I was gonna post more but it's dinner time!

I was gonna post about the people we've met -- Mama Naxi, Incense Cowboy, Grandma Naxi, Deqin Girl... but Cartoon Girl has done so admirably already. Check out her site – I am especially fond of the conversations with Grandma Naxi... [Edit]: Yuppienomad has just posted a really good post about Mama Naxi, too.

I was also gonna post about how we were introduced to the Laos style of working.  According to the Lonely Planet: Lao commonly express the notion that 'too much work' is bad for your brain' and they often say they feel sorry for people who 'think too much'... Avoiding undue psychological stress remains a cultural norm.  From the typical Lao perspective, unless an activity... contains an experiential element of muan (fun), it will probably lead to stress.

And so in Kunming, our express request for a 30 day Laos visa ended up with us knocking on the civil servant's door at 9 pm (the embassy was in our hotel), disturbing him from a World Cup match (in his boxers), and receiving three hastily stamped visas for stays in Laos between January 2005 and March 2005.

After reading over the bogus dates for the third time, the kind fellow finally agreed to give us our visas the next day (right before our bus left for the Chinese border). 

We got the visas -- they were the same ones with the 2005 dates whited out and 2006 typed over.  Lucky for us, the Laotian border guards didn't seem to mind.  Perhaps it was a typical Laos occurrence.  After Vietnam, Laos is a needed breather... although historically, the Vietnamese have always bullied the Laos.. so I'm not quite sure how me, with my jarring last name, will be received....

Yuppienomad has blogged in greater detail about Kunming.

The great thing about traveling with other bloggers is that sometimes their recollections is better than yours... will try to get everything in, but Laos is banging on my head! The food! The huts! The food!

Blowingbubble's post:

I've been blogging a lot about people we've met and the reason is simple -- the people we've met in Yunnan are some of the kindest I've encountered in China.

For other views and more details about our travels, visit  j.fisher  and  YuppieNomad's blogs. I love the fact that we're travelling and blogging together because I, for sure, can't remember or capture all that we're experiencing; plus, reading their renditions as we go along makes me smile and I haven't even left them yet. Another upside for you guys is that they've posted some pics, which I promise to do... eventually.

Ok so back to Mama Naxi. I first heard of her on a boat in Halong Bay, Vietnam from Emma, an Australian girl who had never been to Lijiang herself. Then, there were the American girls in Zhongdian who raved about her kindness and Mama-like tendencies. And finally, there was Amit, the Israeli guy on the bus from Baishuitai who told us about her 8 yuan all-you-can-eat dinners and led us to her. Now we too know why she's famous. Bananas upon arrival and departure, dinners where the number of dishes on the table does not vary proportionately with the number of people sitting around it, and potpourri on a string that has rescued our noses on countless occasions since then. Plus, you can buy bus tickets from her and she'll pick you up/drop you off at the bus station or even the airport. The place also has free internet (limited to half an hour at a time) and a cozy atmosphere where guests eat, sit and relax together. If you go to Lijiang, pay her a visit. The official name for her place is Gu Cheng Xiang Ge Yun Ke Zhan (Address: #78 Wen Hua, WuYi, DaYan).

Haha. Love the efficiency and accuracy of the Laos visa folks!

About Cambodia, there are ATMs in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh (ANZ Royal and another bank that was like Canadia Bank or something), but I recommend you just get a wad of money all at once so you won't have to keep on going back. They use dollars there, so all the ATM machines spit out dollars. It's like America!

Posted by: Sharon | June 27, 2006 at 07:25 PM

Thanks, Sharon! Note about Cambodian visa.. we got them back and they misspelled YuppieNomad's name. Go figure. And for Laos? We walked through a temple complex without paying because the ticket girl, to our best attempts, would not wake up from her afternoon siesta.

Posted by: j.fisher | July 09, 2006 at 08:07 AM