Laos

So Trent is now totally stable and in kidney recovery stage.  He is doing really well.  Miaken and I had been kicking it around Bangkok for almost two weeks and went for a little sabbatical to Laos for a few days while Trent re-cooped in the hospital.  Laos totally has a bad wrap.  It's amazing.  The scenery there is unlike anything I've ever seen.  These towering spires of Limestone blast out of  flat rice field low lands.  

The people we met were really interesting too.  The people of the mountains are nearly all Hmong, speaking primarily Hmong but Laotian as well.  One gentlemen we met on the bus was the son of a Hmong Vietnamese soldier.  The Americans came to the highlands of Laos to recruite troops.  If the war was won, the americans would give them their land outside the communist rule, if the war was lost they would gain American citizenship.  This particular gentleman's father was killed fighting with American Soldiers in Southern Vietnam.  He, his mother, and siblings were all given american citizenship and now live in Sacramento.  He was returning for a couple of months to visit with the family.  

And how would a trip to Laos be complete without bathing and swimming with elephants...ZOW!