Fun day today in Vang Vieng, starting with kayaking down the Nam Song River for 2 hours. The kids loved the mini rapids, and as you can imagine there was plenty of splashing each other and squeals of delight. Not to mention a little water war between Harriette and Mish (who started it is still being contested).
After the kayaking we got introduced to a local village where we saw how a blacksmith makes blades for farm instruments mostly. We all had a turn pumping air onto the fire to heat the steel appropriately for fashioning blades. Interestingly, the blacksmith had polydactyly, with 6 fingers and toes on each extremity - the girls were fascinated as have never seen it before. Maxine's comment was 'he would really struggle to buy gloves!'.
Lunch with a local family eaten on mats in the garden. We each got a basket of sticky rice and lunch included dishes with pork, mushrooms, greens and aubergine. With mini bananas from the garden for desert. They demonstrated how they make home-made rice wine.
The wine is made with a method that we were completely unfamiliar with. The rice (20%) and rice husks (80%) is steamed in a wooden pot, before being cooled down in a flat basket. Yeast and sugar cane sugar is added to the rice and thoroughly mixed. This mixture is then stuffed into a jar with just a little bit of water for moisture, before it is sealed with some mud and ash. It is then set aside for one month before it is ready to be consumed.
We took a jar of this wine with us on a walk through the local countryside, basically dry rice paddies. The walk was cut a bit short as the clouds started to gather near us and it looked like it would rain soon. However before ending our walk, we sat down and enjoy our rice wine. The way it is consumed is to pour some water into the jar, and insert bamboo straws with tubing so that the wine can be sucked out. More water is added whilst it is drunk, until the liquid is not "strong" anymore.
The wine actually tasted surprising good. It had a milky look to it, and a sweet/honey taste to it. It can be potentially very dangerous, as it was quite easy to drink.
We finished just in time, as torrential downpour started to rain on our way back. Once back at the hotel the kids desperately wanted to go swimming, and hence they had a swim/rain shower session at the same time.
The rest of the evening was spent on schooling and chilling while watching the tropical thunder storm.
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