Organic Farm

A few hours after Chris and Nicola left Don Det Peach, Tess and I left too. We were making a boat/minivan trip back to Pakse. Tess was heading back to Bangkok then on to Malaysia so we said our goodbyes. Peach and I caught an overnight bus to Vientiane. We got there on a Tuesday but the earliest available flight to China was Friday. Rather than hanging around in boring, ugly Vientiane we headed to Vang Vieng which was a town about 4 hours bus ride north.

In Vang Vieng we stayed outside town on an organic farm. The room was very overpriced for what it was. The owner of the farm was called Mr. T. He was a very community orientated bloke who ran various projects to help local people including collecting money to help run a local school bus. So we didn’t mind coughing up the cash since we knew it was being put into good causes.

The was an English school in a village a few minutes walk away and we volunteered our time there one night. We sat in on a couple of lessons and helped the kids out with their exercises. There was a class for primary aged kids and another for seconday school kids. It was good fun and after class the kids came up to us and shook our hands and thanked us for coming saying “Thank you. See you tomorrow”.

The class was being run by an English girl and and an Aussie guy. They were staying on the farm too. We also met another , originally from Sydney, who was staying in a mud brick hut on the farm whilst writing a novel.

Here’s a shot of her hut.

The next day we decided to volunteer to do some work on the farm. We spent a couple of hours weeding a lettuce patch before the heat of the sun took its toll. We spent most of the rest of the day reading in the farm’s restaurant or swimming in the river which boarded the farm. In the late afternoon we helped sort silk worm cocoons in another part of the farm before Peach realised she was allergic to them and started sneezing.