Starting them young, eh?

 Since EVERYBODY thinks we are from Canada, figured I throw out a word from my homeland :)  We seriously get asked we are from Canada almost every day....but I take that as a compliment frankly. I think it speaks to our character (and maybe Katy's accent at times :).  But more on whether or not to say you are from America in a different post.........

On to my thoughts on children:

The amount of children that I have done business with here is astonishing.  So far, this seems to be Laos-specific, as I didn't witness it in Thailand.  But the children (as young as 7 years old, I would guess) are completely capable of and often appear to be running their parents' businesses. It started at a tubing bar in Vang Vieng when I was desparately craving my daily BeerLaos and the only person in sight at the bar was a 9 year old. With much trepidation and feeling quite guilty, I said "BeerLaos??"  He nooded, smiled, and said "15,000 kip, please."  And then marched over to the cooler, grabbed a beer, cracked the top on the refrigerator bottle opener, and brought me my beer.  Cool, man....thanks.  Glad you are serving the tourists of Laos in the middle of a Wednesday :) 

These kids speak English well, are great salespeople, and are proficient in making change quickly and correctly. While trying to rent a tube the other day on Don Det, the shop owner was asleep in the corner.  Don't worry, though. Her son (maybe 8 years old?) saw us eyeing the tubes and immediately stopped playing with his friends, came over, said "Do you want to rent a tube? 10,000 kip all day" while his mother continued to nap.  And you bet your butt he was waiting there when we returned the tubes later that day to say thank you very much and to have a nice evening.

And the best was when Katy and I were on a mission via bicycle a few days ago to find "the best burger in all of Asia," at a hostel called King Kong on the south end of Don Det Island. The joint had been recommended to us by a fellow American we met while swimming the night before and after he gave it his high regards, we couldn't pass it up.  The hostel owner came over and we told him we heard he had the best burgers in Asia, and he said, "Yea, man....probably the best burgers in the whole f***ing world."
I knew this was going to be a phenomenal burger.
Anyhow, we ordered our burgers and in typical Laos fashion, waited.  After we ordered, the hostel owner was sure to take the time to cook himself up a meal, eat it, and roll and smoke a joint before bringing us our food.  45 minutes later, he brought out the burgers and they were unbelievable, as expected: I do love all this Asian food but I have eaten almost nothing except for padthai, curry, lap, and fried noodles for the whole month so you can imagine my excitement when a juicy burger topped with pineapple, bacon, cheese!! (something you don't see anywhere here) and a sauce that resembled In and Out Burger's animal style sauce appeared in front of me.

Sorry- got distracted thinking about that burger again. Back to the children: While waiting for the burger, we had perused the menu and it had a history of the guesthouse spelled out.  The man (a fomer chef in Sweden and England) who owned the place had come here years ago, married a Lao woman, and now they ran the hostel and had two children. He noted that his daughter was becoming quite the good cook, and I realized that no, this man hadn't whipped up our burgers in between his own personal cooking, eating, and blazing- rather, his daughter (who I saw at the end of the meal and she appeared about 12 years old), had made us this amazing food. 

I don't know whether these children are having great work ethic instilled at them at an early age or if they are bing forced to do work when maybe they should be playing or going to school.... I guess either way, they are learning something!