Our last day in Luang Prabang

Our last day in Luang Prabang our last day as guest house managers is hear. With no breakfasts to cook I headed to a charity called big brother mouse. Here Laos 16-25 year olds come to practice there English with English language speaking tourists.

I met with a 21 year old student and talked for two hours whilst James caught up on his beauty sleep. During the conversation we discussed the need for hay. It took some time for the young man to comprehend that the grass does not grow in the winter in the UK and that the leaves fall of the trees for 45 months of the year. “So no sun he asked” to which I gave him that British knowing smile shook my head, looked mournful and told him it rained for 200 days of the year back home. He was aghast and enquired how it could possibly rain that much for everywhere would be flooded. Again for that resigned British look and the response “ it only rains enough to ruin your day not enough to fill up the reservoirs.” After an hour of chatting he then read aloud to me from a Paddington bear book. Not the easiest choice as it was written in 1953 so I found my self explaining what opera gasses where how something could be enclosed herewith within an envelope and the difference between envelope and envelope . The English language has certainly moved on in the last half decade or so!

The afternoon saw James and I begin to pack. What a shock to the system. Its been 4 weeks since we have packed up so consequently things were strewn about the guest house. It was a mammoth task retrieving our items from the kitchen, living room dining room bathroom and bedroom. We had forgotten what it was like to live somewhere with so many rooms. We have been condoned to living within a 10ft by 10 ft box with a bed and that’s pretty much it.

A little later Yoxa and Brad turned up. They had been roped into guest house management at the last minute and where given a three hour baptism of fire. We also counted the money and came to the realization that if we were ever to become millionaires we certainly would not want to keep it in cash as counting 6,000,000 took a fair bit of time.

Dinner was with Yaxa, Brad and Christina followed by a visit to the local gay bar. Well we were not too upset that we had missed out on the gay bar of Luang Prabang as it was somewhat underwhelming. Of course it had the required uniform of glitter balls, suggestively named cocktails and boys in tight tee-shirts but it lacked a certain jena sa qua as there we few people in there and there were a number of older western men with younger Loas lads. Love I am sure….