Cozy Warm and Feeling Better Jan 29

My room has a king size bed, air conditioning and a big white puffy duvet. What could be better for spending a relaxing day in bed, well, the morning anyway.

I went out early to book my plane to Cambodia on the 5th and I booked a bus to Vang Vieng tomorrow and to Luang Prabang 2 days later. I will fly to Siem Reap, in Cambodia.

I crawled back into bed and slept till noon. The fever is gone but I still have the cough.

My hotel is in the middle of this group of buildings.

Doorway!

Temple!

I think we must underutilize our sidewalks in Canada. This normal looking sidewalk by day becomes a restaurant at night. They bring in a kitchen stove with all the equipment

Beside it they set up tables and chairs, with table cloths and voila, a restaurant. By morning it will all have disappeared only to return again the following night.

I caught a rear view of this tuk-tuk, named for the noise the motor makes.

It is a funny thing about the money here, it is impossible to keep the bills neatly folded in your wallet because the location of the denomination is in different on each.

You can't take several different denominations and pile them face up and expect to be able to find the amount of its value all on the same corner.

This means that you have to look at them top, bottom and both sides to locate their value, and that means, at least for me, that there is money everywhere to pick up once your bill is paid.

If these are big enough to see, they are the fronts.

The bills also have their Laos numerals which sometimes look like our numbers to add to the confusion.

Here are some examples:

50,000 Back, upper left and lower right. None on front.

20,000 Front, upper right.Back, upper right and left.
5,000 Front, lower right. Back, lower right and left.

2000 Front, lower right. Back, lower left and right.

1000 Back, all four corners. None on front.

500 Back, upper left and right one inch from the edge. None on front.

Here are the backs.

I can tell the stores are frustrated too when they open their cash drawer and dig through a huge pile of bills to make change like they are tossing a salad.

Ah, well, I don't have to live here.

Maybe I should get out of bed and find something constructive to do.

Tomorrow I get the morning bus at 9:00 and I think the trip is three or four hours.