Remodeling the bathroom

We've done a bunch of remodeling recently. We attacked the bathroom first.

The first step in remodeling the bathroom was to remove a soap dish from the wall. Water had gotten in behind the soap dish, so we had to tear out a lot of old tile and plaster. We patched the gaping hole with concrete.

Since we were tiling over tile, we put down a scratch coat of mortar before laying the tile. This makes the tile stick better.

We put up six inch white tiles over the old, hideous four inch off-white tiles. Takashi did all the tricky parts of the work. We wore gloves because we were using extra sticky mortar which really dries out your hands.

After the tiling was complete, Nile carefully masked out the calking lines.

Here is the final product. Notice the new floor, and beautiful yellow glass tiles along the side of the tub. We also repainted our radiator, put a small shelf on top of it, installed another medicine cabinet, and put in a much nicer shelf above the door.

Laos highlights

The night market happened every night, and we were there every night for it.

One day we went kayaking down the river. Nile lost a lens from her sunglasses, but Takashi lost his entire glasses. We were laughing about it later. It was a fun day.

Monks studying under the bougainvillea.

Nile, Yoshie, and Takashi having Lao BBQ!

The orange prosession

Every morning in Lugan Prabang, the monks had a presession to gather food for the day. A representitive from local familys will be out early (6:30am) to provide food for the monks walking bare feet. To show respect, the people are sitting (to be lower than the monks) and are also not wareing shoes. There are a lot of monks in the town, and you can see how far back the orange line of monks go in the first picture.



After breakfast, the monks put thier shoes back on and even ride tuk-tuks

Luang Prabang 1

In Luang Prabang we encountered this girl who had a 3 month old monkey. A local version of the pedestrian crossing sign.

Banana in bloom.

Every day we had great sunsets. This is sunset number 1.

The monks were everywhere. Here is a row of them surfing the internet. Notice that the one in the middle is using MSN.

On the night of the full moon, many people were out worshiping. The night market was the main event every evening.



We rented bikes every day. A local dog by the basket store. And a hand made paper store.

It was very peaceful here.

The food and gift fair

We were lucky that the day after we arrived was the Laos food and gift fair! The night before they had set up the archway decorated with food. There were no gaurds over night, but not a single water mellon was stolen.

This woman carved this watermellon. We forgot to ask how long it took.

Yoshie's pants match the flowers. This is what she was taking a picture of.

We rented bikes that day so we could cover more area. This is the symbol of Laos. Takashi suspects there is a little piece of Budda's bone here. It was close to a full moon.

The next day we piled into a tuk-tuk to go to the airport. We boarded through gate 1. The only gate in the airport. Next stop: Luang Prabang

Laos!

This is in Vientien. They say there is a dragon living under this that saved the city a long time ago. Laos is a lot quieter and laid back than Vietnam. It is a gem of a country. We highly recommend visiting.

Plumaria is the national flower and they were in bloom and the city smelled fabulous.
As always, we went to the market. Here Takashi is very excited.

This was a very big market. They had fruits, nori from the river, and insect pupa.

Here is the food court. Here is a thread store. They had a lot of silk and cotton.