And this week's visitor.....

ah, no sorry, not Nanny Goat, but this little fellow here.

Sorry also about the quality of the photo but my camera does not like doing close up, and the scorpion, as you may be able to see, is confined  behind glass. I am grateful to Wikipedia for advising me that "only" 25 species of scorpion are potentially lethal to humans . As he strolled across my floor I didn't feel that I had time to establish whether or not he was one of the 25.

And the nearest I have come to seeing the goat, is two young goats (too large to be hers), on ropes being taken for a walk. Goat-walking appears not to be the easiest or most straightforward of occupations.

The following photo is much better quality and is this week's quiz; what is the old lady doing up the ladder?   (Answers at the end of the blog.)

By way of  a small clue it is an activity which has been carried out for hundreds of years.....for many of them, by the lady herself, I suspect.

As I write this I am expecting the Water Company to arrive to connect me at last to the water supply. I feel increasingly like a member of a cargo cult waiting endlessly, but in my case impatiently, for some wonderful bounty to arrive on my doorstep from afar. It's not great service when you consider the cost. I have paid out a bit over 200 pounds for this, so far, non-service.
Not a huge amount in one sense but it equates  to maybe 8 months wages for many Lao people. It's no wonder that many families in the village still have to use the well for washing themselves and their clothes. Possibly I should put up a sign saying "Hot shower; 20p" and sit back and make my fortune. But if word gets around that I am running a "bathhouse" it may attract not quite the clientele I might be hoping for.  Hmmmmm, thinking about it, maybe I could make a lot of interesting new friends........

I shall return to money matters later, but for now let me me tell you about our film festival, Yes,next month Luang Prabang will host a film festival; a brave venture you might think when we do not have a cinema. The details are on http://www.lpfilmfest.org/  from which you will see that the showings are out of doors, in one of the markets. I am not exactly a film buff; apart from taking the children to see My Little Pony and Yellow Submarine I don't think I have been to the cinema since 1971. Though a year or two back I did watch an in flight movie, "The Queen", which I thought was awfully good, albeit  not so good that I have felt tempted to watch another.But the event sounds rather fun and I guess I shall pop down and see a film or two. A few years a ago such an event would have been foolhardy  in the extreme, given the almost predictable daily power cut, but these are much less common now and there is a good chance that the festival will get by uninterrupted.

The tourist season is getting under way and the city is noticeably busier....but not yet teeming exactly.

Today I observed that not only has the old city hospital been turned into an upmarket hotel (There are rumours that top price suites go for $3,000 night; I have no idea what bit of the hospital you get for that), but now the old city jail too. Hearing what one does about Lao jails, one wonders what the clientele are hoping to find. Many, many, far too many of the tourists are coming in pathetic groups of 20 or so. They appear to have all, or most of their faculties, but are herded pathetically around the place as if they are either sub normal, or undergoing some punishment; it is not clear whether they are actually chained together, but they are too numerous to be all staying at the the 5 star jail, unless conditions are unchanged from its earlier regime.

I was asked to give a talk on Lao culture to a group of them, after their group dinner (with fixed menu of course). But I declined, suggesting as courteously as I could ,that if they wished to know about Lao culture, then getting out of their mini bus and meeting some Lao people might be more effective.

I was talking with a lad who was on the front desk of a guest house, and inevitably he is a student. He earns $40 a month, and gets to sleep on a mattress by the guesthouse toilet - but that is by the way; he seems content enough.  He told me that he was at the Law School, but had failed his entrance exam. I thought these 2 statements were somewhat conflicting, but it seems not so. He went on to explain that indeed, he had been deemed to fail, but his parents had some buffalo which they were able to sell to raise the money to bribe a teacher to admit him at a cost of $400. I know that one should not necessarily expect lawyers to be above taking bribes, but it is a little depressing. Still, I had wondered for some while how big the bribe was, so at least I am now better informed. When I see him again I shall enquire how many buffalo that equates to.

The weather has been a bit eccentric this last week. The beanie hats and balaclavas have been put away, as have my long sleeve shirts.  The mornings have been nowhere near as cold, but nowhere near as glorious either, with cloud seeming to keep both the sun and the cold at bay. But at 3pm today I had to put the fan on for the first time in  maybe 4 weeks, albeit just for a short while. But no sign of any rain and the children are now able to wade across our 'second' river, the Nam Khan.

I doubt that anyone cares ,but TOG has now left town. Hilariously he has apparently gone to Vang Vieng, home of wet tee shirt parties, pot smoking and "tubing" down the river. I am sure he is fitting in nicely.

We have had a festival this weekend, which will come as no surprise I am sure. It led to a huge family gathering for 3 days or so next door. Whilst I cant really complain that they were noisy, it is quite difficult for a party that size, including many children, to be quiet. When I walked into town another house  had its sound system on at full volume. Actually, I think that sentence may be what is called a  tautology, as Lao sound systems can only be on full volume. I am am sure that the switches just have "off" and "max" on them. However, I was willing to forgive them on this occasion, as what was coming out at "max", was the unmistakable sound of the the delicious Mlle.Francoise Hardy singing "Tout les garcons", which I had not heard for at least 25 years.

I suppose none of you is old enough to have had the teenage fantasies about Mlle. Hardy that I enjoyed or endured? If memory serves, she was succeeded in that department by Marianne Faithful, who in turn generously gave way to Diana Rigg; yes, how horribly predictable.

A more regular,almost constant sound is the not unpleasing one of vegetables being chopped and what  I assume is spices being ground. The lady next door starts at 6am and is joined a little while later by the neighbours on the other side, and these sounds seem to continue for much of the day. Being a housewife here is clearly no easy matter. Quite tangentially, and this has nothing to do with Laos, I read in a Bill Bryson book this morning that up to 1941, literally half of the States in USA had laws making it illegal to employ married women.....extraordinary !

I guess that brings us neatly back to the lady up the ladder. (Oh yes, with what care this Letter is crafted).
She has rice in her basket, and instead of sieving it, as is more usual, she climbs the ladder and tosses it into their air so that the the grains fall to the ground and the chaff is taken away by the wind. Neat. Who needs technology?

And did the water company come. Well, look here next week and all shall be revealed.

Alan