Lao We're Talkin'

I dipped into the real Lao today, and it was great.

It didn't start that way. It started with skype calls and farang lane here in Luang Prapang, and a jaunt to the acro-yoga thai massage compound. Which was fine, and included a dip in a local river. Oooh that current was fast!

That's where the local experience began. Lots of local people bathe and swim in the Mekong and other rivers.

On my way back from the compound, the chain on my Chinese girls bike fell off. As I struggled to fix it, 3 Lao kids came up to me and started to help. Then a few more gathered round, and before I knew it there were 8 little 7 to 11 year olds all gathered round the farnang with the cowboy hat, giggling and letting me take their pictures and then gawking at the videos I shot of them (no they weren't dirty you sickos).

At one point I ran out of Lao words to say (which doesn't take long when you have a vocabulary of 5 words), so I popped out my phrase book and started to point to body parts like my nose and head and say those, and they loved it and a few knew the words in English too. Oooh that was so sweet and fun.

After playing with the kids, I rode my bike down the dirt road and back to the main road, of sorts anyway, and happened upon a truly local market. To me with things are more enjoyable than visiting a market, especially when I'm travelling.

This one was great. I bought some veggies, drew lots of attention as the tall (relatively) white guy with the shaved head and cowboy hat, and also tried to decipher what dead carcass of an animal one woman was selling. I popped out my Lao phrasebook and tried dog? cat? bear? Nope. I never did find out. I'll spare you the gruesome photo. But not the video! Coming by June 2009, suckers.

The market felt different than a Thai market, far simpler and closer to the ground but just as rich and vibrant. I topped off the experience by buying a plastic bag (everything is in plastic bags here) of freshly squeezed sugar cane over ice. Yum. I didn't want to risk drinking any once sufficient ice had melted, so I gave the bag to a kid, who seemed to enjoy it.

It's experiences like this that feed me and give me hope. And yet they feel hard to plan. It's like they happen or they don't, sometimes in big waves, sometimes in tiny trickles.

I have this idea of really interacting with the culture, but that's tough when you travel, because I speak 5 words of Lao and after a while smiling and nodding becomes, well, the end. So what to do?! Just keep goin' with it I guess. And keep snapping this ooh Roni's so off the beaten path shot wherever I go. This one I just photoshopped from my Costa Rica trip. Not bad eh?

More to come. Much love!
Roni

ps - All this said, I will eat a hamburger, see a movie, and maybe even go bowling before I leave Luang Prapang! A buffalo burger!

pps - My friend Mia is travelling through Asia and her blog rocks. http://miamatthews.blogspot.com I get paid $10 for each new visitor, so please do hit it up. Thanks.