LUANG PRABANG
Mammy and I went to Luang Prabang for three nights and had a great time, including exploring across long and wobbly bamboo bridges and elephant-riding!! There was also a fascinating insight into how the lucky Hmong are being 'encouraged' to resettle far from their mountain homes where they can assimilate and enjoy the pleasures of modern Lao life.
The Mixayphon restaurant on Phou Vao Road in Luang Prabang has obviously decided that, having spent so much time and effort (and, presumably, money) on its Santa display, it's damn well going to get its money's worth! At least they are leaving him nice offerings - three perfect mounds of differently-coloured rice. (Alfred: more about this restaurant in the next post)
CATS
Our life since Christmas seems to have been dominated to a large extent by our cats for a variety of reasons - sex changes, spaying, fighting with other cats, attempts by additional cats to adopt us and so on. It turns out, as my mother politely pointed out, that Astérix is actually also female, so we now have two misnamed cats but we don't care, Astérix and Obélix they will remain, even if it means we end up saying 'he' half the time (Alfred: Catherine, to be more precise, pointed out that Astérix had one orifice too many to be male. Nicely phrased!!). Obélix is currently recovering from being spayed and is in great form, even if poor Astérix went into a total panic when Obélix vanished for the day.
BUDDHIST WALL SCULPTURE
We have become used to the combination of garish-but-restrained that characterises almost all the temples and monasteries here. So it was a bit of a shock when we found this in a temple by the Meekong south of our house! This is the one depicting Heaven, which has particularly fine representations of the cash bonus you receive upon entry (Alfred: And the notes do rather give away how recent the painting is!).
The next post will show you the one depicting Hell, which is actually quite scary and frightening, all the more so for being completely at variance with anything we have hitherto seen (Alfred: Viewer discretion is advised - for next week, that is).
STUFF ON THE INTERNET
I seem to spend even more time on the Internet here than I did at home, which I would have thought was impossible! Here are a few things I came across, including mock-ups for a Guinness ad campaign in Germany in 1936 which actually never went ahead in the end (Alfred: Originally published by The Journal, it should be said in the interests of fair reporting).
I've written before about the Lao obsession with pale skin and avoiding sunlight. But putting an umbrella over a pale-skinned statue - surely that is taking it a bit far?
