Aches

I can barely stand up without grimacing. My head hurts. My stomach aches. It feels as though my blood has turned to thick gluggy mud and is weighing every part of me down. I don't feel like doing anything. My body feels fat and swollen.

This sorta sucks. I'm in this seemingly exotic, foreign, exciting place with so much to explore - and the only thing I want to do is lie down in my air-conditioned room, throw-up, sleep and perhaps watch some western television... (cartoon network if I could choose).

I'm having some stomach troubles. I'll spare you the details, but I'm really not managing to hold much down. I try though. And I sleep a lot. For the past couple nights I've had at least 9 hours each night, with a couple of naps during the day.

My diet has been:

7am: thick black coffee. baguette with jam and fried egg.
12:30pm: sticky rice and meat/veges
6pm: same as above with variations on the meat and veges

The sticky rice is really sticky. When I heard that people ate rice with their hands I had pictured a very inconvenient mess of rice grains falling onto laps and spilling onto tables. It turns out the rice is so sticky that it's actually quite inconvenient to eat it with anything but your hands.

I'm in Luang Prabang now. We said goodbye to the village and are now staying in the main town. It's gorgeous here. Apart from the dustiness and the grey skies, it is a beautiful French colonial-feeling wee place. (Not that I've been to France. I am just imagining).

Things move in 'Laos' time. It's like Island time. (Not very fast). It's peaceful. There are nice bakeries and coffee shops. At night time everything is lit up with fairy lights and it feels magical.

Thankfully it's no full-moon-party-tourist-town though - everything shuts at about midnight :)

the quaint streets of Laos

and at night time

This morning we left on the 'trucks' at 7:30am, headed for the Elephant park. About half an hour of dust in my eyes and listening to 14 kids singing 'Bingo' made for a very grateful Pamela as we finally arrived at this sanctuary for elephants.

I ride with Nathan, one of the teachers. He's about 27 years old and plays saxophone (or maybe the clarinet... or maybe both... I forget). He teaches in Dubai but also gets some extra cash from playing gigs.

On the elephant ride he is hilarious. He is genuinely terrified and I laugh hysterically at his comical display of fear.

I cannot help but think of how much these elephants must have been tortured. Like literally they must have had their souls beaten out of them to be like this. So placid and unaware. Graham tells me that they never forget though. I hope for their sake that they do.

me on an elephant!

My view

****

And so I want to go for a run but there is no way. My body just will not let me. I actually just napped for an entire hour and I swear I feel worse for it.

Maybe I need to break my 'rule' and just take some Panadol already.