Life as we know it

To take responsibility for one's life, one must figure out first what kind of life one is to live.

And one does not know what he wants, or what kind of life he wants to live, until he finds it.

The process involves exploration; it also involves leaving all that is familiar...

So says I.B. Sambot in his web journal entitled 'It's my life'.

Life in Lao is laid back and simple. The people are poor, but they seem content (although it's easy for Westerners to assume that people are happy to be poor). Many of them have no running water or toilet, but have a massive satellite dish so they don't miss the latest Thai soap opera!

Any foreign visitor is so spoilt out here. We can live in relative luxury for $30 a day. Usually our budget for Asia has been US$50 a day. I Vietnam we kept well in budget, Cambodia we went over budget and in Thailand we were about spot on. In Laos however we could live on $15/20 a day easily.

While pondering on this (and other things) one day, we examined the art of travelling and its application to real life. Here are a few of our musings:

1. The more you carry, the harder life becomes.
2. Pick your travelling companions wisely. It is easy to be led astray.
3. Listen to those travellers who have been there and done it, but check their wisdom with a guide book in order to find out if they are a crazy person.
4. Learn to appreciate the lie of the land. You can't always be on the mountain top.
5. Your best stories come from the tough times.