Last night in Luang Prabang

I caught the news today and heard there was a bombing of a temple in Bangkok; 20 dead and 100 injured. We're far from Bangkok now but it was shocking to hear of this incident in a place frequented by both locals and tourists. The world has always been a dangerous place at times and it looks like it's not going to get any safer anytime soon.

It's our last night in Luang Prabang and we took a different path than normal, looking for a new place for dinner. We went down a street with some more upscale restaurants and saw a small gym in a building with no wall facing the street, with a few Lao men working out. That was a first. And on the way back I saw some teenagers on motorcycles having a good time laughing together and then zooming off, with the guys riding their bikes and the girls on the back - I guess they can have fun here like everyone else. At the hotel restaurant for dinner we talked to Tok, our waiter, who spoke English very well, which a rarity here. He wanted to tell us all about the area. He mentioned that last January was unusually cold with night time lows of 4 degrees Celsius. The hotel was not set up for this kind of cold; visitors would order a lot of soup and the restaurant staff would drape them in blankets. He said March is not a good time to visit here also. It is very hot with temperatures near 40 Celsius with a lot of smoke in the air from the farmers burning their fields.  He had nice things to say about the town too; it's a nice place to relax and take it easy. This theme has some up a few times around here.

I had a business meeting with someone in Canada via Skype from my balcony to get the best Internet reception. I called him at 7 PM my time which was 8 AM his time. While we chatted the dogs were barking, the motorcycles were zooming by, and the Lao people below me were talking about whatever soap opera they were watching at the end of their day. I hardly noticed the noise but I guess it was a bit unusual for my counterpart, who called me from his quiet office into the depths of South East Asia. He kept laughing at all that was going on around me.

Down by the river on bike ride I spotted something new. It looked like a carpet cleaning robot, but this one's job was to keep cutting a small patch of grass in the only park-like setting I've seen around here. I think the park is associated with an adjacent restaurant near the river, but we checked it out anyway. As we strolled around the small collection of pathways, grass and gardens I spotted a fisherman on the river. He was on a tributary next to the main Mekong River and was casting a net from the bow of a small boat common to this area. The boat was like a canoe really, very low to the water but square and I assume more stable. He expertly cast the ten foot square net into the water and then pulled a line to try to catch whatever was below.

But it's time to move on. We'll take a van down south tomorrow, about a five hour drive.