Camp Champions Blog

Today, we had an odd deja vu this moment.  While in Northern Thailand, I was brought back to Copenhagen.   This is an truly odd combination.  Few places are more modern than Copenhagen and Chiang Mai still feels like a poor community that is trying to be a real city.

The tying idea is the Elephant Parade.  This is a non-profit that raises funds for the Asia elephant in a post teak forest world.

Before I tell you about our culinary education today, I feel a need to add an addendum to yesterday's blog.  As you may recall, we spent the day with tigers following a day with elephants.  But there is more.

I feel like I have put my son in harm’s way.

We had a very eventful day, and it is only half over.  Susie and the girls are dying to return to the carnivorous feet fish and we all want to return to the blues bar.

Luckily, for the second day in a row, the story is better told with photos than words.

I have a lot of pictures to share, so you will get fewer words.

This should make an odd blog.

Yesterday, I mentioned the fact that one van no-showed on us and that we spent over an hour attempting to arrange another.

We are falling for Laos.  The people are unfailingly pleasant.  The country is beautiful.  The food is good if not excellent.

Luang Prabang is physically the size of Marble Falls, has 105,000 people and is the third largest city in Laos.  As I told you before, it was formerly the capital and is still the spiritual center of the country.  Monks in saffron robes stroll the street, accept gifts of rice in the morning, do chores during the day, pray intermittently and talk on the occasional cell phone.

I have not missed a day blogging. Not in 56 days in Europe and not in the first 49 in Asia. When I had no internet (Nepal), I still wrote and then posted all of them when I got a connection.

My grandfather was a newspaper man and a great collector of stories.  I wish I could have a week with him now that I so deeply appreciate great story-telling.

I, however, do remember one of his favorites.

Today was a transition day.  We woke in Bangkok and are now in Laos.  More specifically, we are in Luang Prabang, the former capital and Laos' spiritual center.

It has recently become an incredibly popular travel spot.  They have almost 100 hotels/guesthouses now.  Fifteen years ago, they would have had less than a dozen.