Well, from Thailand, actually....

I am here for 3 reasons. Firstly to avoid some of the excesses of Lao partying over New Year, secondly to complete the fatuous and expensive nonsense of the 'visa run' and thirdly to attend a festival for the opening of a new temple. The former has proved more successful than the latter, though Thais still do love to party!
As many times before, I took the 'ship of fools' on the 2 day trip to Northern Laos and crossed the border there. The trip had a broadly similar cast to normal, although the crazy American was this time replaced by a  gloomy Swede who bore more than a passing resemblance to Frankenstien's monster. A scarf around his neck all the time was obviously concealing the bolt. He  may not have been been, in fact, a Swede, just practising to be one, but this blog seldom favours accuracy over wild racial stereotyping as you will all know. His almost permanent gloomy expression sometimes gave way to a deeper and more angry scowl., such as when he insisted that his black coffee was white. In the same location, on the grounds of hygiene I suppose he fingered all the rolls and pastries to check that they were fresh. I was relieved that I had bought mine before his arrival.
We also had some Christian Missionaries, a group that seldom lifts my spirits. Through day one they read their Bibles; I was inclined to express surprise that they had not read it before.  It was well into day 2 before the Christian tracts appeared. Sadly, in their  eagerness to save locals souls (to which end the tracts were translated into Lao) they overlooked that most of their target group was unable to read, and were thus unable to appreciate their efforts to bring them to Jesus, or whomever.
Happily the cast also included the statutory 'nice couple' with whom I shared many jokes at the expense of our travelling companions as well as an excellent New year Eve dinner. During the latter, one of them lent across the table to his partner and said, "you know, Alan reminds me of X  whom we met in Y ; he  also seemed very snooty and stuck up at first, but turned out to be a really nice guy '.   Ahem...clearly I am an acquired taste. best enjoyed with alcohol.
We were also joined for dinner by a lady who works in Korea. Sadly it was after midnight before I realised that she meant North Korea, so I missed a great opportunity to learn more of that crazy country.

The temple opening seems to be a very movable feast....so movable that it seems I shall miss it. So far, it has varied from 2 January to 9th, to 23, back to 2nd (which I took to be the final word) and now to 6th when I ought to be on the way back to Laos.
 Not that I really want to be. Thailand with a palpable air of freedom has much more to offer the westerner than the corrupt Stalinist/Buddhist regime next door. Just like in Laos, I am the only farang staying in this village but I am not an object of curiosity or fear as I am in Laos, nor do I seem to have attracted the attention of the local stasi. Xenophobia seems not to be part of the official agenda here, even if a rather worrying devotion to a monarchy about which nothing critical may be said is. So I shall not continue with this absurd visa run in the future. Should I not be granted a long term Visa on my return to Laos, I shall decamp to Thailand until I am.
No photos on this blog....I am borrowing a laptop from friends...when the 20yr old daughter of the family can be prised away from Facebook on which she spends about 10 hours a day. I wonder by how many % points Facebook has reduced World Economic Activity?

Best wishes

Alan