We arrived from Chiang Rai by bus to Chang Khong, a border village between Thailand and Laos, there's only the Mekong River between them. So we crossed the river by slow boat, in 5 minutes. It was easy to get the visa for Laos; we filled in the visa form and paid. For French citizens the visa is 30 dollars, and for the Finnish it's 35 dollars!! I think the most expensive was for Canadians, 43 dollars!

We started to look for a guest house, because it was almost 5 o'clock and it was getting dark soon so we didn't want to take a bus to another village. There are many guest houses in Houayxay. People usually stay there one night and continue to other places, or they leave right away. When we arrived there was a girl distributing some flyers of a new restaurant that opened a week ago. So in the evening we went to this restaurant and the rest is history!

The restaurant is called Daaw House, and it's owned by a Dutch woman, Lara, and his husband from Laos. They have project called Kasbian and they are trying to help the rural communities in the mountains to learn English, etc…

So Lara explained us her project and that they needed volunteers. We were interested of volunteering so we agreed to come and help them for a week.

I gave English lessons to Zoo, Lara's husbands' sister with John, an American English teacher, and Kaisha, a Canadian volunteer. David helped to move the wood that was for a new house next to the restaurant.

We stayed one week and it was really worth it. We paid 500 bath, 130 000 kips per person per day, nothing else. So we really stayed in our budget. We ate like Lao people which means a lot of sticky rice and fish( for breakfast, lunch and dinner). In the end I couldn't eat it anymore, especially in the morning. But Lara knew that so she gave me some toast with jam! We ate some Lao specialties like grilled fish from the Mekong with herbs, egg salad, spicy chicken soup… One morning when we woke up, everybody was gathered around the fire outside. They were grilling buffalo skin, which was for the breakfast! I didn't taste it, but David did, but he didn't like it. I think it's normal not to like it for the breakfast…

So every day we woke up around 8:30 and had breakfast, then we just helped with the things that had to be done. David and all the boys were doing the heaviest staff, like cutting the wood, making a garage for motorbike, but everything takes time because the tools were not adapted. It was also dangerous, they don t know how the electricity works and they do some strange installations. David tried to repair a planing machine two days and when it finally worked, after one hour it exploded! There were pieces of metal flying everywhere. That's what the Chinese tools do! David tried to explain how dangerous it was to Nzoua but he just said to calm down because it wasn't their fault if the planning machine broke.

One day when we went to a village nearby, David and Patrick went to burn the land where they are going to build a school. David said it was really amazing and kind of scary because there's fire all around you and everything burn so quickly.

So the same day we went to a village in the mountains, 1 hour from Houayxay. I went with Zoo, Kasiah and John. We went there to see what kind of embroidery the women do and see if they would like to sell their things in the shop of the restaurant. We met a sweet old lady. She just took my hands and kept my hand. She was full of life and so happy that it just burst from her! We saw also many kids. The boys were all together and the girls separately. They had also huge pigs everywhere!

One day we left to another village which was 3 hours trip by motorbike from Houayxay. So we left early in the morning. I sat on the back of Nzoua and David had his own motorbike.

We were driving maybe 40 minutes when the road got very bad. It was a dirt road with big stones everywhere. There was this big hill and when we went down the hill, the bike was going really fast and before I knew, we were on the ground. Later David told me that when he arrived he saw me just sitting on the ground and laughing. I don't even remember this. I think I was in some sort of a shock. There were also dust everywhere, in my mouth and sunglasses, I couldn't see a thing. So we stood up and checked if we were ok. I started to feel the pain after. My both knees hurt, and my arms and hands were in blood. Nzoua stood up but started to feel drowsy. He was really hurt on his arm and his knee.

So David took him to the other motorbike and they left for the hospital. I waited on the road with the motorbike… I stayed there because I don't know to drive a bike. I didn't know how far the hospital was or if I'm going to have to stay on the road 1 or 2 hours… But I had our food bag so at least if I was hungry I would have something to eat and drink. Finally after almost one hour David came back and we left the other motorbike on the road and we left for the hospital. When we arrived at the hospital, I couldn't believe it; the "hospital" was a house with one room with 2 beds and dirty sheets and there were ducks and chickens running around. Nzoua was lying down on the bed when we arrived and he was feeling better. The guy who worked at the hospital disinfected my wounds. Nzoua called Lara so she could get a car to pick us up. We waited about 1 hour that the car would arrive. Lara had called an ambulance from another hospital so Nzouas dad and cousin came with the ambulance. Nzouas dad just ran out of the ambulance to hug Nzoua. It was so sweet. He really looked scared. So we went back to home with the ambulance. That day i didn't do anything, we watched the 2 films of Twilight, which is by the way the worst film ever made. David did advertise for the restaurant, and maybe that s why that evening the restaurant was full of French tourists.

Lara later told me that they were really scared when Nzoua called that we have had an accident because it wasn't the first time. Few years ago, Nzoua was on the bike with his cousin, and they had a really bad accident and the cousin died. Nzoua was unconscious for few hours. And it took a long time to recover from that.

We learned a lot about their family and they way of life in the forest. They use a lot of traditional medicine. After our accident, Nzouas father went to the village where we should have go and went to the forest to get some traditional medicine. It was a root of a tree that grows in the forest in the mountains. He gave me a one spoon of that, mixed with water I think. It wasn't good but I was ok to try everything. It was especially for my knees because they still hurt after.And the day after my knees didn't hurt so much so maybe it really worked!

We met many people from all around the world, but especially from Canada and France. One time David went by himself to distribute the flyers, and in the evening there were only French people at the restaurant. I met also some Finnish people who came to restaurant. Every night we tried to keep company for the people who came, some were travelling alone so they were happy to have someone to talk to.

I have never worked in a restaurant as a waitress so it was a nice experience.