Day 21 - Gloomy Final Full Day

We both had a great nights sleep without any unnecessary toilet break interruptions. We went down to breakfast and had a huge breakfast each of scrambled eggs, toast, fruit bowls and Jackie also ate a bowl of spicy pork noodle soup.

We set ourselves up on our sun beds and waited for the clouds to clear. We waited and forlornly waited, despite the forecast showing SUN and cloud. It was 26 degrees, a nice temperature, but not hot enough for either of us to enter the pool.

At lunchtime, Jackie went out to the little shop next door and bought a couple of cans of beer and a packet of Lays. We persevered by the pool until 4pm, seeing just brief glimpses of the sun, before we retired to our room for coffee and cake.

It had been quiet by the pool, in fact the whole hotel, all day, which was lucky because at one point Jackie fell out of her bikini top. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a ‘perverted paedophile’ and that I shouldn’t have been looking. What she really meant to call me was a ‘perverted gerontophile or gerontosexual’. Both new words on us. Everyday’s a schoolday!!

After a couple of drinks on the balcony, we caught the shuttle bus into town. Our first stop was to find the artist in the Night Market who had some original paintings for sale. We had been contemplating buying a couple of large paintings for 40,000 Kip (£14) each, but the thought of travelling home with them was making us slightly reluctant.

We found our artist, but then discovered that we had misunderstood the price, when he said 40 he meant US dollars, not 40,000 Kip. The decision was made for us.

We walked up to Bouang Asian Eatery and ordered a wine and beer, followed by Laos Dips and Luang Prabang sausage starters for Jackie and I ordered the Laos meatballs again.

Whilst we were waiting for our meal to arrive, I received a WhatsApp message from my mother thanking us for the Mother’s Day card she had clearly opened two days early.

The 3 dishes arrived with 3 bowls of sticky rice. We managed about half of one of the sticky rice bowls, but overall the food was lovely and a fitting meal for our final dinner in Luang Prabang.

We walked back through the night market taking a few final snaps and bought a little punnet of coconut pancakes for 30 pence from a stall. God, they were lovely and we were cursing ourselves for not discovering them earlier.

We then rushed back to the hotel, so we could arrange an urgent surprise Mother’s Day cameo message from one of Mum’s favourite TV personalities, Greg Wallace. She will love it.

On the way back, I said “We need to cross the road in a minute” to which Jackie immediately blindly stepped out into the busy street without making the slightest attempt to look up. Jackie was obliviously walking across the unlit road, when a speeding 2 up scooter braked heavily, skidded and swerved around her, missing her by inches.

Apparently it was the scooterist’s fault, he should have seen her and beeped his horn!

Song of the Day - Cloudy by Simon and Garfunkel.Read more