I know I talk about fruit a lot. I just can’t overstate how much I love it.

For the last couple weeks, I have been eating mangoes from the tree in my yard. There are many varieties of mangoes here in Laos; ours are pale yellow and green on the outside and bright orange on the inside. Yum. The mangoes hang very high in the tree, but when we come home from school we find that our tiny housekeeper, Daeng, has somehow managed to pick them. She wraps the mangoes in newspaper and stashes them in cupboards until they’re perfectly ripe.

Our mangoes dangle close to the front gate, taunting the tuk-tuk drivers who park in the shade there. Once Tony caught our favorite tuk-tuk driver, Mr. Kek, sneaking in to steal one! Yesterday, I had crossed the street to buy an iced coffee from my beloved street vendor, Saeng, when Mr. Kek stopped me to ask if he could have a mango. Happily slurping on my coffee, I felt a little compassion was in order. “Bo-pen-yang,” I told him. No problem. I opened the gate and let him in. He immediately shimmied up the mango tree (in flip flops) and then precariously inched out onto a limb to grab a piece of fruit. Back on the ground, he showed me the mango had a bit of sap on it. “Baw dii,” he said. No good. I think he just wanted me to feel relieved that he took a defective mango, when in reality, it looked pretty darn perfect to me.

Another source of mango-ey deliciousness here in Vientiane can be found at Kung’s Cafe, a quirky little restaurant tucked in a back alley, where you can get a pancake made from sticky rice with chunks of ripe mango inside and drizzled with honey. But that’s a story for another day.

This morning, I walked across the street to the fruit vendors and bought a honkin’ big papaya, a bunch of sweet bananas, a kilo of mangosteens and a few imported apples (for Tony, who doesn’t like tropical fruit – freak!), all for about $5. It was so pretty, I had to take a picture.