Slow day

It's Tuesday morning and Joe gets back this afternoon from his trek. I just re-read the brochure for his three-day "experimental tour" called "The Akha Experience." Among the Akha village activities Joe is partcipating in are: "bird-watching and collecting bamboo shoots and medicinal plants"; "cotton-spinning, making and playing with children's toys, or pounding rice"; "feeding the pigs"; "enjoying a post-dinner massage provided by the young woman of the village before going off to listen to the courting songs of the youth at the courting grounds."

Speaking of massage, both Thai and Lao "traditional massage" are awfully nice. At the oldest temple in Bangkok (14th century, I think), there's an ancient chart showing how it's done. Joe and I have been happily worked over in Budapest and Istanbul, and the Southeast Asian variety is similar. Except here the people are slighter, and the masseurs and masseuses seem to employ more of their body weight, not just their muscles, in manipulating the customer's muscles and joints. There are massage emporiums just about everywhere, and its lovely. "Massage parlor" is not, by the way, a euphemism for sex parlor. There's little commercial sex in Laos, and in Thailand they've never heard of euphemisms. (Some generally legit Thai massages may nonetheless include, for men, a "happy ending"---a term I would have thought Friendly's had trademarked.)

Massages represent one of Indochina's many guiltless pleasures. Now here's a list of farang guilty pleasures we've enjoyed:
Oreos. They are everywhere. Buy Nabisco stock. Now.
Pringles Potato Chips.
The croque monsieur at Le Cafe Ban Vat Sene in Luang Prabang---as good as any in Paris.
Mike's Burger's in Chiang Mai---"Converting vegetarians since 1979." Mike's is ten stools on a street corner and offers the same great burgers, fries and onion rings as Big Nick's, at Broadway and 77th, and with the same carbon-monoxide sidewalk ambiance.
Sleeping in. We keep meaning to get up at six with the monks and watch their ritual of going door to door with their rice bowls. Finally, on our last full day in Luang Prabang, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5:30 and headed downstairs. The hotel door was barred and padlocked, and the staff weren't up yet. We went back to bed.

From our best-and-worst collection---
Worst menu item we still haven't tried: deep-fried water buffalo gums.
Worst name of a restaurant in Luang Prabang: Poupe Pizza.
Best menu notation you won't find in a restaurant in Becket, Massachusetts: "Let us know how spicy you'd like your jeow."

More soon, when young Joe returns.