Laurie's World

It’s just shy of 4pm and I’ve moved to the wall across the street from the hotel to get some sunshine. I guess I didn’t get enough today 🌞 the irony of this is I actually get better wifi here than on my patio. The downside will be to see how long my ipad can take the heat. I’ll save in draft form often cuz when she shuts down, she just shuts down, there is no warning.

I just love the way we travel and the people we meet. We met a couple from France today when we stopped at Utopia. The restaurant/bar that we went to when we were here 3 years ago. It is owned by a Canadian (Rob) as it turns out maybe there is a job opportunity for me??

Anyhow, we ordered drinks and a meat lovers pizza, YA, I know not Laos food. I’m kind of over that, I don’t really get what laos food is, either that or I don’t really like it. The truth is somewhere in between that. If I can get a yummy sandwich I’m in, otherwise whatever goes! I did branch out (again) on the shake and ordered banana Oreo. Another winner.

The pizza was exceptionally good, cost 50,000 kip ($6.50) and was just the perfect amount of pizza. Now the interesting part. We got to chatting with these folks (Adis and Matthew) sitting next to us. They happened to be from France. They started their trip in the capital, Vientiene, then went to VangVienne, then here to LP. 2.5 week journey for them in all. They have only been here for the first half week and they have already had all their cash ($350) stolen and been bitten by a snake in the jungle therefore spending an overnight in the hospital. (In VangVienne) so not sure if I blogged much about this when we were here before, but we happen to know that getting hurt or sick in Laos is a terrible TERRIBLE idea. The healthcare here is limited, primitive and not as sterile as one would like. This was confirmed by the first hand telling of the story by these folks…..wow. The first “hospital” had three beds and an oxygen tank. No English at all so they were sent on to another “hospital” in the area that at least had a doctor that spoke English (very limited), some supplies to draw blood to test her for poisonous venom and apparently a lot of cats?? They didn’t know exactly what was being done to her blood, something about shaking it and looking for a drop? Not sure at all, they did it multiple times and held her overnight to observe her. When she wasn’t dizzy or fevered and her blood did or didn’t “drop”? They said she was fine and sent her along. I forgot to ask how much it all cost, but guessing not much. Adis called her doctor back in France at some point and he advised her to be somewhere with a real/better hospital for at least five days to watch for symptoms. So they came to Luang Prabang, which is much bigger than VangVienne. If I started to feel woozy, I’ll tell you what I would do, hightail it to Bangkok. That is always our plan here. Have Bangkok Airways on speed dial!

So I wanted to have a photo with the only person I know to have survived a snake bite. Not that I know anyone who didn’t survive a snake bite, maybe I should say she’s the only person I know to have been bitten by a snake! Is that more accurate?

We walked acriss “the bridge” that has appeared on the river outside our hotel. We do not recall this bridge last time we were here. We recall a boat taxi. But perhaps an entrepreneurial spirit has come up with something here. A seasonal opportunity if you will.

Believe it or not, for what surely is considered a temporary structure, this is NOT the dodgiest bridge we have traversed in our travels is SE Asia. We happily paid up our 5,000 kip each and wandered across. The is a steady stream of foot traffic all day longs so this seems like a good financial opportunity for someone. Prolly right up there with the ice cream lady.😳

We then walked the loop back down the way to another bridge (a much more permanent solution) to cross back to our side of the river and ultimately past Utopia and back to our hotel.

Troy really gets into trying to acquire the perfect shot…..he is nothing if not dedicated to the cause.

In our travels we came across a puppy doing what we wanted to be doing.

Pink eggs??????? This is actually really weird…the fact that eggs can sit out in this heat all day, maybe multiple days, and the fact they are pink.

We found a merger of two great american entities?

And for Jay, a FLAPPY on the dash of a car. It was really going to town too, it might be a little sunny here…..perfect place for solar technology.

So it really jumped out at me yesterday morning as I sat on my patio watching the world go by on foot and bicycle, and all the gas guzzling ways like motorbike, scooter, car, truck, minivan, tuk tuk, etc etc. There are many ways to get around and I am mostly used to the level of noise that these things create. It just becomes the backdrop here. Then a whisper quiet little yellow and green pod thing whisked by and I thought I imagined it. Then a while later, another one whooshed by. The only noise they made was the sound of the tire rubber on the road. Just like a Prius. So you can imagine this caught my attention. But not so much that I would perform superman like moves to jump over the rail of my patio to chase it down the street or anything. That would require effort. Ha ha. So then in the afternoon when we were walking about, I saw one, I whipped out my camera and snapped some pictures to prove more to myself than anything I wasn’t imagining it.

So we are walking along and turn back down the road that will follow the Mekong and what do we see but this sign….

Holy crow, it’s a THING! A legit thing! I don’t know who sponsors it, but 3,000 kip is like 40 cents. How great is this? A circle tour of the town for fourty cents?? It’s an E-Car. I love it. So I may not have mentioned this but Luang Prabang (or at least part of it-the part we like) is a world heritage site. You can tell….it’s differrent. It’s like being inside the old city in Chiang Mai. Anyway, we (I) decide this is a must do. So according to the schedule, it should come along every 30 minutes. So we continue to walk the loop (the same loop we were going to walk anyway) and we see it several times, but never by a stop (although Troy assures me I could prolly catch it anywhere-I sort of want to play by the rules and catch it at a stop)(yes Angie M, we are both rules followers☺️). But what becomes apparent is that it is not on the schedule indicated on the sign. I have proof positive of this, but I’ll get to that later. No time that we see the E car does it ever have a passenger in it. And we saw it probably four times on the loop? It just whooshes past us, like a breath, very space age….hard to describe but it’s so out of place here. I am going to have to look this up on the internet and see what it is all about, and if anyone else is blogging about it. Maybe a travel forum is discussing it?

So we get back to the room, water up and I decide to go check it out, the route passes right by our hotel and according to the sign, there is a stop right down the street from us. My travel companion decides to let me try this one on my own. I don’t think he is quite as fascinated by this as I am. It is about 3:30 and I feel like it runs until about 5:30 (according to the sign?) so I’ve got time. So I go in search of my stop, as I’m walking to it, one passes me, aargh, will I have to wait 30 minutes I wonder! I note the time, 3:34. By the time I get to my stop it is 3:35. But the time on the sign says stop 5 has a schedule time of 3:44. So wait….if it runs every 30 minutes as the schedule indicates, it should either come by in 10 minutes like the schedule says, or in 28 minutes bcz one just passed. Well either way I’m going to sit and wait. What’s the difference between sitting on my patio watching the world and sitting on the side of the road watching the world 😉 well I can think of a few, but regardless, I sit down with my 3,000 kip clutched in my hand and wait. Traditional tuks tuks slow as they pass me and cry out (as they are inclined to do) TUK TUK?? TUK TUK?? I wave them on, determined to have my E-Car experience. Well sure enough I wait no more than 10 or 15 minutes and a little yellow and green pod slows to a crawl and the fellow inside is looking at me with either a confused look or skeptical of something. I think he was like holy cow, might I actually have a customer??? I leap up with such enthusiasm, he smiles and I say “can I ride?” With my money extended, he takes my money, waves me on and OFF WE GO. I took a selfie, although I’m so bad at selfies, but I had to record this.

So the trip was fantastic, open car, nice little breeze, out of the sun, and I felt great about my epic carbon toeprint. But it was a bit like riding in a fish bowl. A LOT of stares (and I choose to believe) smiles. Not sure if this was because the whole thing is still so new it attracts stares no matter what, or if they were all just laughing at the fact that the dude finally had a customer. Not sure if the E-Car is the cool new thing, or if the other tuk tuk drivers make fun of the poor guy who has to drive the E-Car. Like HE is the loser. It definitely is as new a concept as possibly can be, as the plastic was still on the seats and the car was mint condition. But I thought it was nifty…but I’m a simple girl.

When I got back to the room, Troy was like “did you do it?” And I was like “YA!! And it was awesome and we are totally doing it AGAIN-TOGETHER” He smiled 😄

I think I have officially overcome my challenges with photos this year and have now gone back and inserted photos where I said I would, plus inserted a blog entry that didn’t get uploaded before we left CM. So scroll back and check it out if you like (Mom-you know you will!)

Slept like a baby last night once I got down to it. Stayed up a little on the late side blogging, then started chatting with the kids, so it was close to 1:30am before I shut ‘er down for the night. That’s late for me, so I didn’t wake until 8:30 this morning. (Also very late for me). Started the day with a breakfast provided by the hotel. I rememeber the breakfast here from last year. I dunno, breakfasts are tough in my opinion. How do you make eggs and toast exciting? You just can’t really. This hotel offers a choice of crepe or egg, along with fruit juice, toast, coffee and fruit. The crepe was WAY better than I remembered. Or maybe I am just tired of fried eggs! The juice was pineapple, pretty good, freshly squeezed you could tell due to all the pulp, the coffe was battery acid, but that is expected now. There was a little two sectioned tray thing with mysterious condiments in it. At first I thought it was jam, but I gave it the sniff test, and it wasn’t jam. And I have NO idea what the other thing was….so I left it. The fruit was 2/3 good. I like pineapple and banana, but I intensely dislike papaya, so had to leave that behind.

A couple cups of battery acid later, I was ready to face the day. Now I have been saying quite openly that I am not concerned about the heat on this vacation. I have been heard saying ” once you get past 90F, it’s all the same, there is no difference between 93 and 98″ etc etc well let me just say 100 is hot, and it was at least 100 today. That is stinking hot, and I noticed it. It is distinctly hotter here than in Chiang Mai, and if possible, maybe more humid?

But despite the wall of heat, I decided to head out and check out a hotel I was considering moving to. Found it, it looks basically the same as we have here, and I really like where we are, so decided to just go ahead and book 6 additional nights here and be done with it. Once that was accomplished, I collected my walking partner and we headed off to find a world famous sandwich for lunch.

Oh YA!! There it is, chicken and avocado….15,000 kip ($1.80 USD)

Troy had a few more things in his, bacon and cheese and ham, so it was 25,000 kip ($3 usd)

We had fruit shakes which were 10,000 kip each. ($1.25) Troy went with his classic lemon (which is actually lime-but they call it lemon) and I went out on a branch and had a mango/dragonfruit combo. I really REALLY liked it. Might have a new favourite!

There is Vancy, making our sandwiches.

Thank goodness for the covered area to eat our lunch….Vancy asked me what sauces I wanted on my sandwich, did I want mayonnaise? Did I want sweet chili sauce? I looked at her jar of mayonnaise and thought about the heat, and looked around at what others were doing, and Mom you might not want to read this bcz I know how you feel about mayonnaise that sits out, let alone sits out in 100 degree days, but I went for it. I said yip, put it all on there, load it up. I don’t rememeber what we did about this three years ago when we were here. Maybe I said no mayo, I don’t know. But I ate the sandwich almost 6 hours ago and I feel fine. So I think it’s ok. I’ll let you know, pretty sure I might go back for another sandwich for supper 😳

Now have a look at this poor guy! Guessing he had a scooter accident. We see this all the time over here is SE Asia. I guess it’s why folks think WE might be a tiny bit crazy for riding here. But we are smart about it, very careful and took a 30 hour course at home….so this won’t ever be me…

I can tell you, this dude is in a world of hurt. I said to Troy, “can you imagine how much the heat and sweat would sting on all that open road rash?” He was like “I can’t even imagine having the road rash, never mind the sweating part.” It would be excruciating. But I do know he will love his sandwich…..and Troy is pretty sure he loved me taking his picture 😉hahahahaha

So some perspective, our 2 sandwiches, and two fruit shakes costs 60,000 kip which is about $7.40 USD, so pretty decent lunch all in all. We were full and happy. After our lunch we decided to do a walk about…a very normal activity for us after a meal, also a regular part of our routine is to stop and get ice cream. 🍦So usually we spend somewhere between 10 and 40 baht (30 cents-$1.30) each on ice cream. About 45 minutes into our walk, we saw an “ice cream vendor” walking down the street with her cart, so we decided to go ahead and get some ice cream. We picked a couple items and Troy handed over some money. We are still kind of in the 50,000 kip bill stage due to the bank machine at the airport. So Troy handed her 2×50,000 as we do the math and see “70” as our total, still not converting this in our heads though as she has only given us 2×10,000 back in change and we are thinking it should be 30,000. So she takes the 2×10,000 back and gives us a 20,000. We go round and round on the math a couple times, with a lot of pointing etc as she clearly doesn’t speak a WORD of English and we take another 10,000 literally out of her hands then she realizes her error, laughs and laughs and we laugh and laugh as we wander off. Then I do the real math and realize we just spent more than $8.50 on two ice cream sandwiches. 😳😳 that was more than our lunch cost!!! Clearly special prices for tourists, wondering if maybe the signage actually came from Thailand and was meant to be baht. The prices were exactly what we would have paid in thailand, Troy’s magnum is always 40 baht and my cone is 25 or 30. And that is what it said on sign, 40 and 30 NOT 40,000 and 30,000. Aw jeez….I’m glad we stuck it out for the right change…..

Hahahahahahahaha, someone tried to get us today….but they didn’t know who they were messing with…..

But let me start at the beginning.

We did have a wonderful lunch at Ginny Cafe today. I had chicken with cashew nut and Troy had panang. Always solid choices, Ian and I did enjoy a thai iced coffee

Hold on….interruption! I am hearing Oh Canada blasted at top volume from somewhere down the street or across the River! Awwwwwwwww, that makes me feel great. Happy Canada Day!!!

Ok, back to the day. A very delicious iced coffee, Cafe Yen as they call it in thai….

Thank you Tee for whipping those up for us!

Then since we were to catch what is technically an international flight, we left for the airport at 1:30 for our 3:30 flight. Ian took us to the airport in his new car, which was a really nice treat not having to fuss around with a tuk tuk. That is Ian’s car on the right in front of the restaurant.

So off we went to the airport and all went smoothly, except for the grief over the mango jam and me forgetting my bag at the security X-ray counter, um YA, I was that person. I was at the immigration counter submitting my departure card and they started whistling and whooping back at the X-ray machines to get everyone’s attention, holding up my bag. 😊 Oops, YA, that’s mine, so I had to ask the fellow to wait while I ran back to get it. . I guess I was just a little distracted from having my carry on searched….I know, excuses….So we get through and I think it has kind of become a “thing” for us to get Dairy Queen at the Chiang Mai airport (see previous blog entries for evidence). So we went ahead and did this, but let’s just say the sizes are very different here than in North America. There is the standard small, med, large and “take home”.

The small is about the size of a Dixie cup and the take home is just a little smaller than a North American medium. So you can figure out the rest. Regardless, this poses quite a dilemma as we are kind of in the “take home” range, but clearly can’t bring soft serve ice cream home with us, so we have to eat it. So there I was walking through the airport with not one, but two “take home” size DQ blizzards looking like a total pig, but really only holding what we would normally consider an average size treat. Twas good though….82 baht for a take home size (that’s $2.60 usd)

Completely uneventful flight, tiny plane a 2/2 propeller plane, that was just like the last time we flew Laos airlines to Laos. It is a 60 minute flight and somehow they are able to take off, serve drinks, a snack, bring around customs forms, collect garbage and land all in 60 minutes. Isn’t that something?

So when we were waiting to board, Troy says to me “do you remember how much the trip to town cost?” Good lord, no I do not, BUT I bet I blogged about it….so I got on that phone (thanks for the international data Tmobile) and went back to 2012 when we were last here. There it was 50,000 kip. For an air con mini bus, 3 people max (that’s for a 7 seater Van)-weird I know. So after we come out of airport and go to bank machine to withdraw 2,000,000 kip, yes 2 million, we see what we would call a SongTao in Thailand, pull up dropping off some folks. He catches my eye and smiles and nods, so I feel good about him taking us back to town for perhaps less than the aircon mini bus??? I sashayed up to the girl who just got off and asked her if she spoke English, yes she does, so I ask her how much they paid. She says 40,000 kip. So this is good I think to myself. A whole $1.25 savings over the 50,000 kip airport arranged shuttle. My haggling husband however thinks we can haggle lower even. Once he had taken care of his other customers, I ask the driver how much to go back to the old town, he says 40,000 kip. I say “OK” and start to hop in. OOPS, forgot to haggle, and Troy gives me the look. I’m like, ah, it’s ok, I’ll let him have the buck. Well we peel out of there on two tires I am sure and are well into bouncing down the road when Troy says “did you tell him where to go?” Hahahahahahahaha I realize no I did not, but then again he didn’t ask, so I’m thinking let’s see what happens! The reason we squealed out of the airport was bcz the taxi mafia doesn’t let outside drivers come in and pick up folks like that….it’s all tightly regulated etc etc and price fixed. Thus the thought by Troy we could haggle him down, bcz he was picking us up illegally anyway and was going to have to go back to town with no fare. But anyway I was committed to the 40,000 kip. So as luck would have it, it’s like he knew where to take us as he literally drove right to our hotel and as he was pulling up I just tapped the side of the truck and indicated it was our place. Yay!! See it always works out. So this is where it gets exciting. So we try to pay him the 40,000 fare with a 50,000 kip note (which is all we have bcz duh, that’s all the bank machine at the airport where he picked us up, GIVES OUT!) he turns his pockets inside out and tells us he can’t make change, he just can’t….and so maybe we could just give him a tip, and he giggles and starts to put the 50 in his pocket. He had a 20,000 kip note but not a 10. So Troy says no, we are only going to pay 40, and he says again, “well maybe it’s just a tip then”. Now I’m getting mad, this is ridiculous. There is no way he doesn’t have change…..so I take his 20 and go into the hotel to ask for two 10s. Poor guy at the desk is like a deer in the headlights at this point and he couldn’t make change. So I come back out to the street and look at the guy and say, “I’ll find a store to make change”, so I take HIS 20,000 kip note and start walking. This guy (and Troy prolly too-although I secrely think he is now quietly cheering me on-you go girl!)looks like he can hardly believe this is happening. I didn’t have to go more than a block before I saw a small mini mart and asked the girl inside to make change, she did happily and even broke down the second 10,000 for me. So I came back to the tuk tuk driver gave him his 10,000 note and said “there you go”. YA, you don’t get that stuff past me, not anymore. All this over a $1.25. Buts it’s not the money, it’s the point and how he did it. All giggly, and teehee. Like we would just roll over. If I want to tip someone, I’ll tip them.

Ok, so that’s that. The best news ever is that we got the ground floor room at the Saynamkan with the patio in front. It’s perfect, I love it and I’m going to have the best week here! That’s where I blogged earlier and but when we came home after supper I only lasted an hour maybe bcz the mozzies got thick. I have bug spray on, so not at any risk, I just get irritated with them fluttering around and buzzing in my ears. Plus there were three french guys out there on the next patio smoking, so that was all kinds of gross, but they eventually moved on.

Our room is the first one on the ground floor right after the restaurant…We are moving to our old room (103) on the other end of the ground floor on July 4th when it becomes available. It is a little quieter not being right next to the restaurant. We are in 101 right now.

We were surrounded by smokers at supper tonight too which is reasonably unappetizing when you are trying to eat. These people (Europeans) smoke whilst eating their meal if you can imagine. It’s the most disgusting habit….

That’s my supper, I had sweet and sour chicken. So welcome to Laos, where they can turn the most benign meal into something spicy. Sweet and sour is a “no spicy” dish, but this sure had some kick to it. There were these little green peppers I could see and dig out with a lot of seeds. Troy says to me “are those bell peppers or ghost peppers?” Good lord, they better not be ghost peppers. But they were certainly NOT bell peppers. Anyway, several tissues later, it was a good meal. We wanted to have Indian food as we had an absolute favourite place here last time that had the most amazing Indian food. In fact we specifically only had Indian food once in Chiang Mai so as to wait to get here for this food. But as often happens, things change, and the place is GONE. So we will have to find other food to get crazy about. Troy had Phad thai and once again, while tasty, it wasn’t phad thai as we know it.

We walked down to the night market, jeez this is a great market, so much quieter and more civilized than the markets in Chiang Mai where you could just as easily get trampled as not.
May have bought a few things….but will definitely be going back! The view up and down the street. Very pretty french style architecture here, just like I remember….trying to add more photos, but it isn’t working anymore. Maybe the ipad knows it is past my bedtime. I’ll try again tomorrow😃

Also, It is really hot here, hotter than chaing Mai, in fact I just checked the weather and it is going to be an even 100F the next three days….yikes.

Ok folks, I am back, I am refreshed and inspired and ready to get back at blogging. Due in no small part to reading this gal’s blog…..

https://cocotraveller.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/an-ode-to-the-bum-gun/

Hilarious and SO true….

Literally had the best time vegging out in Chiang Mai. I do so love that city and the friends we have there. Riam, Ian and Tee, Richie (currently AWOL in the UK) and Landon who departed yesterday for sandier parts of the world (AKA Saudi!) many tears shed over that departure. He is actually spending a few weeks back in the USA sorting out his visa situation before heading to Saudi to teach English lit to 8/9th graders for two years. Working on making a visit happen! Not sure but it would be wonderful…

We did not do much at all other than get massages, eat, walk about, eat, sleep, eat, visit, visit visit. It was literally exactly what the doctor ordered, given the year we have had and the year I have coming up with my own schooling!

I was up and bright eyed at 9am for a “new student orientation” webinar for my school this morning. Yikes, that was not only the most boring thing I have done, but a total waste of 90 minutes of my vacation I’ll never get back. But it had to be done regardless. After that we checked out and got a taxi with all our bags etc over to Ginny Cafe so we could have our last lunch….before we settled down to that, we popped over to say good bye to Riam and she gave me a huge sack of mangoes! What a treat as they are from her garden and “near to her garden” 😉 as she brought me two different kinds. Can’t wait to dig into those! So I am a tiny bit worried about being able to take these with me to Laos as I know where we live, we can’t even take a stupid apple across the border without a national inquiry, actually even WITH the national inquiry, there is still NO taking the apple across the border? Here I am planning on getting onto a plane with 3 kilos of mangoes? Riam assures me “no problem, it ok!” I’m like really? 😳 So when we get back to Tee, I ask her and she is like “yes, no problem”. Super stoked! What ends up actually being the issue at the airport is my mango jam. I can take fresh fruit, but jarred jam? That raised some eyebrows and warranted a full bag search/consultation with a coworker. I got it through, but it caused a tiny fuss. I fell in love with the Baan Bakery by the Chiang Mai gate house where we stayed the first week, and they would put out fresh homemade mango jam every day, so one day I was there in time to buy some, 70 baht ($2.10 usd) for a decent size jar. Probably a 16oz jar or so. How could I not? I sense I am rambling a bit, but this is what happens when I don’t blog every day, the story gets jumbled. Anyhow, I bought two jars…so sure enough no problem with the mangoes and they sit right on my table in the room waiting for me to get into. I just need to figure out how to peel them….as I don’t have a knife. Maybe I can sweet talk the hotel into lending me one? 🙏

Love these two!

Gonna go get some supper ATM, will upload this so as to not lose it, and will send more when I get back!