Interesting day, shall we say? Got up at 5.30 to go and see the almsgiving procession. This is when all the monks from all 33 monasteries process through the town and are given food by the locals – thus earning them credit for their next lives. There are are signs in town and in every guidebook, website etc about correct behaviour. No touching the monks, especially if female, no flash photos, no going too close, making noise etc. And be respectably dressed. All fine so far. So I wander up the lane next to the hotel and hang out at the top. There are carpets and small stools all along one side of the main street and people sit on these with pots of rice and give handfuls to each monk that comes past. I am hovering around, clutching my camera (and my phone so that you guys will have at least a few photos) when I am bounced on by a group of smiling middle aged ladies. They stuff a rice pot in my hand and march me over to some unoccupied stools. Deciding (correctly, as it goes) that I cannot sit on a very small stool, they bring me a bigger one. I am lowering myself onto this and sense queries as to why I can’t sit down faster so I hoik up my skirt and display the knee bandage. A chair is promptly whisked over from a closed cafe verandah opposite and I am firmly sat on it. A piece of checked material is tied diagonally round my torso and more rice stuffed in the pot. Then all these monks – most of them teenagers – start arriving and I give them rice. Eventually we run out of both rice and monks and the ladies vanish. I leave the stuff next to the chair on the grounds that I presume they will come back for it. I wander up the road to see the monks returning to the monasteries and am about to go back to the hotel when one of the smiling ladies reappears. ‘You give money’. ‘Don’t have any money’ ‘ Go to house. Get money.’ Think this counts as ‘chugging – charity mugging. Anyway I went and got some money – just about to go in when another one asks for money. I point out that I have already given to her mate who looks marginally peeved she’s been found out. For a Marxist-Leninist state, they seem to have taken to capitalism with enthusiasm. And all this before my first cup of coffee!

Then, after breakfast and a shower, me and my dodgy knee (painkillers, Voltarol and support bandage) went off down town to try and see the things I hadn’t managed to see yet. This included Phousi Hill, a holy site in the centre of town. 300 steps to the top. By the time I got there, I had decided I could probably do it if I took it very slowly. So I did. Other people kept whizzing past me but hey….. At the top there is a stupa, a small temple and a lovely view over the town. Unfortunately there was mist today so the mountains weren’t very visible. There was also a lady selling marigolds and stuff to leave as offerings at the temple. This included tiny birds in tinier cages. Cruel and unusual punishment I know. Do you buy and liberate or ignore in the hope that the business will go under? I bought. One of them zoomed off immediately but the other one must have got damaged in some way. It didn’t want to come out until I put the cage on the ground and then it just hopped onto a rock and sat there. Then the temple cat got it and took it into the temple to eat. Told you my karma was buggered. The only consolation was that it probably would have died anyway, with or without the cat.

This afternoon I have had a Thai massage. Lay on a table whilst a small girl with tiny hands crawled all over me, squashing me and manipulating me in painful ways. (Have to say that she was just small, not young. Definitely adult.) Now feel that I have been run over by a truck but it has to be doing me good.