Oh yes...no frills, or photos of fruit or biscuits in this edition. No photos at all, in fact.
My laptop was so full of virus that it looked like an 8 yr old with chicken pox. After mant trips to the IT shop it got sorted, but now I have a whole new setup and I don't know how it works, It is certainly very coy about letting me add photos and although I have eventually found a way to attach them to emails I have not yet worked out how to add them here and I dare not go back to the shop, since this weekend I spent so much time there that the neighbours must be starting to talk. Maybe by next week a miracle will have occurred and boring photos will be back on the menu. I can only try to imagine how devastated you must be by this news, but try to imagine if you can, several elephants a goat (yes, her again), more boats, me standing next to a local pop star, a butterfly eating my dinner, me standing next to a local pop star again, and you will be fine.
It will let me add photos that I have sent already and are thus stored somewhere on the system, but somehow there does not seem much point in that.
There is a connection between the boats and the pop star, mentioned above in that he drove me out to more boat racing, this time on Nam Ou, close to the Buddha caves for those in the know. In fact, the trip was a 1960s's teenager's dream. Three males, one of whom is the said pop star in a pick up truck with 3 girls in the back. Funny how some of life's opportunities come a little late....about 45 years too late in this case, but it was fun to observe anyway. The pop star was strangely worried about whether girls fancied him, but maybe that is part of the territory? Apart from the 3 in the back, we were joined by 4 more over lunch, and then before we left the village we had to cruise up and down the street to see if there were any more who were available. That there were not maybe had more than a little to do with my presence in the front seats.
The racing was a little different to the previous meetings, with smaller boats and perhaps with greater stress on the eating and drinking rather than the racing. On this occasion I did have a boiled eggs with duckling, and it proved to be all I feared, though I had not been prepared for the white of the egg to be as hard as concrete.
I had said that I would non dwell on Buddhist festivals but I return to the subject merely to make a correction. The festival that I thought was the Festival of the Dead (Or Ancestors Festival ) was not....it was the festival of planting seeds. The Festival of the dead was this week, and it shared the date with Chinese celebrations for Full Moon, which meant lots of rockets, fireworks and oddly expensive Mooncakes which I did not try on grounds of economy. $3 for a single cake seems a little much, but maybe there are very exciting ingredients.
This week I have been invited out to the start of the Hmong rice harvest, which is accompanied by a party and the shaman doing his stuff with chicken feet (apparently whether the feet are open or closed will determine our fortune over the next 12 months. I would have thought that any sensible chicken will have their feet wide open and be heading up into the hills, as soon as they hear my footfalls, since my arrival usually means doom bells for one or 2 of them.) I got a call yesterday asking me to a Hmong Wedding Party, but to judge from the background noise it was a) already well under way and b) a bit too much like most wedding parties that I have been to. It would have been more fun to attend the actual ceremony itself, since I have no idea what that involves.
The weather has been pretty much the same as in recent weeks with a few ferocious but relatively brief storms and temperatures varying between pleasantly cool and mid and high 30s. The storms usually come early evening as I am laying the table to eat dinner on the balcony.
The climate here takes a toll on one's clothes if they are not aired regularly. I had to take 4 jackets to the the laundry as they had got mildew. I don't know why I have 4 jackets anyway (in fact I have 6; three suit jackets, one sports jacket, a fleece and thick winter jacket and I have yet to wear any of them. Oddly, it will be latter which gets most use, as in the December/January period it can be quite chilly in the mornings and evenings, especially if travelling in the north.). I also have about 15 pairs of socks, of which only about 2 have briefly emerged from the drawer; I fear my forward planning was not as informed as it might have been.
I have been invited to go on a 4 or 5 day trip to Luang Namtha in the far north and also on a similar kind of trip to the far south. The former involves getting a bus (and I mean bus, not coach), at 5pm and driving till 4am. My companions would young Hmong people and I suspect that the levels of comfort required by them may not be quite so demanding as I would want, so I might pass on that. The other journey involves a bus ride of 21 hours each way so also has a serious question mark over it. My companion on that trip would be the Abbot of a temple in Vientiane, and whilst he is the most charming of men, and travelling with him would be very interesting culturally and socially, 21 hours is a long haul. I fear that as I got increasingly tired (and irritable) my language and behaviour might not make me a suitable companion for an an Abbot.
My bamboo bookcases are almost walking around the room so full are they of insects, leaving large deposits of debris on the floor and all over the books. So this morning I got some spray to sort them out. I don't know how long it lasts for but we shall see. But this has given friends the much sought after opportunity to re-arrange the books again! I guess it makes the shelves look like like a very eclectic collection when a Century of Cricket Quotes is next to a biography of Rudolf Nureyev. I can imagine that Nureyev would have been brilliant at first slip, but possibly a little over theatrical in his wicket taking celebrations.
Mangosteens and pineapples have disappeared from the market stalls leaving rambutans, dragon fruit, pomelos and oranges among the local produce. The latter are very much in season right now, although calling them oranges is something of a misnomer in that they are uniformly green, although not unripe as their colour might suggest. However, although they are quite sweet, they are rather chewy, with a lot of skin I did buy some imported plums but I don't know what they were like as they were quickly homed in on by visitors before I could try one....it was almost like having the builders back !
I have just returned from accompanying a friend to the local hospital. I had been there a few years back, but that was before I was really getting any sense of the country, so it was intriguing to re-visit. It's a newish, stylish building provided the government of China, and apparently staffed by Cuban doctors. The most obvious thing to observe was the effect that rationing health care by money has. Compared to a UK hospital it was deserted, although my friend was amazed by how "busy" it was. There was no obvious reception desk, but there were 12 windows, like in the Post Office, and just like the Post Office, 11 of them were closed. So 6 or 8 people were clustered around one which said "Pharmacy ", but which seemed to double as reception. There were also maybe 12 others sitting rather aimlessly on plastic chairs. Once my friend had worked out where to go, he disappeared, was seen at once (for a blood test) and returned almost immediately, but $8 poorer. To give some context, the rice croppers in the Hmong rice fields will be on $3 a day, so that's almost 3 days wages. It's little wonder that boiling up bits of bark or sacrificing a chicken or maybe even a pig remain preferred options for many people.
The only work around that have I have so far discovered I to deal with the photo problem is to start a wholly new blog. So, maybe next week you may get an invitation to look up http://www.letterfromlaos2.blogspot.com/ which I have reserved should it be needed.
See you next week...here...or there.
Alan
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