Sunday, June 25, 2017
Cindy and I were up early this morning to watch the monks
receive alms from the locals. This is a
5 am daily ritual in Luang Prabang. The
locals purchase rice balls and distribute them to the monks as they pass by on
the street by our hotel. This is very
important for the monks as this is their morning food. After breakfast, the family biked over to the
Big Brother Mouse program, designed to connect travellers and locals, providing
the locals the opportunity to learn English, and the travellers the opportunity
to meet local people. Nate was a hit,
and the other kids were calling him the teacher. Locals ranged from about 9 to 22 years
old. One of the local guys had been a
novice up until this year. A novice is a
monk in training and are identified by only having their robe over one
shoulder. At age 20, a novice becomes a
monk and would then have both shoulders covered. Kids will become novices because they may
come from poor families, and this provides them with a free education, but they
do a lot of manual labour. And our guys
new job after dropping out of monk school… a bartender at the local pub. After our visit here, we stopped at the hotel
before we planned to go for a bigger bike ride.
While in our room, our hotel rented one of our bikes out (for a second
time) and dashed our plans as we were now down to four bikes. We then went out for a walk of the town. Evening back at the market had Cindy in her
prime negotiating for items. Her
attempts of negotiating with a young girl for a couple of hats was quite
humorous. The local merchants at the
market always start very high, and you can usually knock about 40 to 50 %
off. This girl moved from 200 000 kip to
199 000 kip, a drop of just over 18 cents, and she was not going to move more
than that. The boys then enjoyed another
chicken breast dinner followed by mango milkshakes and banana pancake
desserts. They are still impressed with
the food.  |
| Local kids playing in the Mekong River |
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