Turtles, Monkeys and another homestay!

22^nd November

After a long night on what I'm convinced was a mattress-less bed, we left our disgusting hotel and the cockroach infested shower behind and were on our way to bigger and better things. We had an early and pretty average lunch stop but we stocked up on niceys and headed to the market where our Stray guide bought the ingredients for our dinner. Once again this is the first time the Stray bus has stopped at this particular market town and you could certainly tell. I would say that most of the people had never seen a white person and if they had, it was a rarity. As we walked the streets were were stared at and whispers of “falang”, the Laos would for foreigner, followed us. The children in particular were completely fascinated and most seemed quite unsure about us.

After getting our dinner ingredients, which was an experience in itself (they don't use cartons here, so if you buy a chicken you get a dead chicken in a plastic bag filled with blood), we made our way to Turtle Lake. The lake has been around for 100 years and some of the turtles have been there since the beginning. It was pretty difficult to take a good picture but it was nice to see them and even nicer to know that the locals refuse to eat them and instead treat them with a lot of respect!

We then stopped off at a Buddhist library. Despite wearing long shorts we weren't allowed into the sacred library so we paid the small rental fee of 40p and borrowed a Laos skirt and shawl. The money was well spent for the experience and pictures alone! The library, Hotay Pidok, was built in the 17^th Century and rebuilt in the 19^th Century to house and protect sacred scriptures which are written on palm leaves. There are 219 stories, comprising 326 sets of manuscripts with a total of 2,391 volumes and they're written in various languages even the ancient Khmer language.

Once we looked around the library we made the short drive to our accommodation for the evening, a village! We had to leave the bus behind and walk cross the river which was quite the experience especially as we were greeted by monkeys on the other side! We were carrying our evening meal which included a big bag of bananas so we were closely followed but we made it to our home for the evening without incident. After settling in we took a walk to the village temple where a pack of macaque monkeys all hang out and this time we even had bananas specifically for them! I was a bit apprehensive at first, there were so many monkeys and I really don't want to get rabies, but they were completely fine. I thought they'd be, excuse the pun, cheeky monkeys but they were quite timid and while they took the bananas they didn't climb all over us!

To pass the evening we played charades which is actually really fun and I'm pretty excellent at it – mainly because I watch far too much television and far too many films! We then had dinner which our local guide and the family made together. The tom yum soup, sticky rice and vegetables were ok but for the first time in my life, I ate chicken off the bone with my hands and it was top notch! I had watched the chicken being prepared and the families dogs were licking the utensil and stealing the uncooked bits so despite telling myself that I wouldn't eat any of it, I gave in and would happily have eaten more but for some reason we got a measly helping of chicken so there was none left!

Later the group played drinking games and I befriended some puppies! They were full of flees and probably rabies but they were just so little and so skinny that I just had to sneak them food and strokes! Our beds for the evening were pretty basic but we all bunked in together and they did the trick – even better, we didn't have any snorers so a full nights sleep was on the cards!