Free from Desire

As Lao is a buddist country, it was time for some hard application of Buddhist teaching to our heathen travellers' lifestyles. Buddism teaches us that all desire is futile, and will lead to endless disappointment and conflict - freeing ourselves from desire is the only escape from this and achieves Nirvana. Thus our desire to have a good night's sleep, and mine to digest my evening meal successfully were both always bound to trip me up. Thankfully some buddhist monks were on hand to teach us both some lessons.

After a long session on the internet on the first decent connection since the UK, I started to feel a bit queasy, and as we rounded the corner where the prostitues hung out near our 5* guesthouse, even more so. Lou pointed out to me that the 'girls' were a bit too tall, especially for Lao, and that their dresses were quite lumpy.

After feeling worse and worse through the night and racking my brains as to what I had eaten but Lou hadn't, neither of us managed to sleep. The room was noisy and at 4am the room started to shake like someone had started operating a pile driver in a vaguely rhymic manner. After a few more minutes I started to realise that I could hear gongs between the groups of thuds, and I suspected that this was coming from the local Wat (temple), as there is currently a buddist festival, though I couldn't work out what sort of heavy plant equipment you'd need to make such a seismic event.

My experience of European monks/nuns teaches me that they like to get up early, usually about 5am, even after a long night fueling themselves with the holy spirit (usually brewed on site). However their matins was usually fairly quiet and I could definitely avoid going to it and still not be woken up. So it seemed these monks were breaking all previous records for both enthusiastic early starts and volume.

The next morning, having foolishly prebooked a bus ticket for Vang Viang, we zombied over for breakfast opposite the local Wat. After standing ouside the restaurant to 'get some fresh air' and 'inspect the drains' I noticed an earth shattering drum and several gongs on a large tower next to the Wat. So it seems they were indeed teaching us the error of our vain desires. We thank them for their spirtual guidance, and I am now just up to eating again in Vang Viang.