It is 8am and the earlier chill has gone as the sun breaks though and burns off the early morning mist, although my table still has a heavy covering of dew. The dogs, after a particularly noisy night are sleeping off their exertions. The lady across from me who owns the longest washing line in the world is busy trying to secure her entry into The Guinness Book of records for the most washing put out before 9am, while her neighbour is doing her keep fit, which involves trotting round in a very small circle on her porch, with the tiniest steps imaginable. A man, assisted by his very young son is bringing logs down from the woods and stacking them up ready to be shifted I assume, by handcart and sold, while a little lad is having astonishing success, given the lack of any wind, flying a kite made out of a pink and white carrier bag. Another....wonderfully uncoordinated little boy is being taught by his brother how to kick a football, without any obvious success, whilst a slightly older boy is cycling round and round wearing a Santa hat.
Meanwhile, a man with a withered leg (which I imagine prevents him from taking up employment,) is busy, as every day, with his ‘house-husband’ activities, taking his twins and great pile of washing down to the well. Whereas he never leaves his children, aged about 3, to their own devices, the boy who is struggling to master the art of kicking a ball, and who may be 4 years old seems to be left on weekdays to look after himself, when his older siblings go to school and Mum goes to work.
(In fact, as the day progresses, more and more kites appear, all home made, but some quite sophisticated affairs, and for once the school field, usually dominated by football, is taken over by the kite fliers. Maybe I should try to find sponsorship for the Ban Nar Luang Kite Festival? The kids can fly kites, the men can drink beer, and the ladies can fetch the beer, cook, wash up and generally make themselves useful, as at any Lao event. Even as dusk fell the field had 7 or 8 kiters (is that a word? No, says spell-check) including one or two girls. I hate to be sexist about kiting but on the basis of simple observation, kiting is for boys.)
But the idyll does not last forever, and the sound of an electric saw down the road, and the blender from next door rather spoil the bucolic life style. It must soon be time for Lao pop music to pollute the air.
In the event, the day turns out to be quite a quiet one until the wedding party starts gearing up for serious action about 9pm. I discover that trying to sleep with headphones on is not comfortable, and that not even Rachmaninov at full volume can overcome the boom, boom, boom, of that bass sound so essential for all forms of modern popular music.
The building site, aka the tip, aka the children’s’ playground had a delivery of timber a few days ago. It has gone the way of the road building materials. I now realise why I was put to the expense of building a kind of stockade whilst my house was under construction. Nothing here is exactly stolen; it is just re-organised, and fast. Oh dear. As I am finishing this off here comes a huge road making vehicle. It is so huge that it ploughs up a lot of the existing track en route, thus making more work for itself and its driver. But I hope he is not expecting to find any materials to work with.
Chinese New Year came and went whist being barely noticed. I had expected a big event involving the wider community, as for ‘Happy New Year’, but the celebrations were low key and, unlike in the UK, mostly confined to the Chinese community, which seems not to be as large as I had imagined. Some Chinese tourists arrived for New Year, but my restauranteur friend rather tartly assured me that they ate the cheapest food and had little to drink. For 2 nights there were rather desultory firework displays, and a handful of shops and houses displayed traditional lanterns, but that seemed to be about it. It was also Vietnamese New Year and all the Vietnamese businesses closed for 2 or 3 days. Of course it was also Yao New year, but I have no idea how that went or what it involved.
However, the Lao/Chinese ladies who stayed with me seem to have had a good time, or so they said. But their credibility as witnesses can be judged by the fact that they have gone back home telling the world that they stayed at the home of a very romantic and sophisticated falang. What? Me?
“Moi?” as Miss Piggy would have said.
Or “shome mishtake shurley” in ‘Private Eye’.
The reasons for this sad misconception are apparently that 1. I cooked, 2, I listened to music, and 3. Drank wine. Not only that but I did all three simultaneously.....some achievement, I am sure you will agree. Had I known, I should have put on Mozart, rather than Steeleye Span, which I would not really regard as ‘romantic’, and maybe even lit a candle or two.. But there you are, gentlemen. If you want to win the heart of a lovely Lao lady, that is the way to do it....cheap red wine, folk rock and an omelette. Remember where you heard it first.
The Chinese New Year tourists apart, overall tourist numbers seem to be down again, although the Christmas and New Year high season, did extend through the whole of January. The next surge will be April, for Lao New year. As for the tourists, so does the river level continue to fall, and it is forecast to fall further. It is now down the level of the last officially, ‘dry year’s of 2004 and 1993, and at current (no pun intended) predictions could become un-navigable for the larger vessels around the Luang Prabang area next month.
My grape seedlings were short lived. They shot up about 3cm in 24 hours, then promptly keeled over and died. Maybe buying a small plant or taking a cutting will, after all, prove to be a better option. The orange seeds are coming along slowly, and maybe they will outshine the grapes after a slow start. I hope they will make reasonable progress over the next few weeks, or I fear for their welfare whist I am away, enjoying what I guess will be the last throes of the English winter. There seems to be a second crop of melons and water melons in the shops but I suspect to judge from the price and their uniform size and shape that they are imported.
On Sunday I was supposed to attend the very last rites of Granny’s funeral. She has been in the ground now for 2 weeks; well, her body has, but I am unsure where her spirit has been, as the purpose of the final event was to send it away into the skies. At the time of writing I am unsure whether Sunday was deemed, after all, to be an unpropitious day, (something to do with hens’ teeth no doubt) or whether my transport arrangements broke down. If things did go ahead I trust that Granny’s transport arrangements did not suffer a similar fate to my own
(Instead of helping Granny on her way I stayed at home and followed England’s latest cricketing disappointment; I am confident that she did better than they did.)
I note that the BCC weather forecast for Luang Prabang gives day time temperatures of 34, falling to 20 at night. My suspicion is that, at least where I am, the night time temperatures are a bit cooler than that. I doubt that we can expect any rain for another 6 weeks or so. Although there are not so many flowers around right now...bougainvillaea, some rather splendid yellow flowers atop next door’s tree
and my own flower pots excepted...there are still lots of butterflies. For the last couple of days there has been a very large one which appears to be totally and stunningly black, but inevitably it will not settle long enough for me admire it in detail, let along take a photo.
I am starting to look rather nervously at the weather in the UK. I don’t see too many places where temperatures of 20 are being forecast for the day, let alone the night. But maybe in 4 weeks time spring will be just around the corner in UK
See you next week maybe
Alan
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