Trying to experience some more local things in the region, we read about a Wat in the south of V-town where the novice monks offer a free meditation class in return for helping them with their English by talking to them. 

It was a pretty decent walk away, about 90 minutes or so. In that time we'd managed to get very hot indeed. Nothing better than turning up to a relaxing meditation class sweating out of your eyeballs. There were about 10 or so people in the class, which was quite nice and small. We got chatting to some of the monks which was really interesting to see what their day-to-day life is like, as well as general life and culture in Laos. In Laos, it is seen as favourable and honourable for the family for every boy to be a trainee monk for some point in their youth, from around the age of 8 up to 20. This can be for 1 month or for several years. Many boys go for their entire adolescence if their family can spare them (a lot of families in villages can't afford to as they need all their boys for labouring) and can choose to go to a local Wat or one further afield (from speaking to them, sometimes the family choose the location, sometimes the boy will get a say in where he goes). Can understand why people do it, decent way of improving their lives and their families.

After a good old chat (I very swiftly closed down the "Do you like football" questions) for about an hour, they took us through the meditation, explaining the purpose and principles. There were two different types; the traditional one (sitting on the floor) and one where you meditate walking around, before a final traditional session. We did twenty minutes of each, 1 hour in total, but it's amazing how both long and short it was. You're sat there thinking 'this is lasting ages' then when the gong was sounded, wondering why it was over so fast. 

We walked the 90 minutes back, feeling zen, marvelling at how calm we now were following our pro meditation and how all those things that previously would have irritated us (motorbikes trying to run you over, litter and constant broken paving slabs causing you to endlessly jump to the side or trip over, babies screaming) now weren't even registering in our serene minds (this lasted at least 30 minutes). After walking back a different route to see some other bits of town, we headed to our favourite street food place for some dinner (such good pork) and then checked out places for dessert before heading for some crepes, which definitely hit the spot.