[Seth] Wet Market in Luang Prabang

Perhaps my favorite way to get a feel for a new country is to see how it shops.  In Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia/New Zealand and perhaps a few other places, it is quite similar to how we shop in the US -- perhaps the grocery stores aren't quite so big (although France did invent the hypermarche) but pretty much the same type of experience with slightly different shopping options (prawn cocktail crisps, vegemite or frogs legs).

In Laos, the experience and the options are very different.  We visited the Wet Market in Luang Prabang this morning after seeing the Buddhist monks collecting the morning alms (which is also quite a sight. 

Luang Prabang is a small regional city in the northern part of Laos (about 60,000 people).  In the surrounding countryside there are many small villages that showcase the wide variety of ethnic groups that call Laos home.  While there are small markets and grocery stores (really more like a bodega or convenience store in the US) in the villages, the real shopping happens at the markets.  There are two types of markets in Luang Prabang -- the day markets which include wet (produce, fish and meats) and dry (durable goods and electronics) which are primarily for locals and the night market which is really for tourists. 

Here are some pictures of the wet market:

You can get all types of local fruits and vegetables.

Dragon Fruit.

Bananas.

Chiles.  

And fish of various types.

I actually think the bowl on the right is crickets. 

There were lots of prepared food choices:

Rice, Noodles and Spices were plentiful.

Rice noodles, both thin and thick.

Banana leaves for holding things.  

And then of course there are the more unusual options like Crispy Mekong River Weed. 

[George/Cannon] Goat

Recently in when we arrived in Thailand I decided that I needed a good music playlist.  My old playlist was nothing short of horrible, with old songs that I had listened to too many times and I was sick of.  Also the list was very short.  Maybe 10 songs.  So I decided to make a new playlist.  I decided to call it GOAT, as in greatest of all time.  This probably isn't true but I like to think it is.  The next day I made it.  The playlist was comprised of 9 Imagine Dragon songs, 12 Taylor Swift songs (from the old albums), and 14 random songs from various artists.  It was about two hours long.  In the next week I spent a lot of time listening to GOAT.  I also made a running playlist using the most upbeat songs from GOAT.  And I'm thinking that I'm going to make a study playlist with calmer songs in it, because I tried doing math while listening to goat and I got very distracted.  Also using a cheap editing app I made a Rugby (our dog) Goat for the cover.  (Shown Below)

Granted all that I did was give her horns, but whatever

[Seth] Karst Kayaking

We spent the last week on Phuket and Ko Phi Phi (and in the waters around Phuket and Krabi).  This is the part of Thailand that is on all the postcards -- limestone cliffs plunging into aquiline blue waters.  The karst geology of this part of Thailand is created by the erosion of limestone (once coral reefs hundreds of millions of years ago) due to the chemical weathering where acid rain, which produces carbonic acid, has dissolved layers of soluble bedrock. Karst landscapes feature limestone cliffs, caves, underground streams, and sinkholes.  The resulting islands, caves and cliffs are spectacular.  

We visited caves and secret interior bays at Phanak Island and Hong Island.  To visit the hidden interior, you needed to go by kayak through limestone caves that were so small that in places you had to lie on your back to get through.  

The tide had risen while we were in the interior lagoon, so getting out was even more challenging.  In some cases (not for us), the guides have to remove air from the kayaks in order to squeeze through the narrow gaps.

The interiors of the islands or "Hongs" were beautiful.  In a few cases, you can only visit these at high tide since they are mud flats during low tide. 

[Grace] Exploring Phi Phi Islands

Yesterday, my family and I rented a speed boat for the morning so we could explore some islands around Phi Phi, the island where we had been staying. We were surprised by the fact that our speedboat was apparently named "Marijuana" and was proudly decorated with a marijuana leaf on the side. While this boat wasn't highest on our list, it still did the job. Different cultures, different traditions I guess?

Our first stop on the boat was Maya Maya Bay. Apparently this beach was made famous after the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach" was filmed there. I have not seen the movie, but I have seen Leonardo DiCaprio's face & the beach, both of which are beautiful, so at least the movie has that going in it's favor.

As we rolled up to the beach, the views were stunning. The beach is in a little cove, and as our "Marijuana" boat entered the cove, we were able to see the stunning, high rock walls.

The cliff walls when boating in.

The cliff walls as seen from the beach.

There were some beautiful long boats docked at the beach.

Cannon got some great action shots of him falling back into the water. It almost looks like he is making a snow angel in the water, which is ironic because he is more like a snow devil than a snow angel.

The beach was crowded. And it was only 8:30 in the morning.

After we left Maya Maya Beach, we went snorkeling! My siblings, my dad and I all went snorkeling while my mom took pictures from the boat. The water's visibility was the best I'd ever snorkeled in before; the water was crystal clear so all the fish's color stood out super vibrantly. 

Snorkeling!! You can tell where I am because I am the best-looking.

After that, we went to our third location. It was a beautiful inlet with the same dazzing water and majestic rocks framing us and our homely drug boat ;). We all swam in the water off the boat, and most of the family even jumped off the front! I tried (and failed) to dive into the water headfirst, not because of lack of effort; in fact, I even tried to dive into water, but bailed halfway through and belly-flopped instead. I'm pretty sure that as I lay there, face down and spread eagle in the air, looking down at the water, I regretted every life choice that led me to this moment of shame. (And while I still haven't perfected my dive, I went back to the hotel and got mango ice cream so I'm really not that mad about it anymore.) 

I would sell my soul to the devil to live here (you wish I was joking but I'm not).

Someone is having a little too much fun...I'll leave it up to you to guess who.

This was taken right after I learned how to fly.

Cannon doesn't allow pesky things like gravity to stop him from doing what he wants to do.

After playing in the water some more we decided to move onto our next location. So off we went to more snorkeling! This time, Mom joined us so we didn't have a designated photographer. So sadly, no one was able to document how attractive I look in fins and a snorkel. But, at least I learned one very important lesson snorkeling: if you are really quiet in the ocean, and the water is not too deep, you can actually hear parrot fish eat aglae!!!!!! They make a really quiet crunching/eating noise and it's adorable. I hope you treat that knowledge well.

When we were done snorkelling, it was around 11:30 and we were all tired. It's a hard life when you have to ride around in a boat all day in the Phi Phi Islands and go to beautiful places and swim in the ocean. We could have gone to Money Beach, named apropiately for its abundance of monkeys, but as a family we made the joint-decision to skip it and head back to the main island. 

Right before we ended our excursion on the boat, we took one last brief stop at another beautiful inlet. We didn't stay for long, and we stayed in the boat the entire time, but the pictures were too beautiful not to share.

I hope that after reading this post and seeing all these beautiful pictures, you are already looking at your calendar to see when you can buy a plane ticket to Thailand. If not, then I am a failure (what's new) because everything here is SO GORGEOUS!!!!! My parents told me never to write in all caps online because it looks like you're yelling - but yelling is exactly the vibe I want to get across. The Phi Phi islands (pronouced Pee-Pee with a /p/ not an /f/) are the number one islands in Thailand, and maybe in the world. I believe everyone should see them before they die, even if that means riding a boat called "Marijuana."