Thanks For Reading

Flower Pots Muang Xali


Once in a while I get a quick note via the comments section of a post or via email from a reader who likes my blog. A recent commentator said he’d read the whole blog, beginning to end in a couple of sittings.

I often check my site meter to find other people doing similar things. Maybe twice a week I’ll find someone has been on the blog for 3 hours twice in the last day and viewed 20 pages. Someone with an interest in Laos reading for background I‘d assume.

The site meter became invisible when Google made some changes in Blogger, and I never bothered to fix it. I’m not trying to sell ad space anyway. Lao Bumpkin gets about 50 hits a day, I’m assuming that will go up as I’m a frequent contributor to the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Forum and they recently reinstalled the tag line feature where there is a link to this blog.
People looking on Lonely Planet tend to read more anyway.

Often I get people who enter the wrong search words on Google. Like the heart throb rock group from India, Moon Moon Sen, pulling up my post about that noodle salad Yam Moon Sen. Or people looking for images of Eve in the garden of Eden and they come up with that picture of my one year old daughter holding the snake in the post entitled, Eve In The Garden With Snake.

Besides how long people have viewed the blog, the site meter tells me if they have left the blog on one of my links or clicked on a photo to see it larger. I’m thrilled. If you wish to complement the blog simply click on a photo you like, I’ll see it.

The MSG post got a link from a Wall Street Journal article online, whose authors did a real nice job describing the current craze for “unami”, the naturally occurring free glutamate found in many foods. The funniest is the “Unami bomb” mixing up the heaviest combinations of naturally free glutamate such as parmesan cheese and tomatoes. Sounds like a cheese pizza to me.

Eleven months ago we got on a plane and left Laos. About time I went back.