Yesterday was a forced rest day for me because of the food poisoning I picked up the day before. I was doubly disappointed, because it was scheduled to be a busy but interesting day. The Boy stayed with me while the ladies headed off.
First up for them was a 5am rise to witness the morning alms gathering ceremony in the town, which starts at 5.30 each day. This involves all the monks in the town’s various monasteries walking in procession through the main street to collect small food donations from those lined up along it. It takes about an hour from start to finish.
The vast majority of those giving the donations are local devout Buddhists (this daily ritual goes back a very long way), but some tourists join in also. Other tourists also turn up to observe. The locals and the monks are fine with this (the Lao folk are very friendly and open in general), provided you treat the ceremony with respect and not as a form of entertainment. The ladies decided to observe rather than participate.
</Afterwards, they dropped Eldest Girl back to the hotel as she was feeling a bit sick too (thankfully nothing too serious – she was ready for the pool again by lunchtime!). Then they went off on the other big event planned for the day: Big Brother Mouse.
This is a local charity set up to facilitate the publication and printing of child-friendly textbooks for primary schools. The state-provided textbooks are decades old, with no pictures and do not make reading fun. They are also passed from one year to the next, so you can't take them home to keep. The net result is a general culture, especially in rural areas, that reading is not important. The aim of the charity is to change that by providing kids with textbooks that engage and inspire them. This is encouraged by the authorities, as they do recognise the need but cannot afford a state financed nationwide programme, so this helps fill the gap.
DW had researched this charity before we came on the trip and we had made a donation. As part of that, they invite you to a "book party" if there happens to be one nearby when you're here. Luckily, there was one scheduled for one of our days here, in a rural school about a two hour drive away. The book party involves the charity workers giving out the books to the school.
So, Things One and Two got to go to school for a day while here! They even got to join in on one of the classes (many of the texts are in both Laos and English to also help the kids learn English). As you might imagine, they were a big novelty and very popular. Most of the kids had never seen a European before, so to see white twin kids the same age as themselves was unreal for them. Our girls really enjoyed this too.
craziesontour 