The Final Chapter...?

Editors note - republished from May as it disappeared.  Unfortunately photos are missing... Sorry.


Lao Pi Mai

As barely a month goes by in Lao where there isn’t a national holiday (in fact every month has one), April welcomes in Lao Pi Mai (New Year), beautifully timed to be just far enough away from the International New Year so that you can withstand the almost week-long party and close enough to my birthday so I can forget I will soon be another year older yet no wiser. 

It went something like this.  The four day holiday fell Thursday to Sunday so unofficially everyone had Wednesday off as holiday and some lucky people had Tuesday off as well.  The pre-party for us started on Monday, we’ll call this the ‘introduction to New Year, Lao-Style’.

I should say at this point that most of the photos here are courtesy of friends – as I’m not a responsible adult I didn’t think it wise for me to carry my camera.  You’ll understand why…

Monday

The VSO staff announced that we would have lunch in the office – as a small Pi Mai celebration before everyone went off for the holidays - nice, sedate, civilised.  Or at least that was the impression I had.  I should have been a bit suspicious when my colleague came to work not wearing Sinh for the first time in six months, but no.  It’s not that I didn’t know what happened at New Year, it was more that I thought celebrations wouldn’t really kick off until Thursday.  Not one to be slow on the uptake, I quickly and wisely decided to swap my white blouse for something a bit more resilient.

Lunch was swiftly rolled out and you could just see our Lao colleagues and friends itching to get started on the real reason for the party, which was to systematically and repeatedly soak everyone (as a blessing), by means of cups, water pistols, hosepipes, buckets.  After a long while of this, just to add another dimension, out came the talcum powder for smearing on faces (to ward off evil) and a spot of re-energising by using iced water (just out of purely sadistic tendencies and no symbolic meaning).  So that kept us amused for several hours and towards the end of the water-based activities shampoo emerged, which although a surprise was actually quite a thoughtful gesture.  As day turned to evening, water was swapped for Karaoke and so normality was restored and festivities continued.  (I can’t believe I said Karaoke was normal – let’s see if that makes the final edit!)

Tuesday

Tuesday followed and was comparatively quiet, which is always dangerous… not least because this time, it led to the bright idea of having hosting a party the following evening.  Our previous parties have been planned well in advance, right down to the finest detail, with people knowing well in advance, with true European efficiency.  Either we’re turning Lao or practice has made perfect as we managed to turn around preparations in a day and thankfully nobody had anywhere better to be.

Wednesday

Obviously, this was mainly focused on preparation, with the usual round of: cleaning; strategic planning of shopping to maximise carrying space on bikes and minimise duplication of journeys; carrying out said shopping trips; procuring crates of Beer Lao before the village ran dry; securing the use of the Karaoke equipment; and trying to fit in an afternoon nap post preparation / pre arrival of guests (one part of the process I haven’t yet perfected).  Hoping that, as it wasn’t officially Pi Mai by now, I could go to the market in the relatively safe knowledge that I wasn’t going to get soaked (or pi mai’d as I’ve affectionately termed it).  Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to be optimistic.  At least the soakings were quite civilised, with people directing me on exactly the point they wanted me to cycle through and in some cases this seemed more for my own safety than to ensure maximum soakage.

I won’t embellish on the evening as it pretty much all be said and done before.

Thursday (new year’s eve)

The official first day of the festival kicked off with a party at a colleague’s house, from 10 am (which was just what I needed after a 1 am finish the night before).  Still, true to my hatred of being late (which I’m slowly becoming less retentive about), I arrived on time to a hive of activity where Khamla and her team of workers (i.e. the extended family including children) had been busily cooking and preparing since 6 am that morning.  When I say cooking, as you may have guessed, this doesn’t involve unwrapping trays of Marks & Spencer’s throw-in-the-oven-party-food.  The springs roles were made from scratch, the breakfast stew was cooked, meat was fried, rice was boiled, bananas were frittered, etc.  Although labour intensive, there is a sense of inclusivity to the party preparation which make it an extension of the event and maybe something I’ll try out back in England to see if it works there too.  The stew that Khamla makes for breakfast for parties is so good and reminds me of my mum’s cooking.  This is probably a contributing factor to me always being at Khamla’s on time for morning parties; the hope that there will be a tureen of it on the table waiting for me.  I’ve yet to be disappointed.

Similar to Monday, with breakfast over, Beer Lao in full flow and lunch looming in the near distance, pistols were drawn, buckets were filled and the water fight commenced.  In all of these events it isn’t just the guests that take part.  Lao people are all for sharing and so any passer-by will feel like one of the party as water is thrown at them as they walk, cycle, ride, drive by. 

The thought of being continually pi mai’d for 6 days did make me feel a little bit weary so I made plans to beat a hasty retreat to Namxuang (aka my country retreat), to visit a friend who was temporarily disabled at her footballing debut the week before and couldn’t walk far enough to enjoy the delights of Pi Mai in Vientiane. 

After joining with the morning part of the celebrations, I tried to make a discreet exit (failed) and squelched my way to the bus station.  With it being too dangerous to cycle, this was one of those rare occasions where I opted to walk, naively thinking I’d dry out on the way so that I didn’t drip all over the bus and upset other passengers.  I didn’t think it was possible to get any wetter and my expectations were surpassed as I was continually hosed, water-gunned, bucketed and bombed with water – some plain, some coloured, so after the half hour or being a walking target I turned up at the bus station a whole lot wetter and somewhat more colourful than when I started the journey.

The weird thing was, walking into the bus station (after I managed to extract myself from the tuk-tuk drivers, at the entrance of the station, keen to make sure I wasn’t drying out) it was like stepping into a parallel world.  Everyone was calm, sane and dry… with one obvious exception.  I used the time waiting for the bus wisely by standing in the sun and periodically wringing out my skirt and t-shirt, to the amusement of many.  By the time I got on the bus my saturation levels were reduced to ‘quite damp’.  I took my seat, happy to be going to see the countryside for a couple of days and happy that I wasn’t going to disgrace myself by dripping over my fellow passengers, or creating any suspicious-looking puddles on the floor.  I really needn’t have worried.  The buses here are, as I may have mentioned before, old ones donated by the Japanese Government after they finished with them.  They’re pretty knackered with seats falling apart and windows either stuck open or stuck closed.  Unusually for me I sat next to a stuck closed window, which was lucky.  Barely 100 yards down the road and the bus was suddenly undergoing its annual wash – as we passed through the town, hosepipe after hosepipe was turned on us and there was no escape – especially when we were unfortunate to be stuck in traffic opposite Pi Mai revellers.  Looking on the bright side, I didn’t really get any wetter due to my strategic positioning and my fellow passengers quickly reached my level of saturation and more.  So it continued for the following hour, until I reached the sanctuary of Evangeline’s home.

Taking the invalid out for her daily constitutional, we managed to go a few kms down towards the street party area, which was finishing up for the night and as luck would have it the bus (of which there are only 3 a day) stopped near us which we decided to take full advantage of.  Coincidently, this was the same bus and driver that brought me there, earlier that day.  Since our first acquaintance the bus had gained a 3 very drunk passengers, a crate of Beer Lao and a bus driver who may have had one to be sociable (but no more, I’m sure)!  Given it had probably been a long day for him, he seemed slightly confused to see me back on the bus, travelling in the same direction as before.  At least this time he had peace of mind that I knew where I was going, something which seemed to trouble him greatly on my previous journey.

We did manage to make it down to the street party the next day.  This was centred round a small dam flanked on either side by food & beer stalls, live music and stage complete with its own shower.  This set up was put together the previous weekend and I highly suspect that this day’s proceedings were a replica of the previous six days and would continue for a couple more.

Pi Mai did lead me to muse on a number of observations, a bit less serious than my previous ones (it was party time after all)…

When you see official posters for Pi Mai, they picture a demure woman wearing traditional Lao dress, having a small cup of water poured over her shoulder by a well turned out young man.  I’m not sure at what point the small cup was exchanged for a water barrel & hosepipe and traditional dress for Hawaiian-style shorts and shirts but I suspect one necessitated the other.

I have often wondered why 90% of cars in Vientiane are flatbed trucks.  I now know the true reason (aside from tarmac being a relatively new introduction to Lao).  How else can they join in Pi Mai if they don’t have something to load up with water barrels and half a dozen people to attack poor passers by!  It just wouldn’t be the same.

How come the Beer Lao supply never dries up?  Wherever you go there are homes full of crates, street parties with unending supply, people on scooters carrying two or three crates to their required destination (I love the fact that local stores will deliver crates of beer and bags of ice).  Even when we had run out and took trip to the shop which is usually the most poorly supplied shop I’ve seen (sometimes with only a couple of bags of pork scratchings on the counter and a bottle of Pepsi in the fridge), they seemed to have a never-ending supply.  Although it did come at a price – we had to help them drink their beer before they would sell to us.  Life’s hard!  I have no idea how much was consumed over Pi Mai, but if anyone wants a company to invest in, I’d recommend Lao Brewery Company to anyone.

The Pi Mai festival brings with the hottest days of the year, so the occasional hosing down is actually quite welcome.  After this comes the rainy season with its thunderstorms and unbearable humidity, which turned up bang on schedule.  We have a theory on this…  The extraordinary amount of water released into the atmosphere by party people over the festival period gives rise to increased level of evaporation, making more clouds, etc., hence heavy rain following fast on the heels of Pi Mai like a self-fulfilling prophesy.  I am sure any half-decent meteorologist out there will pull this theory apart, but it works for me.

The End…

With April come and gone my placement is now over and I have reached the end of my verbal contract with everyone to send updates of my exploits.  Before I become a victim of land rights and resettlement I am resettling myself, so it seems that many things have come to a close.  

Maybe my new job and continued time out here will bring me more delights to share with you.  So this may be continued... 

February - March

February continued...

With the end of February came my housemate’s birthday and departure neatly wrapped up into one weekend.  What else could we do but celebrate with a party and… a spot of karaoke.  The latter probably goes without saying as I’m sure that by now you’ve got the gist of how these things work in this part of the world, with the ever-revolving carousel of beer Lao and karaoke.  This party had an added dimension though, just to give it a little twist – a Baci ceremony.  More on that in a while.

We also welcomed a new cohort or volunteers, almost tripling the number of volunteers in country and amongst them is…’The Other Archers Fan’… I’ve searched long and hard over the years to find someone else who listens to the Archers.  Who would have thought I would have to come to Lao to meet one! 

With our continued quest to learn how to cook some Lao dishes, our Lao colleagues offered to show us how to cook a fish & noodle curry that we’d both had at formal parties and wanted to be able to cook back in our respective countries.  I really should have learnt my lesson by now though – never ask what goes in to dishes as your taste buds will become conflicted.  Our colleagues came round in the morning to prepare the dish, and knowing how poorly equipped our kitchen is, they came armed with every ingredient and piece of equipment needed from the fire pots to strainers… and a litre of padek (which you may remember is fermented fish).  Looking on the bright side, they didn’t need the whole bag of padek and we were cooking for 30, so per person it would probably only work out as a teaspoon or two each which is manageable.  You’ll be pleased to know that I probably won’t be recreating this dish back in UK (at least not faithfully), not just because of availability of padek, also as it is the most labour intensive dish, taking several hours for the four of us to prepare it.  I should say though it is still my favourite dish and I haven’t been put off… so long as someone else is preparing it!

The party started with a Baci.  This is a Buddhist ceremony ‘calling of the soul’, I think may be particular to Lao, where the blessings of good luck are given, often for people: leaving, arriving, going to the monastery, getting married, recovering from illness, etc…  An elder community member delivers the blessing to the individual, tying string to their wrist and then guests do the same, until all the string on the pha kwan (floral arrangement) is used, or everyone’s wrists are full.  These ties should then be kept on for at least three days or until they fall off.  So this took place at the start of the party, not really sure what was being said but it was very moving.  Ceremony out of the way, usual proceedings commenced…

So, I lost my lovey housemate, which was a sad moment in my time here.  Still, I now have a bedroom with air-conditioning – every cloud… as they say.

March

Back on the Road

After trying to work out how we (that is my colleague at HJA) could fit in another road trip together before I left, VSO landed us with the perfect opportunity – to assist in some work they needed to carry out in the South of Lao.  So we managed to combine HJA & VSO work together and this time we got to travel in relative luxury, with the VSO truck and a driver – no public transport – hallelujah!  This little luxury meant that we could get to see a little more than with the confines of public buses and no night travelling.

In this week I had the most eye-opening experience of my time here.  (Just as a reminder, the volunteers that we recruit the HJA work in the communities they come from to assist INGOs in their projects.)  After spending the morning carrying out a monitoring & evaluation exercise with one of our INGO partners, we then moved on to speak with one of the communities that our volunteers, past and present, work in.  In this particular case, the volunteers are recruited for their knowledge of the local language, spoken by the Mongkong people of an area in Savannakhet Province.

After waiting for the district government offices to re-open from lunch, we were able to pick up our permission letter and make tracks.  In order to visit a village in this country you are required to obtain a letter authorising your visit, from the government.  This lets the head of the village know that you are there with consent.  From what I understand this used to be imposed on all villages, even those in the city.  So, to put it in perspective, if you lived in Fulham and you wanted to visit your friend who lived across the street but (unfortunately for them) in Chelsea, then you would have needed a letter of permission from your local council.  But now it is only carried out for rural areas, so that’s progress!

The village we travelled to is about 1.5 hours from the district capital, Muangnong (or an hour if you know the road) and in kms it really isn’t too far, as remoteness goes around here, but the road is more of a motorbike track in places.  This particular village is the closest one to the district capital.  Although it doesn't do it justice - the videolink will give you some idea of our journey...

To communicate with the village people we needed one Lao-English speaker and one Lao-Mongkong speaker.  Whilst we have some training on facilitation with a translator, having two translators was a new experience and I was pretty intrigued as to how it was going to work out.  The answer is: surprisingly smoothly.

Arriving in the village we were immediately mobbed by a teem of children intrigued, I have to say, more by the truck than by us and as they don’t speak Lao there wasn’t the customary cry of ‘sabaidee falang’.  In fact I think they were a little awestruck by the whole situation.  One thing that is the same the world over is the basic differences in the genders.  Whilst us girls went to see the weavers working on their looms, accompanied by the girls and women of the village, the boys were drawn, like iron filings to a magnet, to the truck – it’s good to see that no matter what the differences in people, some elements will always remain constant.

So, once we found a suitable meeting room – a reasonably level piece of land under the shade of a tree – the mat was laid down and we got started.  They meeting was to get feedback on the value of the work our volunteers carry out in the community and was with the village leaders and the senior women in the village….and all the other adults…..and the children….maybe a few dogs as well.  All seemed to be welcome.  Which was a good thing as, after all, we were discussing the community as a whole and with a little encouragement we managed to get the senior women to contribute to the discussion.

In this village only some of the men speak Lao.  Whilst we were talking to them to see if the women would be interested in being HJA volunteers, we came up with their biggest obstacle.  The women don’t speak Lao and many of them have never left the village.  Because of this, they are too scared to go to Muangnong let along to bright lights of Vientiane, which they would need to do for training.  With access to education limited to primary years 1-4 (complete primary is 1-5) then this is unlikely to change anytime soon.  It does make me wonder, when statistics are quoted on the increase in access to primary education how it is never indicated if this is in part or full.  Not sure I’ll ever know the answer to that one.  I can’t imagine how it feels being so cut off from the wider province, let alone country.  In the work that is done to try to empower marginalised people to make a better life for themselves one question sprang to mind after this visit.  Notwithstanding access to medical services, education and a secure livelihood, which should be a minimum standard for all people, are they happy as they are?  And if so, should we really be trying to change them?  Perhaps The Kingdom of Bhutan have it right, with their use of Gross National Happiness as a measure of quality of life.  It can’t be any more useless than using GDP with its inherent flaws, surely.

So, after the formalities, the discussion turned into general chitchat – you know the usual things: where are you from, how old are you, are you married.  On hearing my answers to their questions - through two translations - I was delighted to be informed that, had I been from their village I would be a grandmother by now.  Now that was certainly food for thought!

On the return journey, having previously played a Lao music CD to death, we turned to the only other CD in the truck – Bach.  Whilst a little surreal to have Bach playing whilst 4WDing on a dirt track, it was actually quite appropriate, especially reflecting on the preceding hour or so in the village.  I will always be grateful to the villagers for giving up their time to answer our questions.  I only hope that, in return for their kindness, we can use the information to their benefit.  Somehow.

All in all the afternoon was both rewarding and humbling, tinged with a sense of helplessness.

The next few days were filled with organising meetings that we’d thought had already been agreed, cutting through the pile of red tape that is government bureaucracy, chasing missing faxes and endless phone calls.  To get through the bureaucracy you have to tiptoe round speaking to the right people, in the right order.  To add to the challenge, as the meeting locations were half a day's drive apart we had to second guess what day and time each would be likely to take place so that we could strategically place ourselves in a hotel, avoiding the yo-yo effect.

It was a miracle that any of the meetings we’d travelled across the country for took place at all, but as I have worked out is typical for Lao, things always work out in the end.

Thankfully mobile phones are in abundance here and (assuming you have the right sim card to get signal in the area you’re in) they are the saving grace of communications here in Lao.  E-mail is still in its infancy and very few organisations have e-mail systems, including most government offices.  With no door-to-door postal service there is a heavy reliance on faxes and it took me back almost a couple of decades to and memories of the unreliability of faxes.  

While I was in the South I took the opportunity to take some time off and go and explore for a few days.  My colleagues started the 12 hour journey back to the City and I headed off to Paksong in the Bolaven Plateau – the heart of the coffee growing region.  I’ve never been much of a coffee drinker in England, but I have definitely come to appreciate it out here.  I’m not sure though if it is the coffee or the condensed milk it’s served with that I have a penchant for.  As we journeyed down to the South with every stopover the coffee just got better as we go closer to the Plateau and I spent a few days really looking forward to breakfasts of noodle soup (which is nicer in the South as I am able to identify all the animal parts in it) and Lao coffee.

Paksong is a small quiet town, with a few guesthouses and little sign of the coffee industry surrounding it.  There is only one Falang living in the town – aptly named Koffie - who has his own organic coffee farm & cafe and so naturally I headed straight to his place to for, well a coffee.  After a walk round his farm (I can now tell the difference between Arabica and Robusta plants and I probably know enough about the planting season to set myself up a smallholding) I managed to begin to get a bit more of an understanding of why coffee is Lao’s best kept secret.  In a nutshell, small scale coffee farms are incredibly labour intensive and it takes a few years before coffee yields are high enough to warrant production costs.  Due to legal restrictions, although there are many small organic farms they are not able to sell their products as organic and therefore cannot get same prices as those from the large scale plantations.  While I was in town I heard that, with the help of the German government on the legalities, the local farmers had just received permission to set up as a co-operation, which now means they can formally sell the coffee and under the organic label.  This is a big breakthrough for the families involved and will make some difference to their incomes, it is incredible though that it takes foreign intervention to make this happen and perhaps without the resident Falang pushing it through on behalf of the local families, it would never have even been considered a possibility.  

After a week off driving, eating and sitting in meetings, I decided to do the one thing that I have done very little of over the last six months – walk.  It’s not that I have been spectacularly lazy since I’ve been here, it’s just that my bike is a car replacement and I don’t even go to the local shops without it.  Taking it easy to start with, I decided just to do a short 10 km walk (not least because I had no sunscreen or proper footwear) just as a warm up for the next day’s activities.  As there is only ever one road to follow, even I couldn’t get lost this time.  Enjoying my freedom from the confines of the truck, I merrily refused the offers of a lift on the back of passing bikes on my return journey, which in hindsight may have been a bit too hasty given the blisters I was beginning to cultivate.

Lao is renowned for two things – temples and waterfalls – and it is hard to travel anywhere without seeing one or t’other.  Temples I’ve seen plenty of but after almost 5 months I was yet to visit a single waterfall.  I’ve been taking the view that as it’s dry season there’s no guarantee that there is water in them and would hate to make all the effort just to be disappointed.  Anyway, I was assured that Tad Yuang was full so the following day I headed off there.  With the waterfall being 12 km away and transport a scarcity I decided (and quite wisely, as it turned out) to get a songtheaw there and to save my poorly feet for the return journey.  I know this is no great distance, but being poorly quipped as I was it may as well have been 120 km.

After a few hours sitting in quiet contemplation at the bottom of Tad Yuang it was time start the uphill journey back to Paksong, praying that I could get a lift back at least part of the way.  Given the offers of lifts the previous day, my hopes were high.  Oh, how foolish!  I should also point out that, whilst my fellow volunteers back in Vientiane were hibernating from a five day long rainstorm, I’d been enjoying clear skies and unseasonably high temperatures.  (Which goes to show that wherever you are the North is grim and the South is sunny!)

After a few kilometres a songtheaw did pass me…and kept going.  Although it did look full-to-bursting had I been Lao I think they would have crowbarred me in.  That said, I think there is a secret code in getting songtheaw to stop and where to strategically place yourself to effect this and you would need to be native to Lao to understand this – it’s all part of the hidden culture VSO speak of so much! 

Continuing on my way the passing Songtheaw appeared on the horizon as it took a long stop to unload the goods passengers were bringing back from the market in Pakse, 40km back down the road.  So as I walked closer to it I prayed that there were still more bags to unload and was dismayed when I saw the driver climb back into his cab and go on his way.  Still, I may have been burning to a cinder and swelling up in the heat, but I wasn’t defeated.  The second time I saw the Songtheaw (which I was beginning to realise was my last vestige of hope as the service from Pakse stops early in the day) I, again, said a small prayer and quickened my pace, blisters permitting.  Only for history to repeat itself and for my crest to became well and truly fallen.  After about 6km I finally caught up with the ever slowing-songtheaw, hopped on the back and rested.  Then something happened which is pretty well unheard of for a Falang in Lao.  Possibly by my amusing the driver and passengers by the fact that I could ‘wao pasa Lao noy nung’ the driver didn’t charge me for the journey.  Possibly the first and last time this will happen and will go down in my memory as a very welcome act of kindness.

To fly or not to fly

Due to time constraints, I decided to risk it and make the return journey by plane.  The infamous Lao Airlines.  Lao is renowned for low road safety standards and the same applies to sky travel. 

Pakse airport is easy – there’s just the one gate so know problem finding your way.  Checking out the flight schedule beforehand I had some peace of mind as the plane was going to be one of the four French aircraft that was donated to the country, which has a perfect safety record.  As it turned out the plane was one of the ancient Chinese fleet donated some years prior to the French.  In Lao anything that comes out of China is cheap and liable to break after a few uses.  I could only pray that the same logic wasn’t about to apply here.  I should say (before my parents have apoplexy) there hasn’t been an aircrash for a number of years with this model of plane and I suspect that, as is usually the case, bad news has stuck.  Nevertheless, after getting on the plane I said a quick prayer to St Christopher and hoped that the elastic band was wound up tight enough to propel the plane to Vientiane in one go.  Flying over the Mekong with its islands and giant gold Buddha status glistening soon took my mind off of the plane, or at least as much as stunning scenery can make you forget the propeller blade creaking away just the other side of the window to me. Still, Lao is looking to introduce jet engines in the near future.  So that’s progress. 

As Lao is so underdeveloped there are many gaps in the market ripe for filling and barely a week will go past when a potential market emerges.  It does seem though that the gap in the market for airline food product has been taken.  I was intrigued to see what was in the food box and expecting something a little bit Lao.  So I was quite surprised to see a frankfurter in a bun.  Not typical Lao cuisine and not something I’ve seen in the last five months.  Looks like Herta beat me to that one!

As a post script to a previous posting about the survival of the village I live in, it has now been announced that the government will be knocking it down this month to make way for accommodation for visiting dignatories, for an international meeting taking place in Vientiane next year.  We're just waiting for the demolition order...  This was one prediction that I wish I had been proven wrong over - the only thing I was wrong on was the speed of its demise.

February

Luang Prabang

Shortly before Wanderlust announced Luang Prabang as the world’s number one city tourist destination, a couple of us took a short break there.  Luang Prabang is beautiful – the province is filled with some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen and travelling through it I wished I could package it up and send it home for you all to experience, as photos just can’t do it justice. 

The city itself is also very pretty, with most of its attractions sited in the main tourist district, encased on three sides my two rivers with just three roads running the length of it.  Given this, you would think it would be easy even for me with my lousy sense of direction to find my way around.  Sadly not and every night (and I have to say I wasn’t alone in my inability to navigate) we ritually lost our bearings and ended up walking along the wrong river to get back to our guesthouse – thankfully I do have some powers of observation and so we did learn to check the width of the river and if it was too wide and couldn’t see lights on the other side, we knew we had to cross to the other side of town. 

As a slight aside, since I’ve been in Lao, I have conducted an informal survey with people of all different nationalities and can conclude two things that seem to transcend national boundaries: whatever country you’re from, women need to turn the map round to face the direction they’re standing; and when lost, men refuse to ask for directions.  So it’s not just in England.

The tourist area in Luang Prabang is a series of travel agents, guest house and temples and most of the places to eat provide a range of falang food, with good cheap Lao food being difficult to find unless you make the effort to walk the additional five minutes to somewhere away from the bright lights.  Also, compared to Vientiane, most shop/restaurant staff have some English language.  So it is understandable why this is such a popular tourist destination. 

As with everything there is a downside.  With every other building being a guest house, many of the local population have been pushed out of the area – between the beautifully constructed guesthouses you will often find a local house, usually of the traditional wooden-falling-apart-type structure, where a local family is clinging on to its space and livelihood.  Many of these families, especially along the river roads, have found a space along the riverfront to put a seating area so they can run a restaurant, with the meals being prepared back at their homes. Some also have a trestle table and electric cooker set up and do the cooking on site (but still popping back home to top up on ingredients, as and when).  I will never cease to be amazed how they manage to offer such an extensive menu with such limited cooking supplies.  So, many local people are managing to make a living this way and those that don’t have the luxury of being near the river front have turned their living rooms into massage parlours.  Which, by the way, if you’re ever tempted to have a Lao massage, heed my warning – it really hurts.  It is definitely the first time I’ve ever been stood on during a massage!  The government have now ceased to issue licences for guesthouses in the tourist area and so hopefully the plight of the locals will not worsen.  Given that UNESCO have been responsible for putting in tarmacked/paved streets in Luang Prabang and making it the popular destination that it has become, local feeling is that at least the government have started to do something.

I have to admit that while we were there, we were bad tourists and didn’t really tick much off of the ‘things to see’ list, but we ate well and rested a lot.  With some of the temples requiring not so cheap entry fees we saw what we needed to from the outside (we’re such cheapskates).  We later found out that these fees go straight to the government and do not benefit the local community, so we felt better about not paying.

I was sceptical about Luang Prabang and initially a bit anti given the plethora of western restaurants and ‘all you can drink’ offers in some of the bars and I began to miss the relative anonymity of Vientiane.  However, one small encounter made me pop my soap box away.  When stopping for a coffee break (by the way, Lao has some of the nicest coffee I really can’t understand why Nescafe instant is so popular here) we met a couple of ladies on holiday from England, probably in their late sixties/early seventies and they were on the hunt for a simple chicken salad sandwich (something you’d be hard pushed to find in most places in Lao).  They were so lovely and I think braver than many of their peers, to be making this trip.  So I can only conclude that if people such as these two ladies are willing to make the journey over to explore and learn about Lao, if they want a chicken sandwich they should have a chicken sandwich.

Living with Communism

Vientiane Times proudly announced this month that the national assembly are continuing their efforts to create a state ruled by law and now has 90 laws in place (and yes, as I can’t seem to rid myself of HR I have read the Lao Labour Law, which is all neatly tied up in a 30 page document – perhaps UK could learn from this…).  The government are committed to rule of law.  Great.  So, explain this….  I have now found a bit more information out about the land ownership for our village.  The French set the village and the farmland up as part of its legacy when it left Lao and although the villagers do not have official paperwork, under Lao Land Law, due to the length of their occupation, the land, by rights, belongs to them.  The village runs alongside the Mekong which the government is currently investing heavily in by building a new road to improve the riverside area – so it will be prime real estate once the development is complete.  It is no surprise then that the Government are currently trying to take the land from villagers so they can sell it to a concession.  The villagers are fighting this and have turned to the French embassy for help in their cause (and we can hope that one of the NGOs that runs the farming project may be able to help).  All parties are limited in what they can do and villagers will face indefinite imprisonment if they make any form of protest.  I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the government’s commitment to rule of law, but it is really sad that people are not allowed a voice in these matters.

No elephant festival

It’s at this point I should be regaling you with stories of my weekend away to Paklai for the annual elephant festival which took place mid February.  After a week of phone calls and rallying around to get enough people together to make it worth the cost of hiring a car and driver to get there, I was unable to make the journey due to an unscheduled illness.  Previously, when we were in Luang Prabang, we wanted to make a trip out with elephants, but to ride them properly (not just sitting in the baskets on top of them) we had to take them bathing, which unfortunately the weather was far too cold for.  So that’s now twice in one month that my attempts to get to see the elephants of Lao (aka ‘land of a million elephants’) have been thwarted.  Perhaps I should take the hint and give up, but I won’t and I hope for another opportunity before I come home.

So instead of elephants, I’ll take this opportunity to introduce you to Lao food…

There are two basic rules to food here – get these right and you’re well on you’re way to eating Lao-style.

1- Anything that is animal or vegetable can be eaten – no part of either is left unused.

2- Anything of the above 2 categories can be eaten at any stage of development. 

A Lao business leader has called for Lao food to be registered under IP regulations to protect the cuisine and avoid it being lost to other countries.  The French have their cuisine on the UNESCO’s world heritage list and if the French can do it, why can’t Lao?  However, at least as far as Europe is concerned, I suspect that some of their cuisine is unlikely to meet with EU food safety standards so they really needn’t worry about plagiarism from that particular corner of the globe.

Let’s start with fruit.  Many fruits are eaten both unripe or ripe, which is strange given most Lao people don’t like sour foods.  They love to eat an unripe mango or tamarind which not even the accompanying gua - a mix of chilli, salt and MSG - can take the edge off (although I admit I am addicted to unripe mango).  Papaya salad, a favourite lunchtime dish is made fresh to order with unripe papaya.  Padek - fermented fish - is used to make many dishes, including papaya salad.  If you’re lucky, with the amount of chilli they put in it, your taste buds are destroyed before fish taste hits your palette.  This does take some getting used to and I surprised myself when, after recovering from a small bout of food poisoning, I found that papaya salad had become a comfort food to me. 

Noodle soup, another national favourite, is made with various organs floating around it, rounded off with a 2” block of dried blood.  I have yet to build up the courage to taste the latter and I usually offer this to my Lao colleagues who are always keen to take it off my hands.  Well, that’s one way to win friends and I hate to see good food go to waste!  Incidentally, no food goes to waste in our office – all leftovers from noodle soup to sticky rice are saved for Ringo, our guard dog.  However, he does draw the line at chilli paste as I found out when he escaped one day.  After I rugby tackled him we used a bowl of it to entice him back to his pen.  I did feel a bit guilty, luring him under false pretences, so I made sure the leftovers from my lunch were a bit more substantial than normal.

There is only one other food stuff that I’ve encountered so far that really makes me think twice is a sauce they make for laap and as a dipping sauce for some dishes.  Bile.  Firstly, I have to confess that I had eaten laap many times before finding this out.  I made this discovery when on my recruitment trip in the south and I was helping prepare dinner with one of our NGO partner organisations.  When they produced a sack from the inside of an animal (I assume cow, maybe pig – I didn’t want to get too close to find out), sliced it open and out poured a really unappetizing grey liquid.  I have since discovered that bile is perfectly good for you and so I will continue to eat laap but am still unsure about the sauce.  To be on the safe side I don’t touch any sauce that has a grey hue to it.

I have generally been good and eaten anything that is put in front of me.  I am beginning to see the light on the Asian fixation with eating all parts of the fish and just to show willing I have managed to consume both eye and brain, under the safe tutelage of my Philippine friend.  Embryo eggs are available on many street food stands and are served warm.  They do taste like chicken… and egg at the same time.  A strange taste/texture combo and not one I will repeat anytime soon.

I will try insects in due course but so far I haven’t come across any (at least not fried and on a plate).  The UN is undertaking research in Lao at the moment with a view to developing insect farms in remote areas.  People in these areas (which account for 80% of the Lao population) suffer a great deal, not only from thousands of hectares of unusable land due to UXOs, but also due to low incomes with some households living on 70 cents a day.  Insect farming for consumption is being looked into as a possible sustainable source of protein in an attempt to combat malnutrition – with 50% of younger children suffering from malnutrition this will go some way to alleviate the problem.  So it seems impolite to refuse to eat something that may improve mortality rates.  I may, however, draw the line at anything that has furry legs.

End of the plague

For some inexplicable reason, Vientiane is plagued by mosquitos and our little open plan home in the farmland is particularly suffering.  The past month I have been getting up to a scourge of mosquitos outside my bedroom door and fighting my way through to get my bathroom which is similarly infested.  At the weekend my Lao colleague came round announcing that there is new technology that she wants to install to help deal with the infestation.  I was a little surprised that any new technology had hit Lao but not being one to stand in the way of pioneering equipment (and delighted that my mosquito-swatting days were numbered) I looked on eagerly as they installed the cabling and finally unveiled the marvellous piece of machinery….

Might not look so conventional, but it certainly works.

December - January

The Rest of December

Buddhist Giving Party

The rest of December carried on pretty much as any December (but without the snow), with the usual round of entertainment, although some of it was of a different kind.

Inakhone, one of our Lao colleagues, hosted a Buddhist giving party at her home, to which she invited us all.  I would love to tell you the name of this particular event, but as I couldn’t even read the beautifully crafted invitation I was given, there is little chance of that.  Many families will host a party like this every year or two, the premise being that what you give you will receive back in good luck and fortune – so the more you give, the better your life will be.  These parties last for two days and during that time guests come to the house to eat and to give donations (which will go to a pre-designated cause and not to cover the food bill, unfortunately).  As they will want to have as much luck as possible in the coming year, the host will provide for as many people as possible and invite anyone they know, no matter how tenuous the connection (hence my invitation).  We turned up at lunchtime on day one and the grounds were already full with people seated for lunch.  Within the house was an area dedicated to a shrine and on arrival we went to great the family and to leave our donations at the shrine.  Then you go eat.  In total, they will receive and feed 2-300 guests over the two days.  Many guests will also take food back for their family members who are unable to make it, so you could probably add another 50 or more to that number.  The scale of these parties is immense, especially when you consider that you have to have a constant supply of food throughout the two days.  Although compared to weddings, this is quite small scale as you could expect to cater for 7 or 8 hundred people.  (I’m still trying to wrangle an invite to a wedding as I hear they’re a unique experience and have come close but have had other things on.  Hopefully I’ll find one over the next couple of months and if my liver survives the occasion I’ll let you know how it went.)

Sharing Skills

As our aim as volunteers is to capacity build, we’ve decided to take this a little beyond our placement outlines and take it to the world of food.  As our Lao colleagues are showing us how to cook Lao style and every so often they will (with our help where we can) prepare lunch for everyone. Ramona and I thought that it was only fair to return the favour and develop their knowledge of pasta dishes, which they all seem to be fascinated about.  So we decided that we would cook spaghetti bolognaise for lunch for everyone at work.  I may have already explained this, but in case not: the organisation I work for sublets office space from VSO, as does the organisation Ramona works for, so we have a good mix of people at work and it is generally a social little group, especially when it comes to eating – at 12 p.m. everyone will stop work and take lunch (long gone are the days where I am reduced to eating a sandwich at my desk). 

There are a few complications to trying to make the perfect bolognaise.  Firstly, many vegetables are different here, so improvisation is called for.  Some herbs are also different, but I have found the easy way round this is to go to the market and taste what they have and if I think it will go, then I buy.  Pretty easy and it amuses the market vendors.  Secondly, meat is in large joints that you just buy a slice of and doesn’t come neatly minced and cellophaned.  This does present two minor problems – you don’t know what cut of meat it is, so it could be stewing steak or sirloin (my butchering knowledge is pretty limited); also it isn’t minced but after some asking around we discovered a lady at the back of the market with the mincer, who will do the honours for you for a very small price.  The buying was actually the easy bit.  Cooking it was more of a challenge.  Our office has a fully equipped kitchen.  For Lao cooking.  So, with one rice cooker and one electric pan to cook spag bols (and some other Lao dishes) for 12 we opted for the barbecue (bucket of coal) as our cooker of choice and prayed that it wouldn’t burn.  So why they fried the fish outside with us, teaching us a new sauce, we covered off the finer intricacies of spag bol with them.  It’s all one happy cultural exchange, with our own fusion menu.  On my list of firsts, cooking spaghetti on a barbecue is now there.

Christmas Time

As Christmas approached, Ramona and I continued on our cultural exchange programme, baking Christmas biscuits and gift wrapping them as presents for all the office staff and our other Lao friends, to mark the occasion.  With Ramona going on holiday for Christmas and our ‘just in time’ approach to time management, we had one evening to do this in… but not until we had been out for dinner for a friend’s 21^st birthday.  Eating quickly we made our excuses and slipped away early to start our baking marathon.  Similar to the spag bol experience, improvisation was key to the task and so we put our VSO training to good use.  We managed to bake biscuits without scales/measuring cup, rolling pin or shape cutters and all in an oven with no temperature gauge.  Alongside this production line we also had one for making the gift bags, being as inventive as possible in a country that doesn’t have the ‘everything you never knew you’d need for Christmas’ approach to merchandising.  So, at 1 a.m. after four hours of cooking, cutting and sticking we packed up our Santa’s sack of goodies ready to take to work in the morning.  I have previously mentioned that through work I am managing to whittle down my list of future career choices.  After this, I now have two options - Blue Peter presenter and stand-in for Delia. 

Our new recruits

Just before Christmas the 15 volunteers we’d spent the preceding two months recruiting for, arrived from across the country for orientation and a week of training.  As I suspected, just getting everyone from the bus stations to the hotel was no mean feat and the fact that we only left one volunteer behind at the station was a miracle (although possibly a bit unsettling for the person concerned).  Oh, and we forgot to tell one partner organisation the revised date of the training (in traditional Lao style, this arrangement changed about 5 times in the space of 2 days) and so one of their volunteers missed the first couple of days as this was how long it took for her to travel to Vientiane.  In the grand scheme of things though, I they did a good job of getting everyone here. 

It was great to see them all together and I think they began to get more of a sense of what the programme was really all about.  Many of the volunteers had never been to Vientiane before and to put it into perspective for you, most towns in Lao consist of little more than 2 or 3 main roads, which is all they may have experienced.  So to come to the ‘bright lights’ of the city (as a comparison, probably about the size of Bath.).  So those that didn’t look like a rabbit in headlights were just a little giddy.  Given the remoteness of their homes and therefore reduced experiences of things, there are certain, quite basic, points you need to consider.  The usual ‘these are the fire exits’ briefing, was replaced by do’s and don’ts for using the toilet, including: ‘yes it is a toilet, although it looks different’ and ‘no, you can’t stand on it’.  The list of firsts just keeps growing.

Before we sent them off to the training centre, which was basically a campsite in the middle of a 18 hectare site an hour outside Vientiane, we took them out for the afternoon to see some of the main city attractions. Thankfully, we decided on bright blue T-shirts this year so we were successful in herding them round various places and not losing a single one!  Although very limited in my Lao language, I did get to know many of them a lot better.  What was strange (but lovely) was that although they were visitors to a town and environment that was odd to them but very familiar to me, some of the volunteers in their own way, really seemed to want to look after me – making sure I was okay with the food, that I felt included, etc..  Just another of many examples that show how kind Lao people are.  What was even stranger (and not so lovely, given cameras aren’t very kind to me) was almost every volunteer wanting a photo with me (and spending their allowance money on photos from the tourist photographers).  Really odd.  From comments I received, and from previous encounters across the country, it seems that I have finally found a country where pale freckly skin and a larger than normal nose is seen as a sign of beauty (especially when wearing Sinh).  Perhaps I should stay after all!  (Only kidding, mum!)

Following the orientation, the volunteers were then safely packed off to the training centre, where, on Christmas day we joined them to observe the training.  So for me, Christmas lunch consisted of sticky rice, fried fish, sour fish soup, papaya salad.  Yum.

New Year

Having spent Christmas weekend and week working, I was treated to four days off and so took the opportunity to hop on a bus to Namxuang, in the north of the province, to visit one of the volunteers – Evangeline - who is working at a livestock station at a farming research institute.  Only a couple of hours by bus we were away from the city, in the middle of nowhere admiring the peaceful countryside that where we would see the New Year in. 

The bosses at the research institute take international New Year as an opportunity to hold a party for the workers and their families and they very kindly invited us to join their celebrations.  Events kicked off early, at about 5pm, once the buffalo they had killed earlier that day was cooked.  Just to explain, the bull was apparently a hybrid that wasn’t coming up with goods and the vets thought it was time he actually had a use – our dinner.  With tables laid out in the compound outside of the offices for 40 or so people, we were the first to arrive and were immediately sat down, beer glasses continually filled to the brim and food laid out.  Lao hospitality is consistent wherever we go and this was no different.  Also, we were really about to experience Lao partying local style.  Lao people, as I may have alluded to before like to drink and if your glass isn’t permanently at your lips, they must think that you’re not having a good time.  And I don’t even think it is done to bridge the language gap.  To ensure you don’t stop drinking, no sooner do you try to take a mouthful of food as someone raises their glass and it is then obligatory to raise yours and drink.  With 20 or more people round one table this act is repeated, I would say on average, 2-3 times in every five minute interval.  So, as you can imagine it felt like it was going to be long and heavy night with midnight being 7 hours away.  On our table we were joined by a mixture of farm workers and vets, who all work for the institute and were all male except for us volunteers.  It wasn’t until dinner was well underway that I turned round to see that the table behind was mainly women, with only a couple of men.  This did make me feel slightly uncomfortable, not because of the company we had on our table, but more by the fact that we were invited to sit with the men (and really we just sat where we were put) and wives, girlfriends, children, etc., ate separately.  I did wonder what they must think of us and the attention we were receiving and perhaps this is nothing out of the ordinary for them, but it did make me stop and think.  Whilst there is obviously a gender divide in this instance, it can’t strictly be based on gender (in the common sense of the word) otherwise our group would have been split to follow suit.  Gender issues in Lao is one of many issues development workers are tackling, but not something I’ll go into here (at least not now).

There was the obligatory karaoke, in the form of one man continually playing keyboard and songs being sung from a book.  He was quite versatile – could play both Lao and Thai songs.  This brought with it a respite from the beer Lao: Lao dancing.  Which, through watching and learning I was able to pick up reasonably quickly.  Which was lucky considering how much I had to participate.  The custom is that you have to be invited to dance before you can join and you have to stay for a respectable amount of time before bowing out politely.  Being guests, the invitations were continual and at times it was relief to return to the table and the inevitable rounds of drinking.  At least once dancing started, we could then start to get to know some of the girls there and break down any perceived barriers (probably my perception, not their’s), not least because we had to get them to show us what to do! 

So, midnight came, went, then we realised we’d missed it so had a countdown of our own and not a chorus of Old Lang Syne was to be heard.  Perfect.

New year’s day brought with it another the party.  The previous evening, Evangeline’s boss invited me to a party which started at 8 a.m. which I said would be lovely but there would be little chance of me being up that early and I thought that was an odd time so maybe I had lost something in translation and thought nothing more of it.  He wasn’t kidding and I had understood correctly. 

He wanted to come and pick us up at 10 am to take us to the party, but unfortunately my hangover didn’t permit such early movement.  By midday, however, we were on our way to the livestock station for lunch.  By this time, the beer was flowing and buffalo tail stew was being served to help soak it up.  So, the party continued in a tractor shed-come-mess hall and events proceeded pretty much in the same vein as the previous night.  With one addition.  Just in case we weren’t drinking enough, one or two people would do a circuit of the table, filling a glass of beer and offering offering it to each of us in turn to drink down.  You may think that my using the word ‘offer’ suggests some kind of refusal would be acceptable.  Think again.

Hoping that 2 Jan would give us chance to detox as we prepared to go back to Vientiane, we couldn’t have been more wrong.  We had lovely lunch at the nam ngum dam with a couple of Evangeline’s colleagues and some university students who were working at institute and I did manage to keep beer consumption to a polite minimum.  We finally made it back to the Namxuang and waited for the bus back to Vientiane.  As we pulled up to where the bus would stop the doors were opened for us and a couple of women who owned the shop we pulled up at, hauled us out of the truck, put beer glasses in our hands and, yes well, you can read above again to get an idea of what ensued whilst we waited for our bus.  Thankfully it was only an hours wait.

3 – 16 January

After our excitement over New Year, the following couple of weeks have been quiet, punctuated with a few dinners, bit of Karaoke and often both at the same time (and yes, I am still remaining mute when it comes to Karaoke). 

In general, day to day living is pretty easy and so far, whilst my options may be limited to what I know how to say, I can generally get and do everything I need to with the Lao that I have.  There are however some things that are easy and routine back in England and you don’t realise that you actually need quite a complex understanding of the language to complete the task, with the desired result.  So, almost three months in and I finally picked up the courage to do the one such task that requires this level of knowledge of a language.  A task that a girl can only ever be put off for so long before it becomes critical.  Getting a haircut.  Ideally, I should go to a run-of-the-mill hairdresser that can be found on every street or market corner.  But no, I sold out and headed for the tourist district in downtown Vientiane to go to the one hairdresser where English is spoken and they have experience of cutting European hair.  That seemed like a good start, but when it came to my appointment, the hairdresser was not there and so one of the other staff said, in English, she’d do it if I liked.  I liked, so I did.  With her, what turned out to be, very limited English, my very limited Lao, a few hand gestures, several ‘noy nyung’s’ (little bit) and a couple of ‘same-same’s’ (the one phrase in English that is universal in Lao) I came out with something that wasn’t very noy nyung or same-same.  That said, I haven’t had to invest in a hijab, so let’s call that a success.

Ramona and I finally, after a couple of months of saying we will, spent a couple of hours wandering round the village, meeting people and taking photos (I’ve put a separate photo album up for this).  Over the last few months we have come and gone from the village via the same route every day, passing the same restaurant, village shop etc.., and we just thought that was it, other than houses off of surrounding roads.  Oh how very wrong.  Of course there are many other houses, but we also discovered a couple more restaurants (not sure what they sell, but usual procedure is for one to sell noodle soup and the other to sell fried rice.  Our nearest restaurant has the papaya salad business cornered, so that is all that is left really, when it comes to village eateries), the village temple, a fruit juice stall, an iced coffee stall and a few stalls with some fruit and veg, most likely grown by those that are selling. 



Coffee Shop



I can’t imagine any of them make much from any of these enterprises as there is no passing trade (you would only come to the village if you lived here) and so these will just supplement the income they make from their farm produce and any other work family members can get.    The village is very poor and their living is mainly through subsistence farming.  Most of the houses are the old style wooden structures with only a couple of concrete houses, my neighbour’s house being one of them.  With all these houses, rice is cooked outside over a fire pot and ovens are unheard of.  By contrast, our house, which is a modern wooden structure, looks palatial by comparison and it is.  But to us, with our kitchen consisting of a sink and an oven set up on the verandah, it is about as basic as you’d really want.  Most Lao’s use rice cookers and an electric hotplate which covers cooking pretty much most Lao foods.  Ovens, which we wouldn’t do without back at home, are rare here and I suspect are the preserve of ex-pats.  My colleague often asks me about how our oven works and what type of food we would cook in it and seems very intrigued but a bit wary of them –they’re as much of an alien concept to Lao people as, well, an alien would be.