The Island - Day 2

Court got up about 8:00, I got up about 8:15, I had a horrible sleep, it was very hot in the room.

After we got up, lady made us Laos coffee (did I mention Laos coffee is great!), Court bathed, I shaved, and breakfast came about 10:30, an omelette and a loaf of bread, very tasty. After breakfast, the lady climbed up a fruit tree, about 20 feet up, and got us some fruit. This lady must be at least 40 years old, and climbed the tree like a monkey. It was unreal.

We swapped some coins with Sapir, he collects coins from all over the world. Then we played some Uno, then about 12:30, got the boat and paddled to another island, and swam to another close island from there, lounged around, then paddled back to our guest house island. After getting back to our guest house, we lounged, laid in our hammocks, played cards until supper.

Before we went boating, she asked us if we wanted fish or chicken, and we all agreed on chicken. AFter we got back, we could hear the chicken making noises in the chicken, then after a while, no more noises. I remember looking over to the cooking area, and there she was chopping up the chicken. Mmmm, doesn't get much fresher than that!!

Supper was BBQ chicken, rice, and french fries, very good, very good. This woman can cook!

During supper, we saw lightning and thunder, and then about 7:45, the storm rolled in, but the main part of teh storm missed us, but we still got quite a bit of rain, and a nice light show. It lasted about half an hour. Courtney was a little spooked about the whole thing, on a very deserted island, with a big storm rolling in...it's the thing horror movies are made of.

No roosters on this island! YAY! And the cats were quiet last night. YAY!

Everyone went to bed about 11:00, except me, I wasn't tired for some reason, so I laid in the hammock for a while, then went for a skinny dip in the lake about 11:30. I've never done anything like that before, it felt so amazing! I felt totally free of everything for those 20 minutes! Awesome experience!

A little about this lake. It's Nam Ngum Reservoir/Lake (or something close to that). It's a huge lake created in the 1970's when they damned a river to creat hydro electricity. The damn was created using Western expertise, but no one thought to harvest all the lumber that would be submerged in the lake before creating the damn. The result was a lake filled with rotting and decaying trees, which kept muddling up the turbines in the damn, and the decaying trees were sucking oxygen out of the lake, so no fish could survive. The result. The Laos people invented underwater chainsaws, and swapped their lumberjack boots for fins, and started an underwater lumber harvesting operation. Nowadays, old, dead trees stick out of the lake, almost giving the lake a kind of creepy feeling, very surreal, not like anything I've ever seen before.

The lake is also home to a huge $200 million, 200 room resort with 18-hole golf course, Laos first post-communist Casino (the casino only accepts Thai baht...kip is not accepted), swimming pool, massage, many different water sports (jetski's, parasailing, etc.) and everything else you'd expect out of a huge resort. Rooms range from $15-40 (according to Rough Guide), Courtney and I talked about splurging for a night there, but ended up not. The lake is very, very underutilised as a tourist resort area, still, but that's sure to change in the next 10-20 years.