Late greetings from Laos. It took a while to report, although back already on Saturday. Nice, quiet Luan Prabang, especially compared with noisy Hanoi. Enjoyed especially delicious bakeries, Scandinavian bakery where we got “korvapuusti”. Not too many activities for us, but still enough. Lot of orange monks, Lao boys tend to spend some era of their lives as monks, as do the Cambodians and Vietnamese, too, but I understood that in Laos it is kind of must. Probably a living question as well, as the boys are often sent to temples during off-seasons. Therefore, being a monk is not life-long in the Buddhist countries. We also bought some nice paintings of orange monks. You will see them framed. Two pictures as following, the Buddha is either Monday Buddha, Tuesday Buddha or Wednesday Buddha, we do not remember any more, and both of the pictures are taken from the top of a hill in Luan Prabang.

Today I was laughing at myself. In the afternoon our office car driver dropped me to a meeting, and during the drive he told how wonderful country Finland is with one of the highest GDP in Europe. My intuitive response was, that many other countries have much higher. Then, in the meeting two new people, whereby one started telling how HE admires the achievements of gender equality in Finland. My answer was, that a lot more needs to be done, in particular amongst a high wage gap and segregation. The next new person continued that she has read about the great Pisa results of Finland, where my response was, that after experiencing Finnish education, it is hard to believe that the educational system is the best in the world…Give me a break!! Why to be so modest or even reluctant if someone is praising Finland? Where is my patriotism disappeared? I do not know, may be this is the next part of post culture shock…??? Still, looking forward to July and a full month in a country of high GDP, gender equality, and quality education…