Merry Christmas

Christmas was a quiet and thoughtful day. My Lao friends from all over the country called me. Christmas is not a public holiday so most of my friends were working. I could hear the children in the school behind me house as they shouted out their drills on the alphabet, and their happy shouts during recess.

I walked down to the office in the morning and rode my bicycle back home on the river road, then cutting inland for a tour of the rice fields. Farmers flooded some fields and have started the dry season rice farming.

offerings.jpg, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

This is my one Christmas photo. I'm not sure what the story is behind these offerings. Was someone killed here? Or is this a site that has traditionally be a place to make offerings to the spirits of the place? There are always offerings here - whether several bottles of Pepsi or a line of shot glasses filled with rice whiskey next to balls of sticky rice.