The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

The seasons have certainly changed here, and rapidly.  Today at 6.30 am it was 14 degrees, not cold exactly, but a big difference from just 2 weeks ago.  So my early morning coffee on the balcony is now taken wrapped up in a dressing gown rather than a towel. The evenings too, are getting  cool; a sweater is needed when having dinner outside, and I no longer need to keep the bedroom fan on all night. It still gets hot during the day, very hot. In fact by 8.30 am it was already 29 degrees on my balcony. But the early morning is fabulous; very heavy overnight dew and the sun breaking through the lifting low clouds. However the socks and long sleeved shirts which seemed entirely redundant a few weeks ago are coming out of the wardrobe.

The locals are finding it seriously cold, dressing in in thick jackets and scarves. The novices have started to wear their beanie hats, and the lady in the water company was typing with gloves on this morning !  I was told today that the coldest winter for 35 years is expected. However, for the moment at least, I am relishing it.

We have celebrated Ock Phansaa, (spell it how you like !) which marks the end of Buddhist Lent. It also marks the end of the rainy season, so it almost goes without saying that the last week has been dominated by storms and the heaviest rainfall of the year.

I lent my camera to a novice monk so that he could take photos over Ock Phansaa. I hoped that he would give an interesting and insightful view of a big Buddhist festival from "the inside". The results, two of which I attach here were rather disappointing and don't  show anything more than  I could have seen and recorded. I tend to forget that photography is a genuine skill, not given to many of us. The above photos look as though they might have been taken of the Blackpool Illuminations...but they are an illuminated boat at Wat Visoun that the monks built. Most people build similar, if smaller boats to display outside their businesses and houses. You will see below that mine was a rather more modest affair.

The goat has not been seen for a few days, but when last seen was heavily pregnant, so I guess when she  re-appears it will be in the company of her offspring. She had 2 kids when I first  arrived in the village, so the wheel seems to be going full circle.
I am intrigued by the possibility that there is cock fighting in the village. I am assured that there is not, but I am not convinced. Every week or so a guy walks past the house, holding a very large cockerel with great tenderness, like an old lady with her toy poodle. This is not the way that livestock here are usually transported ! He strokes the bird's feathers and chats to it gently. Then a few hours later he comes back, and I am sure that last time he was wiping blood from it as he whispered sweet nothings to it  Maybe it is a fine specimen, used for breeding purposes and some of his clients have found his intentions unwelcome, but for the moment I shall retain my suspicions.

More violently, there was apparently a drink induced killing in town last week. Two young men got drunk, started to argue and one pulled a gun on the other and shot him  dead. I don't suppose I shall get to hear the follow up but it would be interesting to know, since both the alleged killer and the deceased are the sons of prominent policemen. I wonder how the matter is being dealt with. Possibly by a cash settlement with the killer loose to try his luck again ?

Apart from the corruption and incompetence of the police and the regime  I suppose my other complaint here is about noise pollution. Oddly, it is a very noisy place at times. Some of the noises are "natural", like dogs barking and fighting, cocks crowing, temple bells and drums going. But tuk-tuks and motor bikes are pretty noisy. Worst of all is "music". Many houses don't have windows as such, so the sounds of their radio and sound system easily carries outside. Yesterday someone about 200 metres from me had an all day party. By 2pm  I had all the windows closed  and shuttered and  was hiding in the furthest corner of the house listening to contemporary  Lithuanian Choral Music at maximum volume on Radio 3; that is not how I would have chosen to spend 2 hours, but even that could not keep the awful Lao pop music at bay. I shudder to think what it must have been like in the house. I have particular cause for anxiety on that point as I have been invited to a wedding in about 10 days time; I have no doubt that pop music at  full volume will be part of the entertainment. My wedding suit is being cleaned and freshened up a bit;I wonder if it still fits?  It's not been used in a while.

A week or so back the authorities (we have a new Mayor...of whom more in just a moment),decided it was time to get a grip on the street traders who have colonised parts of the town (to its betterment, in my view). They came along with a big lorry and some  hired thugs, (aka  local authority officials) and tipped over all the stalls and loaded them into the back of the lorry.By the time they got to the end of the road, the stalls had re-opened at the beginning, having just borrowed tables and chairs, and were back in business ! First round to the the people.

Back to the Mayor. He has a masterplan.....yes, how one gets anxious about people like that. His plan is wonderful in its simplicity and absurdity.  He is proposing to build a railway line, following the Mekong, all the way down to Vientiane...in 5 years  In the whole of Laos we have about 4 miles of railway; which runs from the Friendship Bridge to a muddy field 5 miles from Vientiane. And now a provincial mayor is going to build, maybe, 200 miles of railway in  5 years!!!!  And it will  be on the far side of the river so I guess we shall have to start with a major bridge. Oh well, it takes all sorts. It would be good if he could start more modestly by filling in some of the pot holes in the roads, but I guess that is not very exciting.

In my last Letter I mentioned that I was going to do some travelling. The plan was to take a motorbike trip for 3 days to the Pathet Lao Caves near the Vietnamese border. All was sorted,  I had booked the bike and a friend was going to drive. But we had not allowed for Lao bureaucracy. It emerged that the bike was only licensed for use within Luang Prabang Province. On checking other hire centres, we found the same story. There must be a way to crack this one but I have not found it yet and I don't really fancy having a fresh bike lined  up at each provincial border. In any event we might have faced another obstacle, as they seemed to be suggesting that I should leave my passport as a deposit; there was no way that Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State would have been happy with that,  even though somehow Willian Hague does not seem to have quite the same gravitas as, say  Lord Palmerston.

The big news this week, is that shortly I am getting connected to the mains water supply. Well,  I have signed the contract and paid the money, but one cannot be wholly confident that the timetable will be strictly adhered to; this is Laos after all. (The country is officially called Lao PDR   (People's Democratic Republic....no comment); and I have heard some wonderful alternatives for the PDR; perhaps the the kindest and most polite is that it stands for Please Don't Rush. ) Up till now my water has been pumped up from next door, and whilst that is a good deal better than dragging it up from the well, it is less than ideal. I have  a nice electric power shower on the wall which is not connected to any water, and my "shower" consists  of taking cold water from a bucket and pouring it over myself. Also, I pay half of next door's water bill; they are a family of about 8, so I suspect I am paying a bit over the odds ! Though, we are not talking huge money.

This weekend  (see photos above) we had an Ethnic Cultural Festival. I think it was probably quite good but whenever I looked in people were making interminable speeches thanking everyone else. Another good reason for banning sound sound systems here. The children in the photo are making the pom-poms that are such an important part of the decorative wear of the Yao people.

Finally, I spent 40 minutes or so listening to the views of a middle aged German, who collared me in a cafe. He seemed to know an awful lot about Laos, so I thought I should give him the time of day, especially when  his experiences and knowledge seemed so much at variance to mine. I began to get tired of him when he started explaining the superiority of subsistence farming over all other forms of existence, the fact that nobody needed medical care as we would die anyway, and that education was quite unnecessary for most people, for what would they do with it? When allowed a word in I asked him how long he had been living in Laos; he arrived, on his first visit 2 days ago !  When stripped down to its essentials, what he appeared to know about Laos was that most of the people are charming; except for those who are not.  He is in town for a few more days, so I  shall have have to change my haunts for a day two.

La khon

Alan