NGON FLOATING RESTAURANTS

We chalked off another fun item from our list today!  It was something that wasn’t listed in any of the travel books or on Trip Advisor, but was found while reading travel blogs!  It was something that the locals love to do; something that tourists typically don’t know about: The Ngon Floating Restaurants!
We arrived not having a clue as to what it would be like!

Flowers and plants were everywhere, which we loved!  Unstable houses were on the riverbanks, which we did not like!  WHOA!

We asked for a “small” boat while our food was being prepared.  We ordered “small” sizes of all the dishes we ordered.  It wasn’t long before we were led onto a BIG boat!  There was even a place onboard to make offerings to the “spirits!” (Would we need extra good luck on this trip?  I guess it never hurts!)

The dishes of food were delivered to our boat and were much like the boat — BIG!  But oh so good!

While the two of us ate our lunches, our “Boatman” (driver) started the motor and off we went!  Just John and me, the “Boatman” and our “LoaBeer Boy“ on a great BIG boat! 🤣

It was delightful being out on the river!  The sights were amazing to see and, lo and behold, we were given microphones so we could have our very own karaoke party!  We weren’t sure if it was intentional or not, but the first song that played as we left the dock was none other than the theme song from Titanic! 🤣

It was really fun watching all the other floating restaurants that were sharing the river with us!

Much to my surprise, we ended up hosting our own little party, with John as the top billing entertainer!  Watch out Vientiane karaoke bars...he’s on a roll!

There were fish farms lining the riverbanks!  And so John sang, and we danced, all while on a floating restaurant on the Nam Ngum River!  If anyone was around to see us they would come to the conclusion that we were certifiably CRAY CRAY!

Notice the Wat between the two houses!  Also notice the questionable structural integrity of one of those homes. 😳

The structural integrity of this one is also in question! 😳

What a wonderful afternoon we had!  Mind you, not one word of English was spoken all day (by anyone other than us); not one word of English (that came out of our mouths) was understood all day; not one white face (except ours) was seen all day!  But that made it the PERFECT day!

Back in Vientiane, we had our driver stop at Patuxai, which resembles the Arc De Triomphe in Paris!

What was really neat was this statue with four elephants we saw not far from Patuxai.  It wasn’t on our map and it wasn’t listed anywhere as a “must see.”  But we thought it was pretty cool!

Upon closer examination, we saw that it was made up of dishes!  No clue as to its’ significance, but it was really something to see!

This building was close by, but the signs we found were all in Lao, so we had no clue as to what it was. There are MANY nice government buildings throughout Vientiane, so we figured that it was one as well.

A bit later (after relaxing and reading for awhile) we both decided to skip dinner (after that HUGE lunch) and get right to the important stuff!