New Year's Eve 2019

We finished our last trip to the villages and found enough energy to walk back to our guest house, a few blocks away.    Dirty and tired but safe.   Ron said he would take Phet and me to a nice restaurant for dinner.   We had eaten junk for days and almost nothing for two days on the trips to the villages.  I thought I was too tired to go but I could not let Phet down so I got a hot shower and dressed in the last of my clean clothes.   We began walking around to find a restaurant and I kept thinking we needed to find one while I could still walk.    I have never felt so tired in my life.   We walked to the corner near the market where a large set up was underway for New Year's Eve.   Round tables were covered with white clothes, flowers were on each table and the tables were preset with some food and stacks of beer.    We knew that was going to be the big bash of the evening so we kept walking down the street.

 Soon we came to the White Elephant Hotel which we passed many times last year when we were in Luang Prabang.   It is probably a 5 star hotel and they had tables set up on the lawn.   It was a preset menu for the evening but not expensive considering the situation and our tiredness.   I began to relax and feel less tired as we sat a few minutes.

We had dinner in courses and it was good except for Phet's steak that was tough.   I gave her most of mine since we had plenty of everything.

There was live music and Lao dancers came out and performed some very smoothing and gentle dance routines.     The weather was a little cool and they brought us blankets to put around us.    It was a two-hour, very pleasant evening.   Phet said she enjoyed it very much and so did we after two very difficult days.   We walked back to our guest house and were sound asleep long before the new year arrived.