Hanging Out in Vientiane

We arrived in Vientiane on Friday (today is Monday) and have spent the last several days wandering around the streets, sampling different coffee stalls (all of which are beyond delicious), and taking in the general laziness of Lao's capital city. Our plan is to go back to Thailand soon for more farm work, so we had to wait until today for the Thai Consulate to be open. We will get our passports back tomorrow. In an attempt to save money on tuk-tuks (SE Asian version of the taxi) we decided to walk to the Thai consulate. Three sweltering, sweat soaked hours later, we finally made it to the consulate just before it closed! We waited for another hour before turning our passports in. "Come back at one o'clock" they told us. We proceeded to try to kill time by finding drinks and noodle soups. We went back to the Thai consulate later, waited in more lines, sweated more, finally reached to front of the line, at which point they told us actually they meant one o'clock tomorrow. Oh.
Now we are back in the central city area, contemplating what to do for the rest of the day. Our plan is to continue North in Laos after we get our passports back. A short stop in Luang Prabang and then further North to a town called Phongsali near the Chinese border. In Phongsali we are hoping to do a trek and explore the jungles before heading back down to Chiang Mai for another WWOOF farm.
We really can't complain about being "stuck" in Vientiane. The food here is excellent and there are a very wide range of options. Two nights ago we ate at a delicious and bustling Vietnamese restaurant that specializes in fresh spring rolls and hot pots. Last night we ate several small things from street vendors that accumulate on the sidewalk once the sun goes down.

Planting Rice in Phimai

We were lucky enough to be able to help Su's parents plant some rice in Phimai (NE Thailand). I think Su's father was amused by our enthusiasm to try planting rice and we has surprised that we actually enjoyed it. I had a good time planting rice and am now much more appreciated of every bowl of rice I eat. The process of rice planting and harvesting seems very long and tedious to me. The farms throw rice grains in the fields until they grow into the green rice grasses. Then the rice grasses are each hand picked from these fields and replanted by hand in another field so that the plants have more room to grow. In this picture, Eric and I are working on replanting the rice grasses of rice after they have been picked from another field. Unfortunately we are going to be gone for harvesting season, which is in November. Below is a picture of Su's father. Although he spoke no English, I found him to be one of the most friendly and kind people I have ever met. He is the sort of person who always looks like he is smiling, even when he is not. Here, Su's father is bringing us fresh bundles of rice bundles that need to be planted. I knew that working in the rice fields was hard work, as I have witnessed hundreds of women working in the fields in Nepal, but I have a new found respect for these people who likely work on the rice fields for the majority of their life. If I did rice planting for more than a week, I think I would need some serious chiropractic work and a 2 hour Thai massage. Props to rice workers.

New Market, Pakse

At the moment Eric and I do not have a Lonely Planet guidebook for Laos. Although some people complain about Lonely Planet ("doesn't it just take all the fun out of travel?", "there is no mystery left with Lonely Planet"), we have found that a Lonely Planet is truly convenient, but not necessarily necessary. I searched Pakse on Google and found that most people said there is nothing much to do here, that there is no "tourist infrastructure" (what does that even mean?), and that Pakse is a better transit stop than a long stop. But, we have found that Pakse has been quite delightful and it is fun that we get to discover it all on our own without a
guidebook. The best way to do this is to put comfy shoes on and walk around aimlessly as long as possible. We have stumbled on many interesting things like people living on the banks of the Mekong River, pigs trotting along the sidewalk, mysterious food stalls, and a few markets. One of my favorite parts about SE Asia are the markets. Luckily for me, one of the first places we found was a huge market. We roamed up and down the little stalls looking at the heaping mounds of chilis that make your brow break a sweat just looking at them, neon colored fruits, bags of fresh green vegetables, meats, three foot long cat fish, piles of frogs still alive tied together with red ribbons, eels, pink fish paste, sacks of loose tobacco, and much more. One of the most odd things we saw at the market were the iguanas (pictured above). They were all alive and like the frogs, tied together with bits of red ribbons. I assume that these iguanas are for eating.

Made It To Laos!

After 3 weeks or so of working on Neil's farm, Eric and I decided it was time to hit the road again. Before departing Thailand, we spent a wonderful weekend in Phimai in NE Thailand visiting Su's family. They own quite a bit of land in very rural parts of the country, so it was fun to see a farm from a different perspective. Su's parents have many gardens with vegetables and fruits, but the main thing they grow is rice. We noticed that almost every field we saw in NE Thailand was full of lush green rice grasses. We went up to Phimai with quite a crew. Neil had made contact with a bunch of English teachers in Bangkok who wanted to go along on the weekend trip, so we ended up going with about 15 people. We met up with all the English teachers in Bangkok before heading up north. Meeting all the English teachers was fun because they were all around our age. I learned quite a bit from them about what it is like to get the needed teaching qualifications and then move to Thailand to teach.

After a few days exploring Su's parents village, Eric and I were on our way. Leaving was bittersweet because we have made such great friends with Neil, Su and the rest of their family. But, of course we were excited to continue on our journey. We took a train from Phimai to Ubon Ratchathani, which took about 5 hours. After spending one night in Ubon Ratchathani we took a bus to Pakse in Laos, which is where we are now. We have spent the last few days wandering around the city, testing different Laotian foods and coffees, and becoming acquainted with the city. Today we rented bicycles from one of the guesthouses in town and went on a 60 kilometer ride into the countryside. The ride was beautiful and quiet, a major change from the constant bustle of Thailand. Yesterday we decided to take the plunge and get haircuts at one of the street side "salons." Eric went first and they buzzed off most of his hair. He says its shorter than it has ever been in his life, but it still looks good. After Eric, it was my turn. My hair was quite long and I decided that there was some room for error because of the length. Before the hairdresser even asked me what kind of haircut I wanted, she began chopping away. I ended up with about 6 inches off my hair, and I quite like it! The total cost for both of our haircuts was less than $2.00. Can't beat that.

Now, we are trying to figure out what is next on our agenda. There was one WWOOF farm in Laos when we checked the website in Thailand, but when we checked again last night to email the farm owner, we discovered that the farm has since been taken off the website. We both highly enjoyed the WWOOF experience in Thailand and are eager to work at another farm. There is an organic farm in Vang Vieng, Laos that we might go work at. If not, we will head back to Thailand in a few weeks and begin work again in Northern Thailand. We are going to make another stop at Neil and Su's farm on our way back down the country to check on the chickens and see how our tomato plants are growing.

Our Day Off

Eric and I have been working hard at the farm almost everyday so the other day we took a day off to do some sightseeing around the area where we are living.  We decided to go to a small island called Ko Sichang for a day trip and had a great time!  Ko Sichang is about a 30 minute ferry ride from the town of Sriracha, the major town near the farm.  We hopped on a motorbike taxi to the ferry docks and arrived just in time to catch the morning ferry.  The ferry ride was quick, but still lots of fun.  Off the coast of Sriracha is where many large freighter boats anchor, so it was fun to move around these large boats and try to imagine the lifestyle of one of the men who work on the boats.  We arrived around 10:30 am to Ko Sichang and we were immediately hounded by touts trying to sell us tuk-tuk tours and motorbikes.  We decided to pass up the touts and take a short walk around the island.  We quickly found that Ko Sichang is a tiny island.  The buildings are all painted in vibrant blues, yellows, and greens.  We decided that we should rent a motorbike for the day, so we found a small tour agency and picked out a motorbike for 300 Baht.  We spent the rest of the day cruising our motorbike around the small island, looking for hidden beaches, eating Thai papaya salad, drinking young Thai coconuts, swimming in the ocean, and laying on the beach.  Ko Sichang is not really on the "farang" tourist circuit.  ("Farang" is the Thai word for Westerner or white person.)  Ko Sichang is the place where people from Bangkok go on the weekend to escape the urban sprawl and pollution.  

Pictures: Top: Eric relaxing on the beach. Bottom: Me, enjoying one of my favorite Thai foods, papaya salad, and a cold young Thai coconut.  

Baby Ducks

About a week ago, we spent an entire day building a deluxe duck enclosure for the white Mascovi (sp?) ducks that Neil and Su own.  There are about 25 ducks in all.  After spending the whole day building the enclosure and a thatched roof hut for the ducks to rest inside, we ran around catching the birds one by one until all 25 ducks had been transfered to their new house.  We were hoping that the ducks would like their new home just as much as the chickens had been enjoying their new coup.  Unfortunately, we were moving the ducks from an area next to a pond to an area with no pond at all.  After catching the ducks and putting them in the new house we left them for the night.  The next morning we arrived at the farm to find that every single duck had escaped from the new house and returned to their old area by the pond.  Oh well....   At least the empty duck enclosure looks nice.  There were two ducks that have been sitting on nests full of eggs.  One nest had a total of 19 eggs in it and Neil discovered yesterday that all the eggs had hatched!  

The Golden Egg

Eric and I have been working at Neil's farm for a few weeks now and much of our effort so far has been focused on the 26 or so chickens.  We spent the first the first days here expanding the chicken coup so it is now about two times as large as it was when we first arrived.  Neil has had the chickens for about 8 months and as of a few days ago, a single chicken had yet to lay an egg.  So after our blood, sweat, and tears (ok, not tears) went into building the new addition to the chicken coup, we were hoping that the chickens would appreciate our gesture and maybe start laying eggs.  We have been checking the chicken coup daily to see if there are any news ones eggs among the white golf balls Neil placed in their to "fool" the chickens into laying.  Day after day of no eggs the chickens were looking increasingly appealing for fried chicken, but we decided to give them a while longer.  The day before yesterday, Eric went into the chicken house and found one egg!  We were overjoyed and Neil was even more thrilled than we were.  Neil did some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that after all the months of buying chicken food, materials for the coops, the cost of the chickens, the work put into the chickens, and other expenses, the total cost of the one egg they have so far produced is about 12,000 Baht, or approximately $350 US dollars!  Truly a golden egg!  Eric and I are both egg lovers to an extreme, so of course we volunteered to taste the first ever produced by Neil's chickens (of course, we needed to check if there were any diseases that might afflict the other eggs.... ;) )  We took the egg home, cooked it over-easy, and ate it with toast.  It was fantastic!  The yolk was especially orange.  Apparently, this happens when chickens eat grass and bugs instead of grain.  The orange yolk shows that the egg is high in beta-caratine. We decided that the chickens must be very pleased with the new coup we built them because yesterday they laid two eggs, and today they laid five!  Our efforts are appreciated and the chickens have now successfully escaped the deep-fryer (but not by far.)  We are looking forward to finding more and more eggs everyday.  

Above: Eric and I trying to coax the chickens into laying eggs.  Bottom picture is of the $350 egg.  Delicious!

Giant Centipede

You never know what kinds of surprises you'll find working at a Thai farm.  We've developed a sort of a game as we dig and rake and trowel the ground at the farm... Who can find the most poisonous and/or dangerous bug and/or animal?  Well, I won yesterday after I found this 9-inch long centipede.  Eric and I were leveling out a huge dirt pile to create a road when this crawler came out of the rocks!  Neil had told us there were centipedes around, but we had no idea they were this big.  I immediately got the shivers and Eric proceeded to catch the thing with his shovel.  He dragged it over to the driveway so we could get a closer look at it.  The centipede was extremely long and very fast.  It moves like a snake, slithering back and forth.  Because we are in the tropics, there are always fun surprises like this waiting behind rocks, boards, and under dirt piles.  They day before we found a few scorpions, a wolf spider, multiple stinging ant colonies, and various other bugs which I do not even now the name for.  The wolf spider was rather frightening.  It scurried out of a pile of grass roofing panels up a near by banana tree.  Eric, of course, prodded it with his rake until it leapt off onto a nearby rubbish pile.  The spider was the size of my hand, and very frightening.  Besides all these bugs, we've found lizards, geckos, caterpillars, and more.  This is better than biology class!  We have yet to find a snake or cobra, which Neil warned us about.  

To celebrate the variety of species we've found on the farm, we've decided to test out their unique flavors one of these days at the nearby market where we are planning to buy fried crickets, grubs, and cockroaches, all of which are enjoyed by the locals as a popcorn-like snack.  

Thai Eating

Today we enjoyed our first home cooked Thai meal.  Su is a flight attendant on Thai airways, so she has been away from the farm for the past few days because she had a flight to Japan.  After we got home from the farm today we were sitting around Neil and Su's house, relaxing after our long work day.  Su's older sister Pimon dropped by the house and insisted we all go to the market together.  We hopped in Pimon's car and headed down the street to the local market, which has a few hundred food stalls.  This market, like all Asian markets, was fantastic to walk through.  Some of the things we saw at the market: fried bugs (cockroaches, grubs, crickets), pig's face, various meats on a stick, all kinds of vibrantly green vegetables, Thai sweet desserts, crabs, shrimp, fish, whole chickens and ducks, fried baby sparrows (including feet and beak), animal organs, lots of tropical fruits, and much more.  It is so much fun to s0imply walk up and down the aisles of this market and try to take in the whole scene.  I highly recommend going to these sorts of markets with someone who knows the locals language and who can point out to you what the various edibles are.  Pimon, a bossy women who was clad head to toe in pink, dragged us around the market buying all sorts of vegetables, herbs, fish, and fruits.  By the time Pimon was done with us our arms were laden with bags.  Eric recently tried a fruit called mangosteen and really enjoyed the flavor, so he decided he wanted to get some mangosteen from the market.  There was only one vendor selling mangosteen and apparently the fruits were going out of season or something because he put his entire stock of mangosteens in a huge shopping bag and gave them all to us for only 20 Baht!  We came home with 6 kilos of mangosteens (most of them bad), watermelon, vegetables, 6 whole fresh fish, chilis, rambutan, Thai snacks, pomellos, rice sausage, and some other things.  

When we got home Pimon promptly put me to work washing and cutting up some green vegetables.  After that I was assigned to take the tops off the small green and red chilis.  I took the tops off about 50 small chilis with my finger nail and then foolishly itched the back of my neck.  Wow, that really burned.  I felt like my neck skin was going to disintegrate off my body!  So I went to my medicine kit and decided to put Tiger Balm on it.  That was another bad idea because that just made it burn even more.  Then I ran to the sink and washed my neck, and then it was alright.  

It took Pimon only 20 minutes and she had whipped up a delicious dinner of tom yom kun soup with fresh fish, stir fried vegetables, steamed vegetables, rice,  and sticky rice in bamboo shoots.  The meal was delicious!  We all gathered around the floor of Neil and Su's house and shared food, beer, and conversation.  The meal was fantastic, but also the whole process of going to the market, examining foods, bargaining, preparing together, and serving made the whole meal even better.  I am looking forward to more home cooking with Pimon.  Apparently she cooks up a mean green curry, which I am hoping she will teach me to make.  

Below: Me, Eric, Pimon, Neil, and Su waiting to eat our delicious Thai dinner of Tom Yom Kun soup at Neil and Su's house.  

Day 3 at the Farm

Farm life is great!  Eric and I are having a great time getting dirty and incredibly sweaty everyday for the hours we work at Neil and Su's farm.  The first day of work we spent most of the time expanding the chicken coups.  This took many hours during which we clearing land of grass and weeds and put up eucalyptus poles to use as posts for the chicken coup.  Then we fashioned walls and a door from plastic green fabric.