Originally written on October 23, 2004

Today we visited several Wat’s, enjoyed many fruit shakes, and made some purchases at the market. Too late to really get into it what with this being our last day, we sadly found out that fruit shakes are cheap and damn tasty. For about 30 - 80 cents CDN depending on the type of establishment (fancy/ not fancy) you can order one of 5 - 20 different fruit shake concoctions. Made of crushed ice and fruit juice they are really tasty on a hot day.

It was pretty hot out, and being a Saturday the Grand Palace was closed. We still poked around the grounds and found these wonderful flowering trees. The flowers themselves are very pretty, and smell very sweet and faintly citris-y. Heather grabbed some and put them in her hair. We then went next door where a few monks became excited that Heather had them and told us that the flowers were Dok Champa - “Champa Flower” and that they were an official symbol of Laos. Blurb: “It is found in cities throughout Laos and represents sincererity and joy in life.” We then went and had more fruit shakes.

We had ’safe’ western food to ensure no problems on the long bus ride back the next day, two tasty sandwiches with a big beer lao. Then we went shopping at the market buying our list of things, most of which will be gifts we think. We then went home, got more money to buy the rest of the things we needed (we hadn’t brought enough on the first trek) and went back to the market, then to home and pack our bags for the early morning tuk tuk to the bus station.