I knew today was going to be interesting given the dream that I woke with: an episode of SuperTed was on the telly, where he again saved the day by dramatically reducing the planet's population thereby restoring the global resource/demand equilibrium (implied). He did this after plenty of rushing around cartoon-style before settling into a parody of the James Bond intro credit sequence where the signature tune plays, our hero strolls out viewed through a scope before pulling his trusty Walther PPK and firing, making everything go red. Only in this case it was SuperTed, he pointed a feather duster, and shot out deadly custard which ripped through the front of the TV and wiped out all viewers, which amounted to a lot of folk as he'd also gotten Spotty the robot to fix it so that his show was playing on all channels. An interesting dream in several ways, I thought.
We spent the day having quite a leisurely tour of the Bolaven Plateau, a high area north-east of Pakse renowned for its tea, coffee and cardamon plantations and spectacular waterfalls. It was a top day all round where we learned about the tea and coffee harvesting process (the plantations smelt so good and fragrant), walked in the relatively cool high-up areas to wonderful deep waterfalls, and spend some time in the afternoon at a Katou hill tribe village - most interesting and certainly great to get up high out of the oppressive heat for a while.
Returning to base I found 2 interesting things waiting for me: one was an offer of freight transport from Malaysia to India or Sri Lanka thanks to a chance meeting with a nice lady this morning - expensive and needs further investigation but certainly a possibility if the dates line up. The other was an accepted place volunteering on the Naucrates sea-turtle conservation project for 2 weeks on a small idyllic island off the Andaman Sea coast of Thailand. The timing is very tight and may indeed preclude our involvement but it is an amazing opportunity if we manage to fit it in.
