Things you love touching

[Jaques]

Originally Posted by lusciouskiwi

My last day in Laos. All the silk - smooth, rough and raw. Cottons. Silk embroidery.

remote village he met many years ago, she is a qualified seamstress and she and her friends made 2 outfits for my wife out of silk made and bought locally, for the wedding, she looked amazing........they both did.
This is paul and Jai his wife, she had 3 outfits throughout the wedding
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This is my wife wearing one of the outfits, with paul
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and here are the ladies who helped make those dresses, i didnt get an outfit made but who cares............
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My son lives in Laos with his laoation wife and baby Ananda, shes expecting another in february, he teaches English and music, plays and sings jazz in restaurants/hotels etc and has 13 piano students. They live in a small village with no lighting or roads, called Ban naa just outside the capital, Vientiane, we last visited in January and fly out to Vietnam again on halloween night to travel on to bangkok and wait l0 hrs for the night sleeper train which is something out of the l930's and very cute, with curtains and snowy white sheets, which takes around 13.5 hrs to the border and then we have cross the Friendship bridge into Laos. It takes around 3 days all in all because of where the village is but its my Grandsons 2nd birthday. We have so many presents for people and things for my son and his wife which they cant get there, that we have literally half a suitcase for our own stuff to last us 3 weeks and my wife will not use anyone elses towel so we have to take them as well.......When we leave them we will be going to NongKhai just over the Thai border for 5 of 6 days - i googled hotels and found guest house......... www.mutmee.com which seems wonderful judging by all the things ive read on their site and travel site reviews, turns out my son knows Julian the owner, the reiki master, yoga teacher and others from when he lst went to Thailand as a volunteer after leaving university to teach english - so seems like we were meant to go. The blog i read also is very interesting so thought i would share it..........


Nong Khai and Mut Mee Guesthouse


The author, a Bangkok expat, and frequent traveler to the Mut Mee Guest House in Nong Khai, relates his experiences meeting interesting people and the laid back bohemian atmosphere that prevails at the guest house on the banks of the Mekong River.

I was first told about Mut Mee Guest House by my friend and co-worker, Peter, a former Catholic priest who did missionary work in Nong Khai prior to his change of life. Peter was someone I had always admired but he was also an enigma to me. He seemed to be the kind of person who didn't have a malicious bone in his body. Maybe it was the aura of a former priest, but I have also gotten this impression from other, but not all, religious people of various faiths. In the era of pedophile scandals and corruption, maybe it was all a contrived persona. But I trusted Peter, something I couldn't say about too many other people I have met in my life.
Peter worked as a missionary for some radical branch of the church whose objective was to provide poor people in developing areas with self-sufficient industries and, I suppose, the word of The Lord as well. As a missionary priest, Peter made about 10,000 US dollars a year. His base was Nong Khai, and some of the projects he was involved in included a traditional silk weaving business that is still in operation.
It was clear that Peter had some uncertain feelings about leaving the priesthood, but apparently the vow of chastity was too much to handle and the lure of local woman was his downfall. When I knew him, Peter had been married for several years, had two kids, and was working alongside me at a government university outside of Bangkok. Peter worked as a translator and I worked as a lecturer.
It was Peter who recommended Mut Mee Guest House to me. He said that Nong Khai was a unique and interesting place with an old style pace of life and a small foreign population. Mut Mee Guesthouse, he said, was run by an artist couple and located on a back soi that also housed art galleries and shops that gave the area a somewhat bohemian atmosphere.
I took an overnight sleeper train to Nong Khai and arrived on a chilly, haze-filled morning to Nong Kai, on the Thailand-Laos border in 1996 and I have visited the place many times since then.
Mut Mee Guesthouse
Mut Mee guesthouse is comprised of several small wooden houses situated directly on the banks of the Mekong River in Nong Khai, Thailand. Nong Khai itself is a slow-moving, traditional town that differs from other slow-moving traditional towns in Thailand because of its scenic riverside location, its proximity to Laos, and its French influence (apparent in its cuisine and some of its architecture). Also, Nong Khai has been touched by a number of interesting Thai and non-Thai residents, who have brought beauty and uniqueness to the friendly town.
Julian, who owns Mut Mee with his Thai wife, is a young middle-aged British man who has an aristocratic and dramatic air, as if he would be quite comfortable discussing art or theatre with a group of New York or London intellectuals. Julian has studied art and the Mut Mee Guest House is a tribute to his imagination and sense of style. But Mut Mee's art is accessible, found in small details like wall murals and creatively designed furniture. And unlike other artsy places, Mut Mee is also a budget-oriented and laid back place. The wooden houses are spread out in a garden area in the center of which is an open air dining area. Music is carefully selected so there is no elevator music, no techno and no pop, only classical, instrumental jazz, and a smattering of classic-rock music. You can sit in the open area, sipping coffee and snacking for the whole day and feel time slowly and leisurely expand and drift away like the current in the river below.

The grounds have a number of seating options, ranging from a Thai traditional sala area, to chairs sculpted out of giant truck tires, and even a tree swing. However, what brings the place together is the kitchen. Mut Mee has a great kitchen system, whereby you write your orders in a book designated to your room number and give it directly to the cooking staff. This eliminates waiter staff and makes you feel like you're almost at home in your own kitchen. The items in the book are all tallied up at the end of your stay. The system makes munching and lazing the day away very attractive because the food is also good. Strong Laotian coffee and freshly baked baguettes are the staple. There are also daily specials and a mix of Thai and European food too. The European food is delicious and the Thai food is adjusted for non-Thai tastes.
Conversations with Interesting People
Mut Mee's atmosphere is very conducive for long chats and getting to know other guests. There's no TV or video, so you are kind of forced to either read or talk, which I think is a good thing. It takes the edge off and relaxes you. And Thailand is a place that attracts interesting people.
One of the most memorable people was Jacob. Jacob was in the room next to ours and was about 60 years old. His wife was much younger and there was, of course, an instant presumption of a professional relationship. However, the girl did not seem to be a pro, they were too intimate and relaxed, as if they had known each other for years, and in fact they had.
Jacob was the kind of old guy that still seemed young in spirit. He was a Canadian by birth and wore local style cotton and natural fiber clothes as if he were an ex-hippie. He rolled his own cigarettes but seemed to smoke sparingly. It was almost like by some quirk of destiny that a 30-something-year-old traveler woke up one morning and found himself in the body of an old man. Jacob gave the impression that he fell off the middle class 9-to-5 assembly line and as result, he had been spared its soul crunching effect. He was an old guy who was a free spirit.
The girl that accompanied Jacob was his Laotian wife and they both resided in Loei province. They were coming up to Nong Khai because they had to resolve some residence problem that his wife was having in Thailand. They invited me to breakfast with them and they were eating fresh fruit that they had purchased at the market early along with baguettes.
You could tell Jacob's wife was a Laotian and not Thai for a few different reasons. She was dressed differently, more conservatively than most Thai women her age, and she had a down-home earthiness about her. Most Thai girls would have had a hard time adapting to bringing your own fruits and mixing your own coffee while away at a resort.
As we ate tangerines, Jacob told me he was only recently married and his wife was pregnant. He had been in Thailand for several years and had previously resided at a Thai Buddhist temple, a "Wat" in the Loei district. He was proud that he was permitted to stay in the Wat, and he explained the entry procedure that he had to pass. He had met with the abbot and senior members of the Wat and they had asked him why he wanted to become a Buddhist. His answer was that he was not sure he wanted to become a Buddhist, but he wanted to learn about Buddhism. According to Jacob, this was the right answer and Jacob lived in the Wat for over a year, learning meditation and studying Buddhism.


Jacob still lived in the same area outside of Loei, Dansai, which is a quiet provincial area described by Lonely Planet as an interesting combination of Northern and Issan culture. The area is most known for an unusual ritual dating back to pre-Buddhist pagan rituals. The denizens dress with giant phalluses and shoot bottle rockets into the sky, getting drunk and rambunctious in a ceremony that lasts several days. Jacob had a few different existences prior to moving to Thailand. He had lived in Israel and is currently on the lam from the Israeli government, not for army desertion, not for terrorism, but for divorce.
Jacob had grown up in a non-religious Jewish family but had met a religious Jewish girl in America and became religious himself. The Judaism he had hooked up with was the Hasidic movement which stresses direct contact and emotional connection with God, rather than the mere intellectual studying of scriptures. Jacob said that as his connection with the Hasids increased, the religion came to encompass all areas of his life. He had children and moved to Israel, to the holy city of Safed, in the mountains, which is famous for Kabala and Jewish mysticism.
The old city of Safed itself is an ancient twisting affair of limestone walks and ancient synagogues and artisan shops like a smaller version of the old city in Jerusalem, but warmer and more accessible. People go for walks in the wilderness of Safed, where the crisp air is reported to assist in reaching higher spiritual states. There are hot springs and numerous trails in the wilderness outside of Safed and Hasids frequently go to purify their souls. Sometimes Jacob would return from a walk believing that he has actually touched the spirit of God in some way. He would meet a fellow Hasid and relate the mystical experience to which he received a shared happiness.
I wanted to know if he really felt he experienced God in the wilderness of Safed. Jacob stated that when you are totally immersed in the religious lifestyle, it is possible to really believe that you had such communions with holiness and it is totally genuine. However, in retrospect, Jacob believed that what he had experienced was subjective, a reflection of his daily experience, constantly praying and discussing God and mystical experience made it natural for his mind to provide objective validation of his mental and emotional landscape.
Eventually the omnipresence of the religious lifestyle became overbearing for Jacob, and that, combined with domestic issues had led him to leave his wife in Israel. The problem was he never gave her a religious divorce, the only kind of divorce that has any meaning for an orthodox Jewish lady. No orthodox man could marry her until she obtained the divorce certificate and she was stuck in a twilight zone.
Jacob said the reason why he would not grant the divorce was that she was asking for all the assets of the marriage. So, initially, Jacob returned to his native Canada, where he lived in Islands of the coast of Vancouver. But the religious authorities of Israel have the force of government behind them and Jacob was found. On an otherwise uneventful day, a man with a beard and black hat was heard knocking on the door of Jacob's remote island home.
The man was employed by the Israeli religious authorities to get Jacob to sign off on the divorce. Initially congenial, the enforcer asked nicely for Jacob to sign the consent to divorce and they discussed the issue in a relaxed and civilized matter. Jacob read over the papers and saw, again, that his wife was asking for all of the marriage assets and again Jacob refused to sign. At this point, the enforcer revealed his other side and began breaking objects and threatening Jacob. Jacob is a small-framed man and the enforcer was huge. As the destruction increased and became noisier, Jacob's neighbor, a cop, came by and asked the enforcer to leave. And that was the last Jacob has heard form the Israelis. Now Jacob has to be careful to avoid the Israeli and orthodox Jewish community in Thailand. He is a man with a past.