July 21,

We were up and round by 0730. I did not hear the drums this morning!!! Bonus 😊👍🏻unfortunately, Jeff did and did not sleep much after that.😔 We did a load of laundry and had our Javas. Then we did a video call with my sister. It felt like it had been forever, since we had talked with her – it had been two weeks.😂 When we finished we had breakfast of oatmeal and “homemade” yogurt from the grocery store. The yogurt has been great, reminds us of the homemade yogurt that locals had in Vietnam. It is thick & tangy. We add a bit of honey and it is super great! After breakfast we talked with Jeff’s sister and her husband. Our brother-in-law told us of his complicated trip to his Uncle’s funeral. He had flights canceled and other delays, but thankfully, made it to the service in time to speak. It sounds like it was good closure and some relationship building.

For lunch we went out to 3 Thep Restaurant. I had Steam Fish with a lemon, spicy minced topping and an order of rice with. Jeff had Ork Lam, a Luang Prabang stew with buffalo with a BeerLao. We spit a carrot shake, which turned out great. While we were eating we heard a group beside us do a Vietnamese cheer! That sent me back to our Motorcycle Venture of Cao Bang Loop, that was in October of last year!! My how time flies. Anyway, our meals were tasty as they always are here. We paid 500,000 LAK, or $23.27.

We walked back to our place, hung out, and started rounding stuff up for packing. We change places tomorrow. We are staying in Luang Prabang, because we wanted to extend here for five days. But this accommodation is booked right after us, so we will transfer to a hotel style place for our last five days. It’ll be sad to leave this nice little home, as we have enjoyed it. For supper, we stayed in having the last of our pasta with buffalo jerky and cheese. We also did more planning for our future living!

     July 22,

We both got up by 0630. We were about early for us. I figure this was because, well, it stormed a lot last night and we both do not seem to sleep as well before a moving day. Anyway, we started packing up our stuff and it started raining. It did stop briefly and Jeff went across the street to get us water. We had our Javas and breakfast of the last of the oatmeal sprinkled with the last of our Muesli. We also had the last of our yogurt. (At our next place we have included breakfast, but no kitchen.) We then finished our packing and relaxed a bit, hoping the rain would break off again and we could do the move in drier conditions. But this was not gonna happen! Rain, Rain, and more RAIN. So Jeff e-hailed a tuk-tuk grab to take us the one mile. It costs us $2.56 for the convenience.

We arrived at our new accommodation, Opera Premier Hotel, by noon. We weren’t supposed to check in until 1400, but they worked with us, and we only had to wait 15-20 minutes. It was still raining, but as we waited, we were able to pet their dog 👍🏻 and a lady gave us each a small fruit plate of a small banana, some dragon fruit, watermelon and pineapple! All the fruit was exceptionally good and will tie us over until supper time.

We got into our room and unloaded/unpacked. The room is lovely! It was about then that Jeff realized we left a cord needed to link the computer to the TV! He texted the guy and was able to go get the cord. I stayed back and blogged. Poor Jeff, he walked to our old place and back in the rain, but he got two miles under his belt! Afternoon was just sitting on our new balcony taking in the rain and the coolness that it caused. We went back into our room to warm up, and realized the air conditioning wasn’t working. Jeff contacted a guy at the desk. He came back with Jeff and we changed rooms. So we loaded everything we just unpacked – a few hours ago – and went to the new room. It is a bit smaller but still very nice- wood floors and ceilings. We love the Laotian use of wood interiors. Again we unloaded and settled in.

For supper we had an assortment of cheese we had and bread. Jeff had a beer and I had some Laotian coffee rum and we listened to the steady dripping of rain and the subsequent streaming of water for the rest of the evening. This is how I pictured rainy season.