Well, I’m back in Luang Namtha after a 1-day trip to Muang Sing, a town right next to the Chinese border. Luang Namtha is fabulously interesting and scenic, and I really wish I could go exploring, but I am pretty much wiped out after a couple long bus rides, so I have (very reluctantly) decided [...]
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve arrived in Luang Namtha, where Internet connectivity is both insanely slow and extremely expensive. Also, I suspect this keyboard of being a leftover Soviet secret plot to sabotage American productivity–it misses about half the keys, and occasionally does totally random things. (It does not, however, [...]
Well, today I decided to wander about town, visit the craft shops, and do the mandatory museum/temple tour. I discovered, not to my enormous surprise, that the vast majority of textiles shops are selling tourist schlock, and that very few Lao shopkeepers speak English well enough to authenticate the “real” pieces for me.
However, I did [...]
Well. Today has been Official Textile Excess Day. (Which of you wags was it that suggested the “tien” as a unit of excess, with standard behavior measured in millitiens? ) I’ve bought three gorgeous woven silk tapestries (two 100% naturally dyed!), half a kilo of naturally dyed reeled-silk yarn, half a pound of undyed [...]
Tastes like game–very, very, very dark meat. In places, much like chicken gizzard.
And now you know.
Oh yeah, and chicken feet don’t taste like much of anything. Rubbery and chewy on the outside, crunchy on the inside (if you insist on eating the bones). I don’t really understand what people see in them.
(There’s almost [...]
So, I spent today exploring Luang Prabang, which it turns out is a classic “quiet, charming, well-preserved heritage site”–which is to say, quite touristy, but not at all obnoxious. (There is very little junk amongst the tourist kitsch, and the handwork overall is very high quality.) Lots of shops selling textiles, lots of Internet cafes, [...]
Well, after eight hours of some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world, I’ve arrived in Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang is the second largest city in Laos–population 30,000. (Which tells you just how rural Laos is!) It’s also home to the second most revered artifact in Southeast Asia, Pra Bang–a Buddha statue made out [...]
Latest news: I jumped off a cliff today.
Twice.
Last night I signed up for a kayaking trip down the river, with a tour outfit named Wildside. I’d walked through all of Vangvieng–which takes about fifteen minutes–and decided they were the most interesting/professional outfit in town, and the guidebook said they were excellent.
They were. Our [...]
Well, I’m in Vangvieng, where Internet access is both unreliable and expensive ($1.80/hour instead of $0.60–but more to the point, connections fail a LOT). Vangvieng is a very small town that exists mainly for adventure trekking–every place in town is either a guesthouse, restaurant, tour operator, or minimart, so it really exists solely for foreign [...]
First, the website has been updated with the Vietnam photos. I apologize for the poor formatting in places–there are some photos that still need cropping–but for four hours of frantic Webwork/sorting through about 500 photos, it’s not so bad. (I apologize for not including the Laos pix, especially the glorious sunsets over the Mekong River–but [...]