in the west we have two-car garages. in laos they have two-satellite-dish houses.
Rambo Fusion: first I had to take a picture of it. Then I had to eat there. It turned out to be Korean barbecue and was quite tasty!
i don't know about you, but for me, nothing says sweet like 'fish.'
rented a motorbike with a friend i met on the bus and spent a whole day exploring the villages between luang nam tha and vieng phoukha.
rented a motorbike with a friend i met on the bus from houay xai, and spent the day exploring the villages between luang nam tha and veng phukauo.
laundry, laundry everywhere...
spotted some ducks
typical hut in the first village we stopped in
and pigs and chickens, of course.
...*baby* pigs, of course (the only kind i take pictures of, clearly)
drying branches on the roof--possibly to make brooms
this guy was weaving these leaves into a new roof.
we followed a path that didn't seem to go anywhere, then realized it to a place where the villagers cut down bamboo. there was a pretty old man carrying this out so we offered to help him.
eric carried the bamboo all the way back to the guy's house in the village. i functioned as official photographer, of course. we were both welcomed nicely into the village.
ahead of eric was a woman who was carrying some large bundles strapped to her back. (and no, i didn't offer to take those bundles and carry them myself.)
arriving back in the village. i'm sure we looked really funny to them.
as we left the village and went back to our bike, we made a couple of new friends.
these girls were really into having their pictures taken, mostly because they liked to look at them on the camera afterwards.
they followed us down a path that led to a bunch of kids playing and bathing in the water (i don't take pictures of people unless they say it's ok (ok, people who can see me taking their picture, that is), and i definitely don't ask or photograph people who are bathing, as that wold be incredibly rude, no?)
they went with us down a small path that led to a bunch of kids playing and bathing in the river.
The best picture I got of these two girls (because the others are all posed, as you've seen) was them looking at photos of themselves on my friend's camera.
i started to photograph what i thought was a child from the back but she turned around and turned out to be this tiny old woman.
The story behind this photo is that during the motorbike ride I really had to go to the bathroom and this was the place we decided to stop. I walked over and found a woman who I assumed worked there and asked, 'Toilet?' She didn't understand. Just as I was contemplating embarrassing myself by making a squatting motion, I decided to try the Thai word for bathroom and was relieved to find it was indeed the same in Lao. (There are a lot of similarities in the two languages, which I was aware of.) The woman then took me back to where a few people (presumably other staff, though they were pretty young) were eating lunch at a small table and called out a short sentence which included the words 'hong nam' and 'farang.' So I knew it was basically, 'Can the farang (foreigner) use the bathroom?' They nodded their assent. I walked in the direction they pointed me and: mission accomplished. I was one grateful (and, yes, relieved) farang. 'Hong nam,' by the way, is literally 'water room' (and thus
stopped onn the side of the road so eric could chse down some buffalo. for taking photos of them, of course.
they got away from him/us pretty quickly.
stopped to have a beer at an indian restaurant right across the street from this. i think *every* town needs a people's complain letter box, don't you?
then we stopped to get gas and this was part of the décor. yes, those are eggshells.
kids playing in the last village we went to before returning the bike.
there she is, our trusty steed.
laos, land of the satellite dishes. hard to imagine what all those villagers with no indoor plumbing are watching.
stopped to use the toilet in the guest house next door to the bike rental place. saw this sign and used it anyway.
