Today we traveled to the Living Land Company to get the full rice cultivation experience.  We had a fabulously muddy time!  Rolling our pants up as far as we could, we waded into the rice paddie (mud field at the time) with Susan, the water buffalo, to try our hand at plowing.  By wading, I mean sinking into the knee-high, water-filled field of mud. Post-plowing, we planted rice–of the entire group of maybe 12 people, I am the only one who fell in the mud.  At least I did not do a face plant.  Red ants found Kendall’s feet, but she quickly discovered that a mud bath would take some of the sting out.  Delaney and Kendall each husked the rice with the foot rice pounder (great cardio), and they also had an excellent upper body workout while juicing sugar cane.  At the end of the very full morning, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor–sticky rice dipped in a buffalo skin/chili paste, coconut/rice thin crepes, dried rice cakes, lotus cakes, and rice wine.

We immediately had to head back to the hotel to clean up–after a short rest, we had lunch at Ock Pop  Tok, a living arts center on the banks of the Mekong River.  The Ock Pop Tok menu was unusual–offered on the menu: silk worm poo tea (we did not partake).  We spoke with some of the weavers, who use only natural dye to create the beautiful colors in their products.

We toured the City with our guide, Mr. Khamla.  Let’s just say we are missing Mr. Santhou.  Mr. Khamla used to be a monk.  He became a novice monk in order to get an education.  He did not want to work in the rice fields.  He was a novice monk for six years, then a monk for two years.  He said it was “too hard” to be a monk–as a novice, he only had to keep 10 promises; as a monk, he had to keep an additional 227 promises.  Too hard.  It seemed that the promise not to drink was a particularly difficult one for him.

Even though Mr. Khamla is not our favorite guide, his past life as a monk has been very helpful in learning about the Buddhist monks here and the temples.  We went to Wat Xieng Thong,the temple where Mr. Khamla lived for several years (he described his former temple as the “4-star-hotel of temples”).  The temple itself was constructed in 1560 and is quite beautiful, so we understand his description.  For example, the back of the temple has an exquisite mosaic of the Tree of Life.  There is a smaller, older chapel-like building right next to the temple.  I believe Mr. Khamla said it was built in the very early 1500s.  In the back of that building, there is a reclining Buddha figure–in the front, a “wishing Buddha.”   We have tons of photos of this temple, which I at some point (probably after the trip) will try to post.  With the aid of Delaney and Kendall.  There are also monks’ quarters in the temple compound itself, along with a building that holds a very elaborate funeral carriage–this building was completed only in 2012.

We stopped at the Lao National Museum on the way to the temple.  Kendall had heard about a photo exhibit at the museum.  After much prompting, we were able to get Mr. Khamla off his script and to take us to the back building of the museum, where we saw “The Floating Buddha,” a beautiful photo exhibit with stunning photos of monks in meditation.

We traveled by tuk-tuk to dinner at Tamarind, a lovely restaurant.  We met Patrice, who is traveling by herself, at dinner.  She is also staying at the Kiridara.  After dinner, we strolled through the Night Market with Patrice, bargained for a few pairs of shorts and cotton pants, then took a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.  The girls and I went straight to bed–after a long day!