Camp Champions Blog

I have so much I would like to share, but this should be a short blog.  I plan to share the early morning part of the day and add the latter part tomorrow as we watch the NCAA Championship game.  We might be in a third world nation, but the great games are still available.

I also must face the fact that I woke at 5 AM to watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat (the largest religious facility in the world). I can report that the sun rises just the same way in Cambodia as it does in Texas, with one notable exception - we generally do not have this many people chronicling the event:

Please allow me to start this blog with an apology.  Last night, I attempted to blog very late at night.  I did this frequently in Europe (writing at midnight or later), but I always reviewed and published them the next day, since I often made mistakes.  Heck, I fell asleep writing on at least 3 occasions.

Last night was the second fall-asleep-while-typing nights I have had in Asia.  Susie woke me with my hands on my laptop when she got up in the night and saw me not there.  I then hit “Publish” rather than “Save”, so a garbled mess hit the blog.  My favorite mistake was the result of the computer’s auto-correct.  I was writing “yesterday, we had a déjà vu moment” and it got corrected to “yesterday, we had a dave moment”.

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.