He took us on a very interesting tour which included a small temple, a very ancient and hugely important stupa and finally to the Victory gate which is very similar to the Arc de Triumph.
Salard has a very in depth knowledge of Laos history, we also discovered that formerly he was a novice monk and so we were able to find out first hand how novices' live and study, what their needs are and how difficult it is when making the transition from temple life to that of a lay person. When they're in the temple they are provided with food, accommodation, clothes, an education and anything else vital to their daily well being. Salard after 5 years in the temple left and went to college to study English for 2 years which he paid for with money he had saved from his alms bowl collections over the years and he's now studying law which he can afford because he has a full time job as a tour guide.
As we walked around the city it was easy to listen to Salard his little pearls of wisdom spoken with a wonderful softly spoken English with a very good accent. Sometimes when they're accent isn't so good they babble away and after a short while embarrassingly it's quite easy to glaze over!
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