Laos - Easter 2007, Luang NamTha

So, what to eat when in Laos? We did some research before the trip, and had already concluded that we might lose some weight during the trip. Intestines and other disturbing things play a role in the Laos cuisine we did not really feel like exploring. We were, however, qurious about the sticky rice concept that all accounts went on about, and yay! Rice, my friend, is not rice when it comes in this sticky shape :)

During our first night in Laos I had to deal with a couple of issues:
- My arachnophobia. As it turns out, I never saw any spiders inside our room, hence that worked out well. I was a bit worried during that first evening, though.
- WEIRD noises! At one point, this one extremely disturbing sound was right above our heads. I was already a bit out there from the malaria tablets, having nightmares like never before, and combined with the nightly opera of the local fauna we were headed for disaster. I woke Erlend up in a sudden pang of total panic as I had a dream that the sound came from a huge cat that had just jumped on to our bed, but he chose to not get up and investigate, and rather advice me to stay put and sleep. Gee, thanks! (I later found out that the sound was, off course, a gekko, and it was not in the room, but inside the roof. Gekkos were everywhere!)

April 9th we enjoyed a breakfast with Laos coffee, which was every bit as perfect as Laos beer. We then commenced to rent a couple of bicycles from TBL, and they gave us a map of the area to go by. Ha ha. The scaling of maps in that country is something else, I'll tell you! No matter, we had a lovely day. It was a bit hot, and a bit humid, but not too bad. Besides, the lovely scenery more than gave us our money's worth. Erlend had a slight freaking out incident as a cricket sat on his shorts, but he masked his nerves brilliantly by taking it's picture.

After cycling a route I still don't really understand, we ended up back in Luang NamTha, where we had dinner at the local Indian restaurant. The food was ok, but when I came back out from a visit to the toilet and was washing my hands, I looked in the mirror and behold: Above the door to the toilet was one of the dreaded monsterously huge spiders, self contently looking at me and probably planning to jump me any minute. I'm just glad I didn't notice it while I was in the bathroom before going out, because I would have stayed there for the rest of my life.

When we got back to The Boat Landing we were both slightly sunburnt, but very happy with the day. As we sat down for dinner, another wild thunderstorm erupted, and we had to take shelter in another part of the restaurant because things were blowing off tables and the place was in a state of general disorder. The restaurant in the lodge is very open, you can see the Namtha river, and the lightning storm was crazy. In short, we had a great evening :)