I went back over the border to
I went to the shopping centre and did most of my shopping at department store Robinsons. I bought some shoes more appropriate for walking and a blender. There are some well priced nice clothes there but they are not modest enough for everyday wear in Lao. I missed the first bus I wanted to catch back to
'Lao authorities have welcomed back another group of Lao Hmong from Thailand , who had been detained in Thai prisons as illegal migrants for several months.'
Hmong vow to resist repatriation to
Our modest office has a supply of coffee that tastes absolutely perfect. It is something to look forward to each morning. I’ve heard Lao is supposed to have some of the finest coffee in the world and this could be it. This coffee is probably from a farmer that earns little for their work has no idea what their produce is worth. Most people drink their coffee with condensed milk. I have my coffee black because condensed milk it’s bad for the teeth and the coffee is smooth enough to not need milk. The coffee beans have been crudely ground- they look like they’ve been mashed with a blunt object, perhaps ground with a mortar and pestle. You simply put the coffee in a cloth net and pour water through. It comes out rather well for such simple technology.
In Lao they banned the ‘R’ sound in their alphabet... just like that. This happened some decades ago when they decided it was too foreign in a time they didn't feel friendly towards foreigners. Therefore the ancient capital of Luang Prabang is technically supposed to be Luang Pabang, but people still say it the old way.
Friday night A and I went out for dinner for his birthday. We tried a French- style restaurant with views above the water fountain nam phu called La Cave de Chateaux. It is probably one of the more classy restaurants in town, and is much cheaper than home. We sat upstairs where it has the traditional straw roofs were we could see a large gecko on the power pole. I had a grilled toast as an appetizer. It was quite unusual- it had slices of apple with a Swiss, smooth sweet style cheese on top. It also came with a substantially- sized salad. It was enjoyable. A had an onion soup. Honestly I have had so many variations of onion soup in my time I still don’t know what a good onion soup should taste like. I guess the onion soup tasted ok but would have expected more onion and I think it should have been more obvious what the base of the soup was!
A had a steak with grilled mango, grilled green beans wrapped in bacon and a stack of potatoes. I had a taste and it was good. It was also a very large meal.
I liked the atmosphere. The waiter was very friendly, as Lao people generally, and attentive. My only complaint is people being allowed to smoke which is generally the case in Lao and the occasional person’s mobile ringing. Large portions, quality food means it’s quite good value so I will be back. I think I’ll be back to try the $6 US 3-course set menus.
Saturday I was happy to be out and about seeing as I had spent my last weekend in bed. I had a nice fruit salad and fruit shake for breakfast at a café in town. A tried to connect my computer to the internet to get it fixed, but my computer was going so slow, annoyingly, it did not get fixed.
A and I went to ITECC which is a large exhibition hall with a large supermarket. Out the back there are cows, water lilies and rice fields. We went to a
That afternoon I had foot/ leg massage at my local massage service which was very nice as my legs were a bit strained after cycling around the whole day. That night we went to a cocktail party at our friend’s place. Fruit and alcohol is so inexpensive here, it is feasible to host a cocktail party and have a sufficient alcohol collection to make them at home yourself. I think our household will have to invest in a blender.
Sunday I had breakfast by the pool on the river at the Australia Club. I went home and stayed inside the whole day because it was so hot and humid. Impressively, one of friends borrowed a projector from work. Another brought his sound system from his home down the road. So a few of us played the Wii with a huge picture projected onto the wall! Our living room seems perfect for it. I beat a friend at Wii boxing- his Mii was Amanda Vanstone and mine was Gandhi. I beat her up good. Other characters that were made that day include Jesus and a Michael Jackson which looked just disturbing. I also bought my first crate of beer. 12x 640mls cost around $11 AUD ($9USD).
I have been sick for the past week and had to take 4-days off work. Here it is more involved than at home- it involves making a trip to the doctor at the Embassy soon after getting a fever and then having blood taken and instantly tested for indications of dengue fever and malaria. My fever didn’t go away so I went back a couple of days later so I was tested for signs of dengue again and my blood sample was sent to
I noticed a squiggle under my bed and I thought it was a parasitic worm. I picked it up with my pencil and discovered that it was a baby snake!
My memory stick and computer has a virus so I wasn’t able to upload the photos I wanted to during the weekend. It has made my computer screen go blue.
How much?
One of the challenges here is working out how to answer questions about how much you pay for things. Eg. how much was it to stay at the guesthouse, how much rent is your house, how much was your camera, how much are your language lessons. I just don't want to admit how expensive our lifestyles are compare to the locals. It seems that if possible, the volunteers I know will avoid the question by changing the subject or giving a vague response such as 'expensive' or 'not expensive'. When closer work friends try to ask you or are persistent, you are pressured to give an answer. I have tried halving the real price, but the person said it was still expensive, so I felt bad. I've heard responding that the cost was 'reasonable' seems to stop further questions. When asked several times how much her camera was by a close colleague, my friend replied 'more than your motorbike'. I think this was a good response because it made it relative but still did not give an upper end of what the camera was worth! In reality, her camera was worth 7 motorbikes of the cheap Chinese variety.
Earthquake in
Last week there was an earthquake in
Communism
I thought I would try to learn about Communism this year, seeing as I'm living in a Communist country. Eg how do the concepts of socialism and communism relate? I will start by listing all the Communist countries in the world.
Vietnam is Laos' best friend probably due to them both being socialist, even though Laos is more similar to Thailand in language and culture. I'm certainly not one to know anything about political economy, or history for that matter, so hopefully being here will help me learn and retain some new stuff.
Students in
A colleague of mine studied in
A few friends and I were catching a tuk tuk home from a club last night. We saw our friend who had called the tuk tuk for us slowly walking his motorbike down the road. We called out and asked him what was wrong. The road is awful at the moment- there is work being done on it so it has been dug up. He had been riding down the road the wrong way, probably on the side of the road you weren’t supposed to be on. The cops took the keys out of his motorbike, and he didn’t want to pay the ‘fine’. I don’t think he had much money on him anyway. Usually you can put your motorbike on the bigger tuk tuks but only the small ones were around. Only he could think of taking it to the guesthouse we had stayed in for 2 weeks when we arrived in
A few of us had been to the opening of a new gay club/ bar in town. I think it’s the second one in
Earlier in the night we had caught a tuk tuk to dinner with friends. Something didn’t seem quite right with our tuk tuk driver, he kept repeating himself and laughing. After a few minutes, we concluded he was quite drunk. He was driving so slowly, it took us about half an hour to travel 4kms. I was scared and didn’t feel comfortable, I thought he would run a red light or swerve or something, but my friends in the tuk tuk didn’t seem to mind so much so we went all the way to our intended destination. It was a bit strange that he appeared to be talking to something sitting right next to him. I was very glad when the ride was over!
I went to a herbal sauna for the first time here in the afternoon yesterday. It is quite relaxing because it is on the grounds of a temple and it is in rainforest surroundings. It is a small hut with wooden stilts. It had 4 benches inside and not many more than 15 people can fit inside. You splash yourself with water, then enter the sauna wrapped in a sarong. It was scented with lemongrass and eucalyptus that day. They give you tea afterwards. I noticed a women carefully applying yoghurt under her eyes and to her arms before going into the sauna. People here believe that putting it on your skin will whiten your skin. Actually my housemate went to
I’d had a nice lunch that day. A and I went to a French style restaurant for $6.50 US for a three course meal called La Silapa. The atmosphere and service is very good. The food is quite nice, nothing I couldn’t have made at home myself, but it had food that is not readily available here. I chose a cous- cous salad for entrée. I had a spaghetti bolognaise for my main meal. I would not normally order this kind of thing at a restaurant, but I think I eat spaghetti bolognaise at least once every 2-3 weeks at home and did miss it so I took the opportunity to eat it! I couldn’t get through the whole plate and was scared I was forgetting how to eat pasta! The spiced banana gelato for dessert was great, and so was their coffee. There was a picture of John Howard on the wall- I’m guessing he went there one time.
I have had quite a good week, there have been a few things going on at work. It was a little frustrating also. I was torn between the Lao way of doing things and the foreigner way of doing things. The foreigner way means you have to meet their requirements ie meet the deadlines if you want the money. The Lao way means you need approval from several levels of authority to have anything done, doing everything at the last minute but still having it done in the end. Luckily we somehow met in the middle and got things done.
I just had a Korean bbq for dinner which is my local favourite. For less than $4 AUD ($2.70 US) you can select raw meats and vegetables out of the fridge and cook them yourself. There is range of fried foods and noodles available, but I don’t like them very much because I know they have been sitting there a while. The dessert is good too, those icy chendol/ ice kachang type things. You mix your own grass jelly with strands of agar jelly, palm seeds, thin coconut cream, syrup and ice. I make these at home very occasionally- they’re quite refreshing. Actually, I think it’s palm seed season here, although I’m not sure whether they’re palm seeds because I haven’t eaten them yet. The palm seeds are from this thing that looks like a small purple coconut. It looks hard and fibrous like a coconut, and people use a sharp knife to hack it open. M said at work they took 15 minutes to split it open and get the seeds out. I’ve only ever eaten the tinned ones and they taste like the inside of a jelly bean and are about 6 times bigger but look a bit like a jelly bean come to think of it. There’s a tuk- tuk at the end of my street that has been selling them for the past week. I am fascinated because they’re only available in a tin at home and I can see the real thing! Same with straw mushrooms and baby corn- I’d only had them from a can before I came here and am excited that I can get them fresh here.
A bought an imitation Nintendo console so I played Supermario today. Cost just less than $10 AUD ($7 USD) including console, cable and controls. I played a few levels of Super Mario Brothers. I used to play it at my cousins house when I was young and its funny, I could still remember where most of the mushrooms and flowers were! I’m really bad though and give up too easily- I don’t think I got very far in the game- I’m just not good at gaming!
It’s nice that I’m going to have a few visitors during the year. I forget how much my friends travel- there are just quite a few coming to this area which is fantastic. It sounds like they are going to make some fun trips around here- I really wish I could join them for all of them. If I did though, I would be off for at least 6 weeks before October which unfortunately in excess of my 4 weeks leave.
There are a few Korean people in
My bike is working well despite me having a few troubles with it this morning due to my ignorance. When I was trying to pump up my tyre I completely deflated it instead. Luckily my housemate M came to my rescue and managed to operate the foot pump correctly and pumped up my tyre good. I can balance better on my bike now and can indicate without nearly having an accident. My next challenges include having good enough balance to have no hands when cycling straight, but what I really want to be able to do is have a running start with one foot on the pedal and swinging the other leg over.
I left home exactly 2 months ago today. It has gone fast when I glance back, but when I look back more closely, I really have done heaps in two months. It’s odd how established I’ve become here in this ‘least developed’ country that I had never visited before. I managed to find a house to rent with a mango tree, a cat with two new housemates. I have a new job, employ two staff, 1.6 full-time equivalent who speak little English. I have arranged language lessons, and get around on a bicycle. I have had good coffee and bad coffee. So many more adventures to come!
My two- month run of non- sickness came to an end yesterday when I got a jep tong (sore stomach). It improved quickly though, and I didn’t have to go home from work, though I wasn’t particularly productive, and ended up going clubbing that night. It helped that the office air conditioner was working for the first time in days so the temperature in the office keeping the temperature under 30 degrees.
I went to Stickies, an expat hangout, to meet my Lao uni friend. No cocktails for my weak stomach this time. Then went to a Lao restaurant called ‘Moon the Night’ on the Mekong which I’ve been to a couple of times now. It’s a big open restaurant. Uni friend got the Lao menu which is a book with several hundred items in it. I wonder what they all are. There are a couple of English menu’s I’ve been given and both were different- one was a couple of pages, the other around four pages. I noticed a lot of commercial activity going on. There were people selling phone cards, and a couple of girls that went around selling small bottles of ‘Wakie’ drink designed to make you feel fresh in the morning. There were the usual beer Lao girls there who pour your beers. I heard that there was a commercial activity going on in the men’s toilet. A, who was with another guy we met came back from the toilets smiling. Uni friend noticed and asked ‘what’. There are men in the men’s toilets to help people relax. Just as you’ve become pant less at the urinal they will come up behind you and start massaging your shoulders. Apparently some of them will ask first, but some just ambush you.
There were lots of dogs wandering around ‘Moon the Night’, and actually there are way too many dogs wandering around when I’m eating in restaurants in general. Apparently the small dogs are the Lao ones, and the bigger dogs are falang, or foreign, dogs. Dog is generally thought here to be a very good meat. Usually it’s imported from China or Vietnam. It’s quite a fatty meat and supposedly warms you up in winter, though I question, what winter, it’s only wet and dry here! This means dogs go missing. A friend said his mum had had two of her dogs taken, much to her sadness, she cried at the loss. I heard another person say their friend’s dog went missing and when they went looking they found it tied up at a pho restaurant.
I ate some dried buffalo skin. It’s about 1cm thick and very hard to chew- you have to chew it at the right angle to make sure you’re with the grain. You eat it dipped it in a think chilli fermented fish paste. People find it a good beer snack, and it tastes ok, but I don’t see the huge attraction. The fish I ate last night was farmed from Thailand. It is 60% bigger than natural because they use hormones to make the fish change to a male and stay that way so it grows. Fish change their sex throughout their life, but I can’t remember whether all types do and what prompts the sex change. This fish isn’t bad for unhealthy because no one has yet proven otherwise.
I went to a fairly new club called Romeo last night. It’s actually really nice, as nice as one of the better clubs in Sydney would be. There are three staff there to help you park your car. I saw a yellow Porsche out the front which is so out of proportion in cost to the other cars around here- I wonder where they got the money from and why they wanted to spend it on a car! There are people to greet you at the door. There are heaps of wait staff giving good table service and shine a torch on the bill so you can see it. It’s quite a young crowd, they play hip hop and the music is quite loud even for a club. Not many people were dancing though, they were concentrating on drinking. They play football on some of the screens for the boys that have been dragged there by their girlfriends. There is a large Johnny Walker sign at the front. Its interesting here, you can’t really buy a glass of scotch and cola. Usually you would buy the whole bottle of scotch at the restaurant, bar or club, and colas separately and you mix it yourself or have the waiter mix it. Most supermarkets will stock the full Johnny Walkers range- red, black, green, gold and maybe the $90US blue in various sizes.
Random stuff
I haven’t ever this much Celine Dion and Britney since the 90s
The rocket festival is on soon. Legend has it that if you shoot the rockets up to the clouds it will bring the rain. My friend has been to a rocket festival already and some are made of a 2 metre long pipe. They usually shoot it off a tower.
Don Chan hotel is haunted! Some construction workers died on site. I think Lao people generally believe it.
’The Economist’ magazine- although I’ve heard they argue its newspaper- is only around ($1.5 USD) or $2 AUD. This beats the $9.50 AUD I would no way pay at home. I was convinced we bought it second hand because it has a stain but A thinks its new.
