Roosters started crowing about 5:00AM. It was cool last night, I was ok, but everone kept steeling blankets from me. I had Court on one side, and Jon on the other side, and spent half the night trying to keep Courtney warm, trying to pry pieces of blanket from Jon or Courtney whenever I could.
I woke up about 7:45 to see a bunch of children staring at us from the bedroom door. Before that, all the little girls were peering into the house and bedroom through the cracks in the bamboo, hoping to sneak a peek at us. We must be really fascinated to them, these white people who very rarely show up. Everyone is family here too, no one knocks before entering a house, just like the kids staring at us in the morning, they just walked into Guy's house like it was there own.
AFter we got up, Guy made us coffee. It was Laos coffee, and was it ever good. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It's very, very strong, he adds a drop of sugar, and uses sweetened condensed milk, and it tastes soo good, it actually tastes like a really good Cafe-Mocha, it seems to have a hint of cocoa flavour in it, but there is no cocoa (or chocolate) added. We had quite a few cups of this stuff.
Guy started breakfast about 9:15, croissants with something inside of them. Very tasty.
After breakfast, we went up and played some badminton at the takraw net, then Guy showed us the homemade rifles they make in the villages. He also let us shoot them, then he showed us how they make their own gunpowder (from bat shit, that they collect from caves), and make their own bullets, then he took us to a blacksmith's blower, where they fashion metal tools, then to another hut where the chief played some really cool, fancy wind instrument for us, then we visited the house of an opium addict. This was kinda sad. It was 12 noon, and two guys were in the house, laying down (which is how you smoke opium, it seems), smoking up, and between them, a tiny baby sleeping in a cradle. (I'll talk a little more about opium in a later journal.)
Guy then cut us up some sugarcane, which is quite yummy.
We noticed that there are hardly any teenage girls around, but lots of teenage boys...where are they???????
We had lunch, and started hiking at about 2:00. Very tough hike, lots and lots of up, steep up. Courtney was getting pissed off. Walked along some nice cliffs, and saw some really spectacular views, though. When we finally summitted, the views of other mountain ranges was amazing, rocky peaks, like one might see in the Canadian Rockies, minus the snow and glaciers. I asked Guy about snow, and he told me they never get snow, even in the highest of elevations, despite how cool it could get.
When we finally arrived at the village, it was very different from others we had visited. It looks like they're living on a lunar landscape. Or a Martian landscape, because of all the red rock and soil. There is rocks jutting up all over the place here. They use rocks to build fences and build up land for houses, not bamboo/wood fences and houses on stilts. They have a huge watering hole in the middle of town, where they wash themselves and their clothes, and where the livestock drink and clean themselves.
It wasn't long before the children came to gawk. Word travels fast in these communities. They are a lot shier (shyer? more shy!) here, a lot of them shy away from getting their pictures taken. I remember two little girls who were peaking their heads over a rock fence from the neighbouring house, and when I pointed my camera at them, they would duck behind the fence, and giggle. So we sat outside our house and handed out candy and balloons again. There was this one kid, which we named aggressive kid, who would fight tooth and nail for every balloon we let go, then he'd take them back to his little brother, give them to him, then come back and stand in front of us, all innocent looking, like he didn't have a balloon.
Darkness fell, it started to get cool out, and we waited for supper. Kind of gross, rice with sardine sauce, pumpkin sauce and some other kind of gross sauce. BTW, supper was not very good last night either.
After supper, we drew dancy wrappers to see who would get the one bamboo bed. Courtney and I won, the others had to sleep on the floor. Because we got the bed, though, we had to take the crappier blankets, the floor people got the thick comforters.
As we were waiting for supper, a remark was made about Courtney and I dating, which we aren't. They were totally shocked. They couldn't believe that we weren't dating. They said, in fact, that they thought we hda been dating for a long time, maybe even married, because we act just like an old, married couple, that had been married for years. Hahaha.
Bedtime......
Albino monk lives here.
No comments:
Post a Comment