Last night we played musical beds, with Mish ending up in Harriette's bed, whilst all the girls piled into one bed! In Mish's opinion, the girls are duvet and pillow hogs.
Once we got up and had breakfast, we headed out to see one of the local markets. One thing we noticed in Laos, is that there are not many supermarkets or grocery stores. The reason for this is that people here still do most of their shopping in the markets, and even on a Sunday it was very visible with the amount of people at the market. It was full of colour, smells (good and bad) and energy. We saw many of the local vegetables that were being sold and even saw some of the more exotic products that you would not find in Europe. These includes various types of worms, crickets, unhatched baby chickens, toads and bugs. The market also had stalls of fermented fish sauce (think Worchester sauce), which really assaulted our noses.
It was fun trying a number of the fruit and pastries, as well as Lao rice whiskey. It had some flavour elements from the rice wine we tried in Vang Vieng. But it was still very much had a rough edge. It probably did not help that it was stored in plastic bottles…
From the market we went to Pha That Luang, a gold covered Buddhist stupa. It is mainly gold colour painted but the very tip of it is made of several kilograms of solid gold (as we were told).
From the stupa we visited the Patuxai, which is the Laos' version of the Arc de Triomphe. It was build between1957 and 1968 as a victory monument in dedication to those who fought for Laos' independence from France.
The next place we stopped to see was the COPE center (http://copelaos.org/). It stands for Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise. The visitor centre show the effects of the hundreds of thousands of unexploded cluster bomb munitions on people. COPE works really hard to help those affected by these munitions as well as other disabilities and accidents. Robyn was amazing with the kids and walking through the various aspect of how to help victims, and the kids also learnt how amazing people are at adapting and living fulfilling lives even when they experience a limb loss tragedy.
Once we finished of the tourist stuff, we headed to a little café hidden away in a residential area. It was very charming, and had a delicious lunch. Our favourite was a potato based soup that can be best described as a Asian take on goulash. And we topped it off by getting some ice cream.
Just as we finished off the ice cream it started to rain, and hence headed back to the hotel to prevent getting soaked. It was time to get some schooling done. Luckily as we finished the work, the sun came out again and quickly dried everything off. So we headed out and today's night market was full of people and atmosphere. So we spent quite a bit of time wondering around before our belly starting calling out to find some dinner. Unfortunately today dinner was a bit of a disaster. We thought we picked well, as it had a great view of the river and the Hussle and bustle, and filled with locals. However the dishes we ordered had a few issues:
- The cucumber salad first came spicy, when we ordered the non-spicy version. The second attempted had the fermented fish sauce as its dressing. We could not get over the smell of it!
- The beef salad had little beef itself, but instead was a collection of cartilage, fatty skin, gritty bits and liver!
- We ordered 3 plates of beef steak, and only got 2 which were more chewy that Duke's (our dog's) chew toys.
Only thing that we enjoyed were the French fries (ordered as a back up) and the fried shrimp
We escaped the restaurant as quickly as we could and found bar to disinfect our mouths with some strong drinks (parents not kids). Funnily enough we found a "Green" Bar (Robyn's maiden name) to get rid of the fishy taste! Once that was accomplished we headed back to the hotel as tomorrow we head to Thailand.
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