River Resort in Pakse

For my birthday, I asked Nick to take me to Pakse for the three day weekend. 

(Side note: December 2nd was Lao National Day, the FIRST Lao holiday we've had since we arrived in May. I am so jealous when I see my friends have time off on MLK day, 4th of July, and Thanksgiving... working Thanksgiving was especially hard.)

Pakse is in Southern Lao, and seems to mostly be filled, tourist-wise, with traveling retirees and backpackers. Most of the guests at the River Resort, the hotel being a "luxury destination" and far from Pakse center, were older travelers, mostly from Europe and the States (some Australians). Nick and I were by far the youngest, but we didn't mind because this place was INCREDIBLE.

We found a package on their website (pricey for Laos, but not bad overall) for two people for two nights. It included:

1. A riverside villa (awesome, outdoor shower, balcony)

2. A river cruise for two (wasn't really excited about it originally, but it turned out to be great)

3. Two aromatherapy massages (they were OK, at best. Staff could use better training)

4. 10% discount on food

This was the package rate for the high season; I'm sure it would be much cheaper in the low season.

On the river cruise. The River Resort staff in charge of hosting us was great

View on the River cruise

Sunset view from the villa

The Mekong River is pretty muddy and gross. I wanted to explore the "beach" a bit and ended up getting stuck. One of the very sweet gardening women, Noy, came down and helped me out of the mud, then helped me clean my clay-caked flip-flops.

Getting stuck :(

Washing my flip flops off with Noy.  How the conversation went :
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao)
Me: "Yeah I tried walking over there *gesturing a walking motion* and I sunk!"
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao) *starts cleaning my other flip flop*
Me: "Khop jai!"(Thank you)
Noy: (speaks a bunch of Lao)
Me: "Yeah I know, I'm a mess!"
(Both awkwardly laughing because we have no idea what  the other is saying)

The River Resort was about 35 minutes from the Pakse airport, so it took a long time to get to the Bolovan Plateau (about an hour, see "Bolovan Plateau" blog entry). They were only about 15 k from Wat Phou (another blog entry) and provided bikes to get there and back so that was an incredibly beautiful ride. Plus so many kids were excited to see white people on bikes!

Mayo cheese Pringles

Gross

Thanksgiving

For the last three years (2011-2013) I have not been able to spend Thanksgiving with my family. As anyone who is far away from family during the holidays knows, this sucks. And if your mom cooks as well as my mom does, you'll know that this sucks even more.

But we did have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Lao-style. We DID have to work, both the day of Thanksgiving, and the day after (in Louisiana, called "Aradian day"?) but a lot of people are gone so it was more relaxed.  Our boss and his wife graciously opened their house to all of us who are far away from home, and rented big tables so we could all sit outside in the great 70o weather (this was my first Thanksgiving outside!) It all came together quite beautifully, which for a while I was worried would not happen...

For the Thanksgiving meal I volunteered to make Cranberry sauce (something I've been making ever since I was 7, so it's like my own Thanksgiving tradition) and the Sweet potato casserole (Marshmallow-style, not pecan). I didn't think it would be EASY to find all the ingredients, but I didn't realize it would be that hard. 

I expected a couple stores that had Expat ingredients to stoke-pile Thanksgiving ingredients. None did. 

Monday night I spent two hours roaming the aisles of my usual "grocery" stores ("grocery" is a relative term... like mentioned in earlier blogs, it's more of a really big dollar store than anything). No luck on sweet potatoes or cranberries, though I DID find large marshmallows. 

The next day at lunch I went to Joma (the most awesome chain "restaurant"/cafe in Vientiane) and asked if they would let me buy cranberry sauce, which they had because their seasonal sandwich was a "Turkey Dinner" one. They would not let me. One of the ladies said "Oh you can get it at (insert Lao name here!" but then she couldn't explain where it was. Another guy help but after 5 minutes of jotting down directions I realized he had gotten confused and was directing me to a local M-Point (convenience store).

Then I went to Lao Plaza- the hotel we used to live in- where they were having a Thanksgiving buffet. I just wanted to buy cranberry sauce. Denied. 

So Tuesday night I went to D-Mart, another "grocery store", looking for sweet potatoes and cranberries/ cranberry sauce. I thought I found a weird-looking sweet potato, but I ended up buying something that I now believe to be a radish. 

Then I went home and complained about it on Facebook. This turned out to be the best move I could make, because a coworker's wife was out shopping the next day and found ALL of my ingredients- cranberry sauce, REAL sweet potatoes (not the purple/ black ones they usually have here) and MINI marshmallows. Divine intervention all up on my Thanksgiving meal :) 

I made the sweet potatoes (AWESOME recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sweet-potato-casserole-ii-2/) and "made" the cranberry sauce (took it out of the can, heated it up and added orange zest) and Thursday night we had a great Thanksgiving - everything an American could want in a Thanksgiving meal. We even went around the table and said what we were thankful for. 

And I wore my "Thanksgiving" (yoga) pants. Lots of give. For when I went back for thirds. 

Food mysteries

From lunch: what IS it ?

Answer: weird bananas in a grey coconut sauce. (It's actually pretty good)

Question: what is it?? 

Answer: I don't know; I felt that it would be weird to buy a drink called 'ManSome'

Christmas tree

I set up our mini Christmas tree 2 days before Thanksgiving ... 

But I was so excited I couldn't wait ! 

I got the tree and Christmas lights in Nong Khai (the Thai city across the Mekong from Vientiane - it has a supermarket!). I also asked a friend to pick up some homemade Lao ornaments from the WIG (Women's International Group) Bazaar this weekend. 

At first I wasn't sure how the tree worked and I was panicking that I would have a Charlie Brown tree...

But then I figured it out :)

The handmade ornaments : 

Booking agency mysteries

Nick and I used a travel agency to book our flight to Pakse next weekend (the Lao airlines website was either broken or not able to detect available flights...)

But the travel agency- different than the one we used last time- was a little off beat. The woman who booked our flights was great, but the 'travel agency' also had:

1. The family of the clerks in the middle of the 'office', eating a large lunch

2. The little girl of the woman, watching the Victorias Secret Fashion show 

3. This picture, on the counter. Why?

Awkward Thai Signs

'Fire Man'- I think they mean Fire station? It's in the mall parking garage...

'Asians Potato'- potato salad, with an Asian twist?