We started today heading to do a few of the arts and culture parts of LP. First was the Arts and culture centre, then onto the UXO information centre.

The Arts & Culture centre is a little museum outlining the different peoples that live in Laos and giving a few details on there idiosyncrasies. we debated whether we had different 'peoples' in the UK and came up with not really, maybe northerner and southerner? Only key difference here is northerners like to dip everything in gravy.

It was a little disappointing, was relatively expensive and ended up being about two rooms.

We headed to a quite interesting looking cafe, it specialised in tea and books (it had national geographics from the past 40 years or so) and did 'free' movie nights (1. not free, had to order something and 2) i would guess not strictly on the legal side). Rather disappointingly, we ordered an iced coffee and honey & ginger iced tea, they came up and they were some of the most undrinkable beverages we've had. Hannah's tea was so spicy, it was if they had brewed it for a few days. Mine was clearly made with instant coffee which hadn't dissolved properly.

Next we tried the UXO centre. The UXO centre is a public face of the government run organisation to clear up the unexploded bombs from the USA secret bombing on Laos in the Vietnam war (or American war if you're from SEA). This was really interesting, if that is the right word. It wasn't very big, but a lot of hard hitting information. Like how so many bombs ended up there (apparently US planes with bombs were expected to return without bombs, regardless of whether they had a target or not) and that there were more bombs dropped on Laos in this period than in the entirety of WW2. Approximately 80 million unexploded 'bombies' remained at the end of the war, with 25% of villages today still contaminated.This is a big factor today in keeping the country in poverty; the abundance of these unexploded bombs stops a lot of farming and development throughout the country. It also went on to how they go about actually dealing with the problem. A job it seems is 95% boring then 5% OMFG!!! They also had information on how they educate rural villages on how to recognise the bombs and what to do. A lot of casualties now are kids thinking they are toys, or farmers digging land and hitting one. The videos made tough viewing, hearing from people who'd lost limbs and loved ones, and the effect it had on their families and communities. 

For dinner, there were quite a lot of restaurants on the road of our hotel, overlooking the Nam Khan river, which flows into the Mekong. So we headed to a well-rated one, the Bamboo Tree. The food was pretty good, we shared satay skewers to start, then i had a Coconut curry and Hannah had steamed fish in banana leaves with sticky rice and vegetables (!!! a fairly rare occurrence here). It did seem a little bit of a tourist trap and when we got the bill, it was confirmed. For the quality, it was quite expensive.