Bangkok

We're in Bangkok till Sat. when we fly to Germany.

On our last day in Phonsavan we toured a silk farm run by a women's cooperative, seeing everything from the bushes to the final woven scarves and cloth. The women who runs it wants Peter, our host, to help start another such demonstration farm in another area. We stopped to walk around that property on our way north. This Laos-Bangkok portion of our trip is more about seeing development work that our friends are involved in than sightseeing, so we've seen several corn storage sites and yesterday we saw a sewing business for Issan women and a school.

Making silk thread

Annato seeds for dye

Silk after spinning and dyeing

Sat. we drove from Phonsavan to Vientiane on a v. windy road through karst mountains and many Hmong and Khmu villages. Just as we drove out of town, we saw this band of boys running with sticks and nooses, holding lizards. We saw many small garden plots 4-8 feet off the ground and fenced with bamboo to keep the chickens out. We went through one village and I yelled to Peter to stop, because I had to take a picture of a bocce ball game.

Boys hunting lizards, Phonsavan

Village along the road

Raised Garden Beds

 Playing bocce ball

Eating waiwai with Ruth and Peter Dutton on the road back to Vientiane

Small village along the road with karst topography

I could send lots of pictures of water buffalos on the road, families and goods on motor scooters and bicyles, and street vendors, all of which I find endlessly fascinating.

Carrying broomgrass on a scooter

Sat. we jump into the tail end of winter in Germany. I was thinking last Sun., as we were worshipping in a Lao church that next Sun., we'll be attending a German church in Hannover. Benno's family (our German exchange student) invited us to lunch afterwards.