Well, well.....

Since  it's evident that nobody is willing to admit to having had fun in  a bus shelter, let's move on.

I mentioned the other week that the village well might sound romantic and pastoral but isn't. I think maybe this photo rather confirms that opinion. The well itself is the concrete circular object to the middle left.

My return from Vientiane, will one day be humorous; but right now I am still just a little irritated. As stated before, the advertised length of the journey is 8 hours, though nobody believes that. But on my return we clocked up an amazing 14 hours. If you add the time from my hotel to bus station, waiting time, and time from LPB bus station to my home, the journey was 17 hours. That was only the prelude; when I got home  I found that a storm had knocked out my electrics. So no fan, fridge, cooker, laptop, radio, music, lights. (in fact, just like 50% or more of the population here)  I took the only course open to me and went to bed and sulked. But sulking gets get dull after 36 hours, so finally I moved out and into a very sweet guesthouse, where I am writing this. It's in the eaves of a 2 story house,with superb teak floor and panelling, tv  (great !), warm shower and fan.  I am assured that tomorrow my house will be fixed, but I was assured that it would be fixed yeterday , so I  might be in the eaves a little longer.
PS; all fixed now. Apparently we were hit by 1500 volts of lightning. I don't know  if that is a lot, or whether in translation noughts got added or deleted,but it seemed to be enough to do some damage.It also damaged the contents of my fridge, which mostly had to be thrown out.

Vientiane itself is an odd place, and initially I did not care for it. It was pretty much laid out by the French, in the Baron Haussman style of town planning, but it is simply not large enough or elegant enough to carry it off.  There is a perfectly laid  out, (Parisienne style) very  broad avenue from the Presidential Palace to the the Patouxi Monument ( aka the Arc de Triomph, 1960s style).But along the kilometre or  so that the avenue runs there is scarcely  a building of note or interest. That Luang , further up the hill is , of course a stunning building, but rather in need of a coat of gold paint right now. The Presidential Palace too is very impressive and elegant. Oddly, although it is obviously French Colonial, it is in a more Caribbean than Asian style, as if the French just had one set of architectural drawings which would fit all its colonies. There is also a very beautiful art deco building, now a printing college or something like that; it's a building which seems to have escaped the notice of architectural historians of that period, as  I have never seen or read of it anywhere.


This morning I had a quite blissful breakfast by the Mekong, there was just enough breeze blowing off the river to make it warm rather than hot. the river itself is not as high as I recall  it in the past at this time of year. That either means we have still got a lot of rain to come ( or they have up river in China) or we may have some water shortages later in the year.

Last Saturday I had a walk up the mountains and a picnic with a Hmong family. A bike ride to their home village was followed by a further 15 minute ride to the  foot of the hills. From there we walked for about 45 minutes up to where they keep their chicken and ducks and have a small house on stilts,  which they occupy for 2 or 3 days in turn, and then a further 45 minutes through their rice fields, pineapple plantations and rubber tree plantation to the summit, where they have another shelter which serves as a base in the rice cropping season. There were many signs of elephant activity in the area, but sadly no actual sightings.

Given the size of their landholding it would be wrong to label them as poor, but they work exceedingly hard with a  very basic life style  The Hmong may well emerge as the first indigenous capitalist class, given their attitude towards savings and capital accumulation, Not being Buddhists they do not have constant days off work for festivals, nor do they have temples, and monks to support..Apart from their own New Year, they seem to opt for work in preference to travel or party, and eat and drink pretty much only what they grow.
Others may know better, but the impression I am forming is that there  is no great hostility between different ethnic groups here, but an awful lot of ignorance about groups other than one's own. There were six of us on the trip, 3 Hmong, 2 Lao and me. My  Lao friends  were as intrigued and curious as I was to see  the lifestyle and habits of the Hmong, suggesting little previous knowledge or contact. Apart from the significant differences, (phyical appearance, language , religion )there are curious little differences in habits; the Hmong eat their rice steamed, not not as sticky rice, and instead of using fingers, chopsticks, or forks, use small, flat spoons to eat everything.  I was, of course offered the head of the chicken to eat (you can just see it in the cooking pot), but no-one seemed offended when I declined. When we left I had nothing to offer them in return for their hospitality but money, but they would not countenance accepting anything.

Sorry to sound doom bells, but this week's death is a an 8th month old baby. I  have never before been made so aware of deaths  (I was brought up to ignore death, as being really rather vulgar and lower class), but then maybe its simply typical of village life anywhere ? But here we have an  informal/getting on for formal community support network which requires us all to be kept informed, as we are expected to contribute to funeral and associated costs.

Last week, I think, I mentioned a lad who was working all the hours of the day to pay his college fees. I ran into him last night when I was going for dinner....he was still at his station at 7.30, selling, or trying to,. bus and boat tickets. (He had sold 10 in the day, which he regarded as an acceptable haul). . He had just learned that for the last year of his 3 year course, the college had doubled his fees, from c.$150 to $300. It"s a good college, bur privately run. They have clearly worked out that no-one wants to quit having completed 2 out of 3 years and that they can rip the kids off in the final year. Through LEOT, we have started discussions with a partner body here  to try to establish a non fee paying English Institute in Luang Prabang. That little story has made me keener than ever to bring it off.

On a more cheery note..how many of these items can you identify?

The many  markets here are a real joy to visit; the fruit and vegetable sections particularly.  The live produce ones are a bit more of an acquired  taste, in every respect, and  they maybe best described as "interesting".

 

See you for next week's gripping installment....

Alan