Just arrived in Chiang Rai, and will probably spend the next day or so writing up the last couple days of rafting trip…which were highly amusing. First, however, I’m taking care of the necessities of life: hot shower, laundry, ATM, hair conditioner, foot massage, gay bar, and email, not necessarily in that order. (If you [...]
Well, I’m back in Luang Namtha after a 1-day trip to Muang Sing, a town right next to the Chinese border. Luang Namtha is fabulously interesting and scenic, and I really wish I could go exploring, but I am pretty much wiped out after a couple long bus rides, so I have (very reluctantly) decided [...]
Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve arrived in Luang Namtha, where Internet connectivity is both insanely slow and extremely expensive. Also, I suspect this keyboard of being a leftover Soviet secret plot to sabotage American productivity–it misses about half the keys, and occasionally does totally random things. (It does not, however, [...]
Well, today I decided to wander about town, visit the craft shops, and do the mandatory museum/temple tour. I discovered, not to my enormous surprise, that the vast majority of textiles shops are selling tourist schlock, and that very few Lao shopkeepers speak English well enough to authenticate the “real” pieces for me. However, I [...]
Well. Today has been Official Textile Excess Day. (Which of you wags was it that suggested the “tien” as a unit of excess, with standard behavior measured in millitiens? ) I’ve bought three gorgeous woven silk tapestries (two 100% naturally dyed!), half a kilo of naturally dyed reeled-silk yarn, half a pound of undyed reeled [...]
