supper at the market.

Tomorrow we are getting up real early, because at 6:00AM all the monks line the main street in town for alms or something, so it should be a good sight. Then we have to head real early to the bus station and hopefully get a bus to Nong Khieu (or something like that, I forget), north of here. I don't know what the internet access will be like up north, so who knows when I'll be one again.

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