Savannakhet

Sabai dee from Savannakhet, Laos! This is our 3rd day here, and our last. We're boarding a 10 am bus to Hue, Vietnam tomorrow morning. We ended up having a very easy time getting our Vietnamese Visas when we arrived (it only took about 15 minutes, instead of the 4 days we had been told it would be), but the next bus to Vietnam from here was Wednesday, so here we are. It's been nice staying here though. We've actually made a good friend named Yah. We met him the first night when we went to The Rose Garden. He works there and asked if he could practice his English with us. We of course said yes. He's been doing that with all of the travelers that come through apparently, and speaks english quite well for just learning from customers at the restaurant. He taught us some Laos and we talked for a while, and he even played us one of his band's song. They could only afford to record the one, and its quite good, but we haven't been able to get a copy of it yet. Maybe before we leave. He sings with the band, who's name is "By Myself" and actually likes to sing all the time. His favorite song is "Hero" by Enrique Iglesias, and he can sing it almost exactly like Enrique, which is interesting because he doesn't actually know the meaning of the words, he's just memorized it.

The next day, we were eating dinner at "Seven" and he pulled up on his motorbike and told us the Rose Garden was closed for the week to train a new manager or something, so he hung out with us to practice his english. He took us to a place called "We All Love" where different bands played and people sang, not karaoke style, but just went up and sang with the band. Yah sang "Right Here Waiting for You" and a Laos song. Everyone cheered a lot and seemed to like it. We met a group of students at that place who are from Savannakhet but go to school in Hue. They had drank a lot of BeerLao and were all trying to practice their English with us and tell us about Hue and talk us into going dancing with them. We might have gone, but our guesthouse has an 11:00 curfew, so no late nights for us here.

Today Kiley and I walked around the city some more, which we're getting to know quite well. Its right on the Mekong, and there is a beautiful view across the river is Thailand. We ate Laos baguette sandwiches for breakfast which were quite delicious. It was strange to eat a sandwich though! Bread is not so popular in this part of the world. We also got "traditional Lao massages" today, just to compare to Thai massage, research you know :) I think it was the most intense massage I've had yet. A lot of stretching and bending and kneading. In a good way though. After that, we finally found a place to buy Laos Cotton that I'd heard about. It was a really neat business that makes all natural, handmade cotton clothes, accesories, pillows, etc. The cotton is from all local farms in the province, with about 400 families participating. It is then spun into yarn in another village and brought to Sannakhet where they do the dying. I took a few pictures of that. Then, the dyed yarn goes to another nearby village to be woven into cloth, and it returns to Savannakhet to be sewn into different items. They had a lot of beautiful things to buy, but could only accept cash, which I was low on, so I got a very pretty cotton scarf. Its always nice to buy from something like that that is actually really helping local people.

After that, Yah found us again, we're probably easy to spot around here... And we made plans to meet him at four. We will go to dinner and then to meet some of his friends.

I'm glad we've gotten the chance to spend a few days here since we're too low on time and money to see more of Laos and need to head towards Ho Chi Minh city since we already have tickets to fly from there to Bangkok. I have seen many eyeopening things here, some of which are very hard to see. It seems like everyday I am traveling in southeast Asia, my perspective changes at least a little. I am so thankful that I am able to be having this experience.

Here are a few pictures. At the present I seem to have misplaced my other memory card for my camera, which I am very much hoping I will find back in our room. Cross your fingers!!

Much love,

Katie