Day 25 - Pig in a Pot

While I did get some sleep on the plastic couch I didn't get much and was awake the next day before anyone else. Ken and Dave got up some time later, I don't think they got too much sleep either on that bed. Throughout the whole night there had been a rooster who seemed determined to disprove that whole sunrise rumor by going on all night. By pretty early in the morning everyone was up including the Uncle's father who had for some reasons put on a suit jacket and pants but was still wearing his incredibly old soccer jersey underneath. We had breakfast, which essentially was the exact same thing as every other meal with the Uncle's family and the teacher. I had tried to go to the bathroom but honestly unless it's an emergency I just have trouble making myself use squat toilets. The breakfast was good and again the teacher said eat until full and with the pretty slow pace of eating I did. We learned that there was some sort of marriage celebration, it didn't seem to be an actual wedding, but it could have been pretty much anything else, going on for some relative of the Uncles and we were invited to join. First though we went back with the teacher to his house where we were promptly made to eat a second breakfast.

It's not that it was totally unexpected that they would try to feed us more than we could possibly eat, but still to go literally from finishing one breakfast to eating another was a bit much. We joked all throughout it with the teacher for telling us to eat until full when another breakfast was just moments away. If I ate until full the first time, this time I ate until stuffed. We wandered around a bit outside the teachers house. bedsides the tons of dogs there were a bunch of chickens and I think even one turkey walking around. They were all followed by a little flock of babies who would just follow after the mother. They didn't seem particularly afraid of people because they let me get pretty close to them. There were some children running around also. We saw a make shift soccer field, made essentially out of a dry rice paddy, that seemed to bumpy to possibly play on. After a while we went over to the house of some other relative of the Uncle's who was the one who was getting, or had gotten married. Out in the yard there was a huge group of women all working to cut up a large pig that apparently was going to be the main course. They chopped the pig up into small cubes which all went with some vegetables into a huge pot which was put over a fire.

We were shown inside and sat down at a table with yet more food on it. At this point there just was no way I could actually eat anything more so I mostly just sat there and looked at the food. It was never really clear why exactly they had put us inside while everything seemed to be going on outside. I think it was some mix of not knowing what to do with us while wanting to treat us well. We sat around for a while with the teacher before getting bored and going back outside to see what was up. All the men were sitting around talking while the women worked to prepare this big meal. After the huge pot was on the fire everyone just sort of stood around in clumps. No one seemed to be paying any special attention to the bride and groom and we had to ask a couple of people before we even learned who they were. It was amazing just to watch that huge pot cook and I have no idea how long it would have taken to fully cook. The other animals just sort of walked around unconcerned about their fate, one chicken was even sitting in a cooking bowl. We had really run out of people who we could talk to and we really didn't want to be asked to eat another meal so we said that it was about time for us to be going. Everyone did try to insist that we stay for the meal but we eventually made our way out.

The Uncle came with us back to his house and asked us, though the teacher, if we had any pictures of ourselves. We had been advised that we needed some passport sized pictures before we came, we really didn't need them in the end there was always some other way if you didn't have pictures, so we all did in fact have several small pictures. The Uncle thanked us and collected them and taped them up in a small section of the wall. So there are pictures probably still are next to the family pictures and beneath David Beckham. We walked back to the main road and just essentially stood their waiting for some bus to come past. It may seem a little odd to just stick your thumb out for a bus instead of going to a bus station, but this is pretty much how it's done in Asia. After about 20 minutes a bug fancy bus rolled by and picked us up for pretty cheap. It was completely empty, it may have just been coming back from some where, and it was actually a lot nicer than most of the buses we took. We found a hotel, a lot of them were booked for some reason and we ended up staying in the same place we had stayed in the previous day in Vientiane.

Dave and Ken decided to go get massages and I was just so tired that I just lay down in the room. They came back a while later and said that they had meet two westerners at the massage place and that we were going to dinner with them. There was a Canadian girl and an American guy who both actually worked in China. We meet them outside a French place that I had actually avoided suggesting to Ken and David because I thought they would say that it was too expensive. The guide book said it was supposed to be the best French restaurant, which in my mind just means best restaurant, in Laos. It was booked though so we made reservations for the next day, unfortunately Ken and Dave couldn't come then. A while ago when me and David had gotten flights from Vientiane to Hanoi, due mostly to time constraints Ken had been unable to get a ticket and instead got a bus, which was supposed to take about 24 hours. Dave decided that he always likes doing things the hippy way, aka the hard way, and wanted to get a bus ticket also. So they were both leaving late the next day. We went instead to this Japanese style restaurant which was also very good. After that we went to some bar that was mentioned in the book where we actually saw some people who had been on the same bus to Vientiane with us. It may be a big world but the backpacker community isn't so large.