Pii Mai, the Lao New Year festival, finished a couple of days ago. It was a wild week of waterfights all over the country! Hartley and I were in Luang Prabang, and we immediately bought some squirtguns and joined in – made me feel like a kid again. More photos will be up soon (this was SO MUCH FUN), but this was my favorite – a guy emptying a huge bucket of water on us.
From his seat on a pile of backpackers’ tubes at a bar along the Nam Song, a man (I think he was the owner) relaxes and watches the action on the river.
This is the second dog-themed Photo of the Day in what, two weeks? Guess I’m missing pets these days. Anyway, this little dog lives at one of the riverside bars in Vang Vieng. What could be better than tubing, afternoon beer and a puppy to snuggle (well, ok, she actually just chewed on all of us, but whatever)?
So today’s Photo of the Day might be cheating, just a little bit, because it’s a photo of a poster I saw at a roadside restaurant on Cat Ba Island – some advertisement for a water park, I think. But I had to put it up, because really, how weird is this? I think if a seal gave me a peck on the cheek I’d have a happier expression than this guy. What about you?
A scene we saw the day we rented motorbikes: a Vietnamese basket-boat on one of the shores of Cat Ba island.
Saw this newspaper while waiting for a bus from Hanoi to Cat Ba island. I have no idea what it says, but apparently some snake out there is a very big deal!
Walking around the big market in Hanoi’s old quarter, I noticed a guy sweeping fish guts off the floor. Just as I was thinking what an unpleasant job that would be, he stood up and I saw the back of his jacket. He didn’t seem particularly lonely though…nor did he seem to mind being on fish-gut duty. I wonder what the initial idea behind the jacket was!
A couple of days ago, I saw this dog having a snooze in a doorway in Hanoi. ”Con chó” means “dog” in Vietnamese, and I think this is a pretty photogenic one!
One of the rice paddies in Phong Nha National Park. They’re truly huge!
Here’s another picture from earlier in this trip that I’d forgotten about: a guy making enormous soap bubbles in a park in Madrid on one of those perfect fall days. This one burst just a split second after I took the photo.