May 28. What is ten dollars?

We have a brunch with a German lady, Dagmar, who tells us her compelling story: she is editing and publishing an autobiographical book about a Lao monk. It's what keeps her here, and what keeps us listening. It is really nice and I hope she will publish the book.

I pick up my Vietnamese visa and with it rush to the Cambodian embassy. It is extremely hot today, especially for a stamp collector. At the Cambodian embassy they tell me to come back on Monday because they are only doing express service today. I can wait and want to save those ten dollars. Ten dollars! Imagine what zou can do with it. Beautiful afternoons in posh grand cafés with wifi, 10kg of rice for an orphan home, hundreds of minutes of international phone calls over skype, enough white paint for a large wall, tools for a street shoe polisher, essential medication for a week for a refugee, a busticket from Nairobi to Kisumu, two soccer balls for a children's center...

The photos shows Lao whiskey!