Travel Plans Changed

Sunday, Aug. 1, 2010--Don Khon

Today was the day I planned to leave the island. I got up and organized all my luggage. Then it began to rain around 8:00. It continued raining steadily, and the sky looked as if it could continue all day. The boat to leave the island is at 11:00. By 10:15 I became worried and decided I should stay for another day. I didn't want to try to take the boat in the rain and then transfer to the van. And I didn't want to arrive in Savannakhet with it raining. I paid the owner of my guest house for another night. Then around 10:40 the rain stopped. There has only been one brief sprinkle since then. It would have been a good day to travel. But who was to know?

My neighbor felt like walking this morning, so we went to a restaurant down the road. We both had a pork sandwich with cucumber and tomatoes in a baguette. They were very good sandwiches. On the way there, several people asked her about her limp. One person was a young French man. He told her he was here with his cousin who is a kinesiologist and suggested that we let him lock at it after eating. We walked to his guest house and found him. He and another kinesiologist both looked at it. He seemed to do all the right things. He moved her joints different ways. He moved his fingers over the skin to see if she had feeling. He point pressure at different points to see if there was pain. He asked her to make pressure against his fingers with her toes. By the end of the examination, he agreed that she was doing the right things and told her she should be resting more rather than walking, however. She returned to the guest house and rested the remainder of the day until we went to dinner.

I spent the afternoon in my hammock finishing reading The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff. It's the best book I have read on this trip--well written and a fascinating story about the first man to have sex change surgery. It will be produced as a movie by Nicole Kidman and will star her as the man. Charlize Theron and Gwyneth Palthrow have been been cast at different times as his wife, but both have pulled out of the production which is scheduled for release in 2010. It's definitely a story that could give Nicole Kidman an Oscar nomination. I gave the book 4 stars out of a possible 4.

My neighbor has decided to leave tomorrow, too. We went to buy a ticket for her. I paid at the same time for a ride on the boat to leave myself. We'll take the same boat at 10:45. When we get to the mainland, we will each go in different vans, since she will go to Vientiane and I will go to Savannakhet. Then we had dinner together. Now she is copying information from my guidebook and I will copy from hers before I go to bed.