Rat For Dinner Laos

This is a good story. Listen closely. The bus was loosing water. We stopped at the local hydrant in a small village to take on some water to cool the over-heating bus. There’s a woman by the hydrant. She has a tub. In the tub are three big rats. You know, rodents. Big ones. She looks like she’s preparing them for dinner. Other people on the bus saw it too. People on the other side of the bus were getting up and peering out the windows on my side of the bus. I guess I’m not the only one who feels strange when I see a woman preparing rat for dinner.

Tuk Tuk – Laos

It’s the Laotian version of the tuk-tuk. This one was spiffy. It had some chrome and a nice paint job. The owner had, obviously, taken pride in his ride. I use the word "his" because I’ve never seen a Laotian tuk-tuk driver who was female. For that matter I can’t recall ever seeing a woman driving a tuk-tuk anywhere in the world. Ladies, there’s an opportunity here…

Over Loaded – Laos

I stopped to take this picture because I noticed that the driver of the minivan had so many packs on top of the vehicle that he couldn’t get them all tied down. What that indicates is that he’s got way-too-many passengers. I’ve heard that the minivan drivers try to cram as many people a possible into the vehicles because every passenger pays. I’ve also heard that the only way to stop this overloading of passengers from happening is for the passengers to revolt and refuse to go with the driver until another minivan shows up to take the passenger overflow. I’m not real fond of Laotian minivan drivers.

Electric City

It was the sign on the inside of my door in Luang Prabang. What I think the maker of the sign meant to say was to turn off the electricity. The grammatical error just sort of typifies the problems I had with communicating in Laos. Let’s just say that it wasn’t always easy to make myself understood as far as my conversations with Laotians went.