Thought for the day It’s 6pm on Sunday evening and I am sat at the Vista wifi cafe in Vientiane surrounded by laptops. Virtually every table is staring at one (me included) even whilst eating dinner there are people leaning across their plates typing away. They’re not sat alone either. (I currently am. Matt is off wandering for an hour as it’s our anniversary tomorrow so he’s doing some shopping I assume). ...
Happy birthday Dulcie! Decided to go tubing again today and our mission was to go all the way down the river back to Vang Vieng before 6pm. We started out at 10:30 and met a couple from Holland called Edo and Annalies in the tuk-tuk there who had done trans-mongolian, china, thailand, cambodia, now laos and onto myanmar and thailand. We arranged to meet for a drink later so they could give us their Cambodia book. ...
Happy 30th Birthday Lisa & Happy Birthday Leah! Tuesday Back to teaching yesterday and today was jam-packed. Had the same class at the primary school again. This time Mikael another volunteer came and helped me. Tuesday evening I taught Level 1-1 again on my own this time. Which was fine for a while but soon became rowdy. I played a running game with them where they had to draw pictures on the board and write the word I was saying like Cat, Hat, Fan, etc. Davone came to help out with calming them down in Lao and taught the word for quiet – Miet!. It was very entertaining watching them draw with their classmates in their team shouting at them. Absolute carnage but good fun. ...
It’s my birthday and my nan’s. Happy Birthday Nan!! Early brekkie at the most basic cafe you can imagine with a lovely little family running it. We’d been here a couple of times before as the views are fantastic. The little girl is so cute. She can hardly be 1 year old and likes teetering around in her mum’s high heels. Hired the same moped again for 5 days. I am becoming a pro now :) And headed off to the farm for the 9am meeting. Lots of volunteers turned up to do temporary teaching this time plus Ben who had taught 2 weeks previously. ...
Today changed our opinion of Vang Vieng. We saw a different side to it. No teaching so we had the whole day to ourselves. After a good-lie in and a chilled out brekkie lounging on raised platforms overlooking the Nam Song river and the karsts beyond, we took the moped for a drive across the countryside. And I mean across it. There aren’t many roads the other side of the river and to get to many of the “sightseeing” places such as caves and viewpoints you need to go across farmland, dodging chickens and cows and rocks and streams. ...
Before heading to Laos I contacted the EEFA Project. EEFA stands for Equal Education For All and is based at the Organic Farm 4km from Vang Vieng in Phoudindeng. I signed up for 2 weeks of volunteering as an English teacher. A chance to use the TEFL skills and to give something back. Monday morning I was scared to death. I had no real experience of teaching or of working with kids whatsover. They were going to eat me alive. ...
Vang Vieng is a 7.5 hour bus journey from LP. We were told we were buying a ticket for the 6 hour special VIP trip. They forgot to mention that when the 8am and 9am bus was already full, the 9:30am bus was in fact a less expensive VIP trip with no loo and dismal aircon that took longer but were happy to charge us the same price. If anyone else in Luang Prabang is going to Vang Vieng the ticket at the bus station costs only 90,000 kip for the 9:30 trip. We paid 140,000kip at a travel agent on the main street. OK it included pick up by a tuk tuk but it was only 10-min journey to the bus station. No way that cost 50,000kip! Be warned. (You do get “lunch” included which was a stop at 3pm and the journey was over at 4pm). ...
Whilst I spent my mornings at Big Brother Mouse, Matt concentrated on stolencamerafinder (check it out!). We almost fell into a normal routine. We’d both be up before 8am, ready to go get a breakfast baguette & a strong Lao coffee or Jasmine tea from the local Lao ladies. Matt would have chicken and I would go for Lao-style which is tofu, omelette and some brown hairy stuff. Then we’d part ways and I’d go on my 10 min walk through the town or the morning market to Big Brother Mouse and Matt would go back to the guest house and get coding. He met a Chinese guy there who was also working. He’d been travelling around Asia for 2 years doing research on trees and their effect on agriculture. ...
As well as being Valentine’s Day today it is 6 years today since our “non-date” in Wagamamas in Bristol when we hoped no-one we knew would pass the window and spot us just being 2 “friends” out for a meal on what just happened to be Valentine’s Day. Since then I’ve had the most amazing years ever. And I’m so glad that Matt was up for the same mad plan of giving up everything and going travelling. I’m having the best time with the perfect guy. I’m a very lucky girl. ...
After 7 days in Luang Prabang we are still not ready to leave. This has to be one of our favourite places of the trip for easy living. It is a beautiful place and the people are so friendly. I have been volunteering at Big Brother Mouse, a local charity which creates books for kids in Lao and English. They encourage tourists to buy books from their shop or from the market to give to kids who live in villages. If you have enough money you can sponsor a “book party” where they go to a village and tell the kids about books, play games with them and let them select a book each. Or you can sponsor a book itself to get it published. Unfortunately I don’t have that kind of money at the moment but fortunately it’s possible to help out in other ways. So I spent 2 hours every morning this week going to their office and chatting to young Lao people who want to improve their English. They were mainly 18 & 19 year old students and one or two locals who are working in tourism. ...