Sunday Sunday

This is a photo of downtown Vientiane about 2 hours ago. Me and a stray dog wandering down the street in the pouring rain.

The weather here has been shocking for the past three days, it has dropped about 20 degrees in temperature and has not stopped raining. In a way today is just like many of my childhood memories of Sunday afternoons, sitting inside, bored, restless and wishing it would just stop raining for a little while. And here I don't even had a mammy's dinner and Top Gear to look forward to. I think that we are getting the tail end of the Chinese storm. And i digress slightly to suggest that these pictures we are seeing shall be mirrored at the beginging of August as 1.3 billion chinese try to get to Beijing for the start of the Olympics.

Anyway before Vientiane decided to do an impression of Dublin I did get the chance to do a lot of sight seeing. Now it's definitatly not the prettiest city or the most interesting city but it is a friendly slow and easy going kind of place where you can just kick back relax and enjoy the ecletic range of resturants and a couple of Beerlao. I visited the national monument it's called That Luang, it's the most holy of the Buddhest temples in all of Lao and a place of pilgramage of the Laotian people. It could be kept better but this is a very poor country. Foreginers are asked to pay 5000kip about 50 eurocents to enter and then another if you wish to make an offering.

I promised a friend that i would say a prayer and make an offering for him. So nervously I took out my 5000kip note and gave it to the old man sitting at the entrance. He handed me a flower, a candle and two sticks of insense. I walked across to where the altar is, took off my shoes and walked up the steps. I wasn't really sure what to do but what I did know was that it is a terrible insult to the Buddha if you point your toes at him. Now i can't kneel but i managed to twist my knees around so that my feets were sticking out at weird angle but away from the Buddha so that was okay. Then I preceded to try to light my insense, and what was with the candle. I took a lighter out of my pocket and of course it had run out of fuel. I also knew that I couldn't swear even as match after match either snapped between my fingers or just lite for a moment before extinguishing. And what was with the little candle. Then a lady came along and she lit her little candle and with it ignited the insense. Aghhhh so that's what it's all about. I tried that but the candle just keep going out, more and more Laotian people came along and I felt strange and embarrassed, what was i doing, I'm not even a Buddhist. But with that the old man from whom i had purchased my offering came up behind me and with a big smile on his face and with the ease of a local, took my insense and my candle and sorted me out. Kop Chi. I hope it works.

I am heading across the border tomorrow back into Thailand, there is no sign that the weather is going to get much better here and I want to make it down to the temple in Angkor. It's not advisable to travel by "road" in Cambodia so the easiest and safest way to get there is via Thailand. So back to the land of Sawadeeka tomorrow. After Angkor I think i am going to see if I can fly to KL and from there to Manila for a couple of days, Air Asia is super cheap and while in this neck of the woods I might as well see as much of it as possible. I am also seriously considering going down to Bali. I found a flight for $73 each way from KL, WTF?