Mango with Sticky Rice, Please!

We arrived in Nong Khai Monday evening and checked into our hotel - the Thai Nongkhai Guest House. We ate our first Mango with Sticky Rice here after purchasing it from one of the many street vendors on the adjacent streets. The vendors sell all kinds of soups, noodles, roti (crepes), meat-on-a-stick, whole fish, iced coffe and iced tea (with condensed milk of course), sodas (Anna and Max love the Fanta), fruit (pineapple, watermelon, jack fruit, tamarind, green mango, apples, green oranges, papaya, guava). There is even a vendor with a sewing machine who sits on the sidewalk and mends the clothes of passersby. Our hotel is very nice with air conditioning and television - amenities that the college students are mostly doing without for now (please don't tell them). Our proprietor Som is super nice and makes a nice coffee for Kim every morning. There are geckos and frogs ALL over the place. Fortunately, they help with the mosquitoes which are quite common.
We swam in the Mekong River on Friday. Of course we had brought some Mango with Sticky Rice to enjoy along the river banks. The river was surprisingly clean and easy to maneuver at the little beach spot we found. There is a strong current, which adds a bit of excitement when the kids begin to drift away to Cambodia. They found endless fun things to do in the current with their bodies, a couple of innertubes, and a rope. We were joined for the day by the Wheeler boys, including father Geoofrey, a friend of Dan's who he met last August on the visit with the Cal Poly Engineers Without Borders group. His sons Andrew (15), Thomas (8), and Peter (8) are delightful and played with Max and Anna nonstop. It was really cool to keep looking over to the other side of the river and realize that we were so close to Laos, a country of very similar people as Thailand but very different politics and economics (it is Communist and much poorer). We hope to visit Laos before we leave the area.
We also got to spend some quality time at the Wheeler's home about 20 minutes south of Nong Khai. Geoffrey's wife Yupin made us an incredible batch of homemade Mango with Stick Rice from fruit trees in their front yard. Anna and Max had more fun with the boys - it is good for them to have some kids their age to play with. They are learning English and they even have Monopoly!
It is now Sunday, and I cannot eat another serving of Mango with Sticky Rice.