Luang Prabang with the Family (and Mount Phousi)

This is kind of a belated post, as all of this happened before Angkor Wat/ Cambodia/ Vietnam with the family, but better late than never.

For Christmas vacation Nick and I met my family in Luang Prabang, which is a really beautiful city in northern Laos (way more picturesque than, say, Vientiane).

Luang Prabang was really cold (low 50's in the morning), which was crappy considering all of us had brought warm weather clothes.

We spent the first day exploring the city. In the middle of the town district there is a hill called "Mount Phousi". "Phousi" is pronounced "poo-see", so of course Max and Ollie were laughing every time we passed something named after the famous site- Phousi Hotel, Mt. Phousi, Phousi Stupa...

Along the trail to the top of Mount Phousi, there are Buddha figures, miniature caves, and women who sell these tiny sparrows in woven bamboo cages (I think we paid 10,000kip? so $1.20?) Once you arrive at the top, you can release the birds- and opening the cage without hurting the birds is way harder than you would think- but not before the sparrows crap all over your hand.

After our exploration of Mount Phousi, walking along the river and grabbing a couple of fruit shakes from a street vendor, we ate dinner at Tangor, which had really good French fusion-y food at around the same price you would pay in the States (aka more than $15/ person).

Some of the dishes we ordered came with rice, and at Tangor they take obvious pride in their presentation so each mound of rice was topped with a small red chili. This red chili is a garnish, not to be eaten, but Ollie thought he would be a bad ass so he ate it in one bite.

And ended up with eyes watering, gasping for a glass of milk from a waitress who was looking at him like he was a moron.

The next day the family all rented bicycles from a hostel along the main drag. We then biked to the bank of the Mekong River and took a ferry (10,000kip per person + bike, each direction) across, getting a bit of "local flavor" (ie getting SUPER lost on these dusty dirt roads). Also one of the bikes kept falling apart so every 10 minutes or so we had to go through the whole ordeal of fixing it. Or, rather, Nick, Max and Dad did, while Mom and I talked or took pictures.

Also Nick's birthday was December 23rd. I celebrated by buying him a light-up Santa hat and dragging him to a cooking class. 

Highly recommended cooking class at Tamarind. It was cold outside but the teacher was funny and the food was good. We learned a lot about cooking techniques and different local ingredients that the Lao cooks use to make their dishes. Also I discovered how much I love tamarind fruits (which look super weird)

Also this dog: (notice the blue eyebrows). What?

Spikeball (AKA White People be Crazy)

Coworker/ resident "Thor" Seth has determined Sunday afternoons be official "Spikeball time". At 4pm every week a group of us head down to the riverbank along the Mekong, Seth sets up his Spikeball net (like a mini trampoline you hit a ball on), and we play Spikeball for hours.

This is awesome! Except for two things:
1. 4pm on Sundays in June in Vientiane is effing hot. It's nice if it rains earlier that day, but otherwise all of us are chugging down water.
2. I am crap at organized sports. I don't know if it's because of my lack of co-ordination or what, but Spikeball gets considerably less competitive when I'm playing, mostly cuz the 6- 8 guys who play kind of have their game figured out, and I'm still the 3 year old kid who's ecstatic about hitting the ball until I realized I just scored a point for the wrong team.

"Beach time"- note that the beach leads to a nasty river, and there is trash and metal everywhere.

 Griffin's a super muscle-y bad ass Spikeball player. 

Seth, observing his Spikeball minions hard at work. Pretty sure he's a covert salesperson for whatever company creates Spikeball. 

One of my favorite things about Spikeball happens around 6pm, when the locals start coming out (many of them go down to the river and hang out as their social time, when it starts to cool off). We're this loud, crazy group of white people who are wearing, for the most part, very little clothing, and some of the guys see it as a contact/ tackle sport and take down other Spikeballers... it stands out a lot from the Lao groups around us. Many times we have groups of young Lao men who ask to stop what we're doing; next week, I think some of them are planning to join us.