That means "Happy New Year" in Lao.

On my last day in Luang NamTha, I was invited by Yves and Martin of France to a party at their new Lao friend Soda's house. What a great invite it turned out to be!!! For New Year, the kids all run around trying to soak everyone else on the streets. Everyone is fair game, pedestrians, cyclists, people on motorbikes, etc. Water guns are very popular and as a gift, Yves and Martin bought a few for Soda's nieces and nephews. They were a huge hit.

When we first arrived, it seemed that the men and the women ate separately, and I was included at the men's table. This also meant I couldn't refuse the lao lao when it was offered to me. Luckily, I've found that it doesn't affect me too much, so I drank away. Martin, Yves, and I thought if we could get the Lao drunk first, we'd be ok. This isn't very hard to do because Lao people can't hold their booze very well. Martin and Yves had also brough a bottle of French red wine from town and when the Lao men tried it, they all made really funny grimaces, some trying to be polite, others not caring and spitting it out. It was hard to explain you sip the wine, not shoot it as you do with lao lao.

We ate gingered pork, spicy beef with mint, and some sort of sweet rice paste with coconut and egg inside of a banana leaf. After eating enough, the women joined us, and I headed off to the store to buy some beer. I hadn't contributed to the wine and food, so I splurged and bought 8 bottles of Beer Lao (650ml) for 56,000 kip. That's a bit less than $5.60, a fair gesture I thought. When Soda and I returned, the women made such a fuss you'd think that I'd bought the whole brewery. The women prefer to drink beer and drink they did. Martin and I played Caps and two of the men joined in.

Drinking games were not meant to last and soon the women wanted to dance and dance and dance. The Lao style of dancing is easy to imitate because it's much slower than the Thai version. Move your hands up and down in a fluid motion and tap you feet to the music. After some lao lao, no problem. When the Lao men wouldn't dance, I'd pretty much drag them up off their asses. Being that most of them are half my size, they didn't have much choice. This amused the women and we became fast friends even though we didn't know each others names or speak a common language.

The women were really great. They showed me who was married to whom, who the kids belonged to, etc. When I took photos, they were thrilled and laughed at their own pictures, as well as mine of friends and family. Before I knew it, I had flowers being shoved in my hair and my boobs poked again (this must be some sort of compliment!). After a bit more booze, I even ran down the street with a bucket of water to dump on some random girls who wandered by.

By 2pm, I was sufficiently drunk and was ready to call it a day. Martin, Yves and I eventually made our way back to our guesthouses and said goodbye. I'm glad I got to have a truly Lao experience with good people on my last day in this beautiful and super friendly country.