Wedding Bells

No, darlings, I have not run off to deepest Luang Nam Tha with a water buffalo herdsman, it's just that life has got even more interesting--- I'm going to be the mother of the groom!

(Semi-retirement? Ha!! OK, one thing at a time.....)

I guess my biggest news is actually the culmination of the past three years of coming here, talking to people, thinking up ideas, wild times in the wine bar with the gay ex-pat gang, (Networking, Sweetie, networking....) and gradually working my way through the various bureaucratic and other hurdles. I am about to start legal, paid employment with a real visa tonight at 6 PM.

Happy Birthday, Molls! Yer momma is following in your footsteps and turning an honest buck!

Well, it's a pretty small buck, but I also have been teaching a lot of private clients and learning SO MUCH about this business. It has been brilliant. I spent a month teaching the staff of a posh hotel/restaurant, and am currently teaching the manager of a restaurant who speaks only German and Lao, a young girl who speaks only French and Lao, a young architecture student who speaks only Lao and a lovely mob of ten new employees at a restaurant which is about to open.

Every day I dream up lesson plans that concentrate on the phrases they need to do their jobs, sell stuff, serve drinks, wait on tables and chat a bit with customers. Each class is quite different from the next, but I swing from the chandeliers, repeat myself incessantly, think of new ways to teach different things and basically talk myself hoarse.

It is fabulous when they cotton on and deeply challenging when they look at me blankly. But it is pure joy to work with these kids. A great moment came over the weekend when my new employer, the wily Ping---he of the sparkling smile-----asked me to accompany a school excursion of two busloads of 18-25 year old students to our rather wonderful local attraction, Kwang Xi waterfall, about 25 k out of town.

The blank looks that greeted me to start with turned to beaming smiles and cheeky grins as the day progressed. I was thinking of it as a chore to start with but soon I was thinking that I didn't want the day to end. We wandered through the beautifully improved park land around the base of the falls and I acted as a walking dictionary----answering questions, explaining words and usage and then we climbed up the nearly vertical track to the middle of the falls where there was no actual path so we scrambled across the face of the falls through the water. They--including one teacher in neat tweed jacket and tie---skipping nimbly over the rocks and through the mud and icy water on its way 50feet downwards and me groping and creeping and staggering along after them, getting quite soaked in the process.

I was helped by the tiny hands of elfin but steel-strong students who were always more concerned for my well-being than their own to the edge of the large pool at the mid point.

Here we found half a dozen novice monks stripped down to orange loincloths over their undies, enjoying the forbidden pleasure of a freezing frolic in the deep pool there. They were doing triple spin cannonballs and leaping from trees above the water and having a whale of a time. What a sight!....as was the view out over the countryside to the north, mountains and fields bathed in sunshine and still green and gorgeous.

Then we slithered our way wetly back to the track and continued puffing our way up to the very top of the falls, where a wide pool of clear cool water flows along peacfully through the trees before the sudden drop of maybe 120 feet,----no, it's got to be more than that---over the edge. Safety considerations are almost non-existent, but no one seems to mind. Then down the other side of the falls we went, scrambling like goats, to the assembled students and a vast picnic of rice, grilled fish, papaya salad, pickled fish, spring rolls and fruit and of course, lots of beer.

Afterwards the kids all sang and played games and did a bit of Lao dancing and all joined in heartily as each teacher led an activity---no one thought anything was too corny, bless ém and finally we piled back into the buses and drove home to Luang Prabang through the golden afternoon.

This time of year is the perfect temperature---balmy but not hot, cool, but not really cold, a perfect climate. I couldn't have had a better day.

But the day wasn't over. Next, having washed off the mud and dressed in my serious Lao Lady gear, I went off to the little shack where my other 'son'' Sunlay lives and where I was to meet his prospective inlaws. I am, of course, his parent, as he has not spoken to his father since dad said "No more education for you, kiddo. Into the rice paddy with you." and his mum is dead.

So there were long speeches---luckily, the girl's uncle, who is her chief guardian---spoke fairly good English, and I had to reply and make speeches back and everything had to be discussed and hashed over until they arrived at a price. This includes the cost of the wedding---food and beer, and the bride price which is paid in gold. This was all worked out in fine detail and recorded in an exercise book and presented to me as a fait accompli.

It was another of those can-this-really-be-happening moments, sitting on the hard concrete floor of a dimly-lit cinder-block one-room house listening to lilting Lao patter while the family sat solemnly and watched me, minor members hopping up occasionally to tend to dinner, have a bath.

My legs are not built for the Lao lady style of sitting; men can sit crosslegged, but women must sit like the litle mermaid with both legs demurely together and folded to one side. Feet must never be pointed at anyone. The Lao skirt makes this operation easy, but after twenty minutes or so, one needs to shift over to the other side, which is not as easy for me what with the aftermath of my broken femur, so after forty-five mnutes, I was happy to get up and bow and nop my farewells to the family, now smiling warmly and treating me like family.

The wedding will be lovely, not least because of the sweetness and joy of the young couple, but it will take place upcountry in a village on the Nam Ou, one of the loveliest rivers around, according to my latest visitors, the intrepid Jena and Stan Lubin who've recently descended same and declared it magical. It's north of Nong Khiaw, and near Muang Ngoi, for those of you with a Lonely Planet guide to Lao.

This will be in early January, around the 6th or so. I am having a new Lao blouse made for the occasion, to go with my blue sinh, which is faintly iridescent and newly altered to fit my no-longer-so-plump shape. I can get into skirts made for Lao ladies, but the tops are all incredibly short in the body for Gargantua here.

Sunlay has saved up a few hundred bucks to buy his bride, but it will of course be up to me to buy the beer and the food, but this kid is the most determined young man I have ever met and will be an asset to this country, so I am happy to help him out. (Anyone who wishes to contribute will not be refused!!)

I rounded out the evening with a delightful dinner with my ex-monk friend Ken from Arizona and his cousin Priscilla from Little Rock Arkansas, who is here for a visit. Ken has a peaceful little place overlooking a rice paddy on the edge of town where he makes little wooden spirit houses to sell abroad. he has added a huge farang-style deck to his house which is great for star-gazing and dancing and watching the rice harvest.

So that's my life, a little of this, a little of that and all a delightful mix. And I haven't even told you about the wonderful sleep-over rice harvest and the little temple on the hill and, oh, so much more...

Meanwhile, today the weather has turned chilly and I have to put on some socks and get my lesson plans in order for my private students and my Big First Class tonight! And also track down the smooth-talking Ping to see if he has finally got my contract ready, not to mention my actual visa. Just a soupcon of reality to leaven the mix...

Updates from Up here

I am well behind the eight-ball this month as life gets busier and more demanding so the following will be a general post of many tidbits...

How is, you ask...

The Job Front...Was distressingly slow but now have pinned down my bosses and we are meeting on Friday to sort out the nitty gritty of my visa and start dates etc. . Meanwhile, I am chockers with private students---not strictly legal with my visa---which is giving me valuable insights into the challenges I will face when regular classes start.
One thing I have learned is that I love teaching and another is that Lao students are very rewarding to teach, right up until I realised they will do and say anything to please me, even if they are learning nothing. I have learned to surprise them with questions that are not on the lesson sheet and I have also developed an ability to read their faces and see when they don't actually understand, but aren't admitting it. In the end, as long as they develop some confidence in their abilities and don't say fuck when they mean fork, I will have achieved something.
And as I have learned from Molls and Marion---you get days when you feel as if you are talking to a brick wall, and others when the brick wall answers you and pronounces ''çontinental breakfast' faultlessly. Ah!
I avoid the legal ramifications by not accepting money; instead I am paid in kind---a glorious painting I have long desired from an artist whose students I will teach, lovely temple paintings from my Thai friend A who has a shop, (No, that's his name) and so on. Last night I had several glasses of wine at my friendly wine bar for free since I taught the staff there a few lessons. And so on.

My Visa ....at present is maintained by leaving the country once a month and this time I went to Chiang mai in Thailand and took my son Sommay, who is thrilled to bits to have become an international traveller. Chiang Mai, you can have, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, nice mountains, wonderful temples, great markets, nice people, but dirty and crowded and full of traffic and pollution, not least of which is made up of dissolute fat farang travellers who have lost their way, their razors, and their self-respect, as far as I can tell and do the place very little good except for the call girls and drug dealers.
We did some shopping for various necessities for the house that are much cheaper there and came back a day early, mainly because we had a very exciting pieces of news...the boys were both given places at university!

The Boys.....This was welcome news because they've both been hanging out since August when they took the exams and then waiting to hear as various lists went up and their names were not on them yet. I thought this was odd, knowing how bright Sommay is, but then I discovered
the grim truth, which is that it's not only the bright ones who get in but the ones who are able to pay large bribes to teachers and administrators. There are only 600 places for 2500 applicants and Sommay was loath to tell me that we'd have to pay; instead he spent a lot of time visiting his teacher, doing odd jobs for him, painting a fence, and hoping. In the end we still had to pay, but only after the fact, not in anticipation, which sometimes does not get rewarded or returned.
The teachers, to be fair, are very badly paid, and tuition fees are quite low by comparison to the 'gifts'' one gives, but often the university teachers are merely last year's graduates and still rather wet behind the ears themselves.
Then we had a flurry of haircuts and new shoes and shirts as they need to be neatly groomed to go to uni here, unlike the instant slobdom that our kids adopt.
And Joy needed a motorbike, so that was another loan/gift. But lately he's been a paragon of dutiful employee standards getting up at dawn to climb down to the river bank for bags of soil for my pots and much more.
Overall, they are fine and happy and a delight to live with, as ever.

My Social Life...continues to improve, with invitations to all the right parties and gallery openings. The last one was a magnificent photographic exhibition at the posh hotel, where the air-kissing was frenzied---- both cheeks, as we are part-French here----followed by a wonderful dinner for a select 40 or so people at the magnificent riverside home of the artist, my friend Mimi, catered by her friend and mine, the redoubtable Vonnie. She is the daughter of a general and is a hotelier here. She speaks Chinese, Lao, French and pure San Diego American and is a real treat.
Before that was the White Party at the Pack Luck Wine Bar where we all wore white and celebrated the birthday of big Laurent, who works for the Heritage commission and drives a huge Lee-Enfield motorbike. He lives with the very bright and witty Wei Wei, who is from China and she and I share a love of plants.
And before that was the glittering do at Satri Lao House, the home of Ivan and Lamphone, who are the duke and duchess of Luang Prabang. He has the Apsara (listed in Hip Hotels of the World) and employs me to tutor his staff and she has a posh shop and loves to party. Most attendees at her soirees end up in the pool sooner or later, so one has learned to wear swimmers under one's clothes or at least something that won't be ruined by repeated dousings.
And I finally staged a small event of my own on my little verandah, a mini homage to our legendary Alexandra St. Dos serving , yep, smoked salmon and cream cheese with capers, nuts and crudites all in the glow of a huge number of tea lights. Huge success! I had Vonnie and Mim and the new guys, Chris and Anthony whose shop has just opened and Nith, the artist who is actually a royal and lives partly here and partly in New York and Paris. He's a lovely little man and is also employing me.

My Good Works....Reports from the village I have adopted have been few as they are flat out with the rice harvest and are waiting for the track to dry out after the rains, so we will go up there early inthe new year and see how things are going. My scholarship plans have received a set-back with the death of the dear man who was going to help set it up for me. He was visiting a village upcountry and fell ill, but was too far from medical help to be saved. He was a lovely guy, very gracious and dignified.
I have been busy using my connections to find jobs for various kids, which is very rewarding, and am embarking on a project to trace Sommay's eldest sister who disappeared two years ago, basically taken by a Thai woman as a domestic servant and never heard from since. She had suffered a degree of intellectual impairment after a bout of japanese Encephalitis B so she is a bit helpless. Her husband and children are left feeling totally bewildered and Sommay's mother wept about her missing daughter until the day she died. We think we can trace her if we do some work, and I really feel I must, for the sake of the family.
Meanwhile I am putting together a list of stuff you can provide for those in need here with a smal donation and willpost that soon, rather like the Care Australia Give a Goat for Christmas idea.
And my landlord has been most uncooperative about taking my concerns for the doggies to the village head, but I have been talking it up and my friend Vonnie has agreed to go with me, since she has considerable clout and lives in the same neighbourhood.

My health is fine, I can hear with BOTH ears now, I exist on local food and am having clothes taken in and now that Joy has a motorbike I have taken back the bicycle and am hoping for trimmer calves before too long.

The Garden....is, of course, my real joy and now that we have cleared the rubble out back and the boys have built nice concrete beds, I have a burgeoning crop of veggies that would make even Melinda green---the soil here is fantastic and as long as I control the mealy bugs and the weeds, it's an easy place to garden. My tiny bougainvilleas are now well up over the six foot fence and I've found a village over the river that makes pots and have ten arriving tomorrow---They are literally dirt cheap that way, as long as you don't mind waiting for delivery.

OK, now to post this before the internet signal drops out againand I lose the whole shebang again, then it's cocktail hour here on the misty banks of the Mekong. Sabaidee.

Birthday Benefactors Bulletin

Time to update all those sweet people who eschewed dreary tasteless coffee mugs bearing jokes about menopause and sagging bosoms as presents at my recent Big Day to give me very generous donations for my one-person-with-lots-of-kind-friends campaign to help the deserving poor in Laos.

This, as I have said, is necessarily a somewhat ad hoc effort at the moment, as I can only deal with the cases I come in contact with, and cannot advertise or work with any agency on this.

But on the principle that ANYTHING is better than nothing in such a desperately poor place, and seeing that I can monitor what happens with what I hand out, I find that this works for now.

So, this is how your gifts did their bit....

Essentially, I like to concentrate on donations for educational purposes, given that people here both need and want education, desperately, at all levels, and the government doesn''t help beyond primary school. (sorry,my apostrophe doesn't work)

And I take it upon myself to assess the character and potential of my recipients, and tend to like to get to know them a bit before I hand anything over. I also usually ask for a detailed list of what they need the money for which is a useful exercise in itself.

OK. the bulk of the money was to pay off the timber and shipping thereof to Naxane village for the folks there to build 100 school desks for the kids in the new bamboo school.

Then there are small amounts that have been used to help young people pay their schoolfees, usually about $65 each.

One case is particularly wonderful, and that is the indomitable Sunlay, who I have mentioned below in earlier dispatches.

He has fought against all the odds and made down here to Luang Prabang from his tiny village, up the muddy trail, (milk chocolate) from Naxane. He phoned me shortly after I arrived back here and about a week later, I met up with him. He took me, wobbling on his borrowed motorbike, to his place, where he has a single room---no windows---in a concrete-block bottom half of a small house in a scrappy, but peaceful village past the markets. He gets free rent in return for keeping the place clean.

At the time he was doing the caretaking of the house, one job in the morning at a hotel, another at a restaurant from 7 to 10 at night AND teaching English classes in his own little schoolroom during the afternoons.

I was gobsmacked to see the neat, simple benches, the white board with the day''s homework written up, and walls covered in conjugated verbs. He has maybe half a dozen students from the surrounding houses, mainly those who can't afford to go to the big private colleges.

That is what I call enterprise. Peter would say he's got Character. Sunlay has essentially disowned his family because he says, "I want an education or I will die.", and he has done all this off his own bat, with only what he can earn and what people give him.

I, of course, was worried about his own education. But Mother, he said, I had to go to hospital for 5 days and so I do not have the money for the fees. (I think it was malaria)

So I gave him 130 bucks of your money for his fees, books and materials and now he is back at evening school, the same one where I will be teaching once I get my visa, called Pasabandith College. He regularly phones me for clarification of grammatical points and meanings of words. (Please, Mother. What is ''çondominium'?)

And then there's a sweet---(I know, they're all sweet to me!!!) ---schoolteacher and father of four who was moved to a different school and was having to walk an hour each way every day, dragging the youngest child as well, just to do his job, rain or shine. So I gave him a half-loan, half gift of $300 to buy a second hand motorbike and he cannot stop beaming with joy.

My friend Som was given his school fees and dormitory rent---he lives in one in a row of concrete block rooms that they use for dormitories for students from out of town. His rent is $200 per year and he sleep on a woven bamboo mat with a lino underlay. No mattress, no pillow, and showers outside in cold water.

So that's how it has gone. I pay for my own boys'' fees, food etc. as well as their wages. They are still waiting to hear if they will be admitted to university but they are both studying English for Tourism at the Teacher Training College as usual every night and spend most of their time doing homework, it seems.

But the need continues. Last night I thought I'd grab a tuk tuk to my usual watering hole and was quoted $1.50 which is highway robbery. They came down to $1, but even that was outrageous , so I strolled off saying that I'd rather walk.

Within a minute, one of the drivers puttered came up behind me and smiled and said, OK, sister, 50 cents, and I accepted, hopping into the front with him, where we had the usual conversation about how I live here and I am teaching and he told me how he has to keep his kids at home because he can't afford to send them to high school with what he earns in the borrowed tuk-tuk. Kids are aged 13 and 16, I think. So, yeah, I gave him my card and he gave me his and I said I'd see what I could do. He will bring the kids around for a chat and Sommay will help me interview them.

There are about 25,000 more stories like that in this dear little place, without even going out into the countryside, so I'll keep doling it out where I see a need and genuine potential.

So that's yer Annual Report, folks...Hope you are all feeling a warm glow from the beaming faces of these very grateful people. I wish I had a photo of Sunlay down on his knees, prostrating himself in a deep, forehead to floor bow of thanks, eyes shining with tears, when I gave him the money. I get all the fun....

Fun Trip in a Tuk-Tuk in the Funtok

Some of you may be familiar with my weird phobia about half-dead balloons, but probably only a few are aware of my shopping phobia---especially Marion, who did 99% of our shopping, and my kids, who remember me ringing them up on my mobile, seeking counselling to get through the weekly grocery gathering at Coles.

I really hate trolling up and down the aisles trying to recall the list I left at home, getting more and more depressed by the screaming children, the Miserable Meanderers, the dreadful smells of all those room deoderants, and the squeaking, intransigent shopping trolleys.

But shopping here is another kettle of odiferous dried fish altogether. Mostly I rely on my maid Me, who picks up what we need in the markets on her way in in the morning, or Sommay who goes with me to the Chinese market and bargains ferociously and works economic miracles without a shadow of guilt. Sometimes, Joy is sent out for something, but the other day he came back with, inexplicably, thirty eggs in a plastic bag, many of which arrived unbroken after a wobbly ride in his bike basket, so we don't usually ask him to do that sort of thing any more.

So this past weekend, Joy was left here and Sommay and I went to the Big Smoke--Vientiane, where 234,000 of the 5.5 million strong Lao population lives for a shopping trip. The real destination, however, was Thailand, just over the Mekong, where I needed to renew my visa, and where one goes for shopping---much cheaper, better selection of goods, actual shopping centres.....We very much needed a new router to try and improve our sporadic internet coverage, and the odd wine glass and what-not.

This is a fairly routine trip for most folks; a 40 minute flight, a couple of nights in town bracketing a dash over the Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai and a 90 minute bus ride down to Udon Thani for the aforementioned shopping.

For Sommay, however, it was a huge, spine-tingling, ear-to-ear-grin moment in his life, as he'd never been to Vientiane, never been on an airplane and never been to Thailand.

It was a delight to watch his little face light up and his eyes dart about as he discovered all the fun things about airplanes, saw the world from the air and landed in the big city for the first time.

The traffic was a real eye-opener, and novelties like traffic lights, which he'd never seen, and he often lost his sense of direction completely which is very unlike him, but to me it's a small, flat, dreary town and I knew it well enough so we got around fine.

We found a centrally located guesthouse for $6 a night each, but soon discovered why it was so cheap. so we moved to a great place reccommended by our taxi driver. Only $9 each and wonderful!

But the real mission was the trip to Thailand, so we got to the bus station early for the 10:30 bus, very comfy, sailed along to the border, and then came to a grinding halt in the thick throng of fellow-border-crossers all trying to thread our way through the undermanned exit and entrance to the two countries. It took three and a half hours to do the 90 minute journey, but it was great seeing Sommay's happy face as we drove across the Mekong and he was suddenly an international traveller for the first time.

He was blown away by the merchandise on offer and by the prices as he scurried about buying various bits and pieces for friends a relatives in his village. I was over come by the sheer volume of goods, people, noise, and the fragrance of buttery coconut waffles being made and sold at several stands in the shopping centre, permeating everything with a golden miasma of toasty-brown cholesterol.

Anyway, we GOT the router and I got some speakers and a couple of tops and Sommay got his phones and it all took forever, so we were starving and decided, rashly, to eat before we ducked back to the bus station to book our bus trip back to Vientiane.

The food was great---BBQ duck, lovely veggies in oyster sauce---and the restaurant was one of those where some bright spark has decided to improve on a good thing and feature dancing waiters...Yes, suddenly the music hit a particularly peppy note and all the staff took up positions in the aisles and boogied away to a smart set of coordinated dance steps, while customers hoed into their steaming hotpots. It was halfway between charming and bizarre.

Less charming, however was the fact that we managed to get back to the bus station shortly after they had sold the last seat on the last bus, so we blinked a few times and asked for a taxi. This is where the adventure began.

The fellow yelled, no, he bellowed across the bus station to another guy who led us to a rank of tuk-tuks. It took a minute to realise he was serious. A tuk-tuk is a far cry from a taxi and great for pottering around town, being basically a three-wheeled motorcycle with covered seating attached to the back, but for a 60 kilometre run...

But, when the devil drives.... Actually, far from being a devil, the driver was a big cheerful solid-looking bloke who was willing, for just under $20 bucks, to drive us the 60-odd kilometres to the border and it was either that or walk....

So in we hopped, cheerfully thinking that it would be a bit of a lark, if a bit juddery. Until we looked in the direction we were headed and saw the blackest sky I've ever seen, getting blacker....

The driver pointed at the doomsday scene ahead and laughed and we joined in, but after the first 15 or twenty k's, it started. Just a fine spray at first, then a proper rain, followed by a deluge, a short period of fine mist and then back to pouring....

There is a roof on these vehicles and plastic curtains along the sides of the seating area, but they tended to flap uselessly under the onslaught of the rain, the splash from the larger vehicles and huge double-trailered trucks that hurtled past us in the dark.

Sommay got a good position right behind the driver and bore up stoically despite wearing only jeans and a T-shirt, so I had to do the same, with only a large plastic carrier bag to protect the side of me that faced the torrents.

At first it was actually refreshing and kind of fun, but gradually the water turned icy because of the speed we were travelling and began to trickle down my back, and I was, for the first time in the entire month I've been back in Asia, chilled to the bone. Also soaking wet.

I kept seeing road signs with the mileage, but soon decided to ignore them as it seemed to get longer between kilometres as we went along and even with only 16 ks to go, it wasn't a lot of comfort. Finally we slowed down as we got into Nong Khai, and it was at this point that we discovered that the driver had no idea how to ge to the bridge. After trundling down several dirt lanes and stopping to holler for directions from people sheltering under trees and roofs, he decided to follow the very obvious signs and we ended up at the bridge, feeling like refugees under the eerie orange halogen lights.

We slopped wetly through the routine of customs, departure, over the bridge, and then through the apply-for-a-visa and wait and then got through immigration and collapsed happily into a nice comfy minivan that took us, shivering in the air-con, the last 25 k into town and up and down several dark wet streets before we finally found our hotel and our nice warm showers and warm dry beds.

The next day was sightseeing and more shopping at a huge traditional market and at ITECC, a Lao style shopping mall, which was basically just a market but inside a brand new exhibition centre just outside of town. We got there after a lot of searching and adventures like running out of petrol on the lousy motorbike that we rented from the hotel and which Sommay distrusted deeply. You actually have to wear helmets in Vientiane so I had to do a lot of hollering in his ear to navigate , but it was a pretty good day, visiting the vast golden That Luang temple and the big lump of concrete that is Patuxai Arch with its fancy dancing fountains.

The best bit of the trip, beside watching the dear lad's delighted face, was getting home, where we celebrated with big bowls of noodles from our favourite (non-dog) restaurant across the road.

Action Woman is on the case of the Kanine Kitchen

I thought you'd like to know that after an agonising afternoon yesterday of listening to non-stop barking and howling and that harrowing doggie-type screaming that they do when being clouted unmercifully with a stick, during which I contemplated getting one of those stun guns (Good thinking, Stu, I was only one synapse-firing ahead of you) that humane slaughterpersons use, then moved on to plotting guerrilla action and letting all the poor pooches go under cover of darkness, and finally was about to storm over there like a wrathful Valkyrie and start shouting at the poor bastards, instead I stormed off to town for a curry and a drink with friends and lay more constructive plans......
Obviously, none of the above would actually represent a lasting solution nor would it endear me to the ladies who run these places. And they're not the forgiving types, given an altercation that raged during most of the afternoon between two of the lady proprietresses. Heated invective echoed back and forth across the street, fingers were pointed, barbecue tongs were brandished, fists were shaken.
So, today I went to see my friend Manivonh of the Magnificent Mammaries (Call me Vonnie, baby!). She's the daughter of a general and speaks Chinese, Lao, French, and pure Californian from years spent in San Diego. There I met her friend Mimi, (Off to Paris for a week, but when I get back, I'll be having an opening at the gallery---you must come) and held a conference with these two formidable ladies.
The upshot is that they emphatically endorsed the idea of visiting the headman of our village and politely, diplomatically voicing my concerns about the welfare of the dogs, the tone of the neighbourhood and the international reputation of Luang Prabang---Heritage City---if this were to be played up by some farang travel journo.....Now who would that be, I wonder....
They were horrified and said We are Buddhist we don't cause suffering to animals! They also pointed out that dog restaurants are illegal in Vientiane and while they may not be here, they should not be permitted to do the killing there on site.
So, tomorrow morning, I will kit myself up in my Lao clobber, that I affectionately call my sauna skirt, cos it's so hot to wear in this weather, and Sommay and I will go to see The Man. Let''s hope he will see us and will do something soon, but I no longer feel like a lone voice, crying petulantly in a wilderness of cruelty and feel that I can get on with my life.
Hope you all feel better, too. Thus endeth the lesson.

The Good, the Bad and the Downright Horrible

Yes, I'm still happy as a clam at high tide up here in this sweet, sultry Shangrila, but I think you have perhaps tired of all my rhapsodising about how wonderful it all is and thirst to hear of the nasty negatives that you suspect must exist even here...
Well, yes, there are things that make me mad, sad and jest plain disgusted, so I'll get them off my chest right now and get it over with.
Lao dancing, while a graceful, gentle sight when done with skill and enthusiasm, and quite watchable for, oh, minutes at a time, is downright boring and insipid. And so , I fear, is the music that accompanies it. Plinky, plonky monotony, to put it brutally. Tiny mincy steps in an unfathomable order in a circle, whilst twirling one's hands as if limbering up for playing the accordion. Yes, that, too. And always at full blast. Weddings are particularly painful with vocalists churning out wailing, warbling tunes far into the night with loudspeakers so that everyone for miles around can hear it. As the resident large farang lady, I am usually asked to join in and they absolutely will not take no for an answer when I demur and then they look pained or laugh when I relent and can't do the damn steps.
And the pop version of the above, as encountered in one of the discos here particularly often, is even worse, a sort of sugary-sweet, pre-teen confection and it drives me nuts when I'm for a night of good ol' Beerlao-fuelled, sweaty, I-don't-know-who-I'm-dancing-with rock'n'roll.
What's worse is the line dancing that they do to it! The whole place moves in unison twirling their hands like demented taffy pullers and executing this labyrinthine series of steps.
Luckily the other disco, while relying rather too heavily on rap for my liking, offers more of the slam bam stuff that one prefers.
Well, I feel really wicked, but it's refreshing to get that out, so I'll go on.
Ok, well, there's the usual Asian bugbear of the hawking and spitting and manual noseblowing that all you backpackers know about. I've seen entire sweet little families on a motorbike, Dad driving, one kid on the back while mum in the middle holds infant or toddler, plus umbrella, and casually gobs one into the street as they trundle past. And in some places, the open drains, the rubbish in the Mekong, the totally unabashed public nosepicking....
Allright, that was awful, so let's go back to music. Monotonous plinky plonky doesn't even begin to describe the popular Thai love song crap that they play at full volume in the restaurants that line our street, at parties, on ipods of passing motorcyclists at 1 AM, and pretty much whenever they feel like it. It wails and it thumps and it whines and it all sounds the same, with plenty of accordion backing. The accordion or the anthill? I'd go the little biters every time.
Oh, I could go on, but many of my quibbles would be petty---like the shoddy building standards---Scotty, you will need to be sedated when you examine my renovations---but I have one lollopalooza to finish with that I really feel I must do something about. (And Fran...Darling...now is when you should leave us and go feed your puppies. Just don't read any further, sweetie...)
Across the road from my heavenly little house, there is, of course, the little patch of garden that my neighbour Meena and I take turns to nurture. Then to the right there's a little restaurant of rickety tables and haphazard tarpaulins where our neighbours serve wonderful noodle soup with a bit of pork and veg etc and we often order breakfast from them. $2 feeds me and my two hungry boys. Wonderful stuff, nice folks.
BUT, next to them along the banks of the river, are now three establishments that look much like the noodle place except that they serve dog.
Yep. BBQ bow-wow and hot dog stew. And they are hugely popular with what appears to me to be the rougher elements of local society, jolly, but rather prone to very loud drunken singing from time to time. And eating dog.
OK, so some of us eat cute little lambkins and fluffy chickies and even doe-eyed veal, so I cannot be hypocritical here. But the problem is not the noise of the diners and drinkers, their music or their hollering, it's the fact that the dogs are kept and killed within a few feet of where they are then served up. And this, dear reader, is not being done under the auspices of the R.S.P.C.A.. It is often done by some teenage menial with a stout stick, bad aim and a heart of stone. And possibly no ears, as the noise of the pups prolonged passings is soul destroying, not to mention the frenzied barking and growling of the caged, crazed animals who are sold to the restaurants by impoverished up-country folk and kept in a revolting kennel just over the river wall.
None of us in the neighborhood, Meena, the Noodle People and I suspect anyone ese who is not actually running one of these places, is very happy about it at all, especially when the doggers get up early and start to knock off a few pooches at say, 4 or 5 AM to get ready for the rush.
I have rhetorically announced that I will buy the bastards a freezer so they can just do their killing once a fortnight at a specified time and keep their supplies therein rather than reaching into the kennel every time they need another chop. So we would be spared the unholy racket. Added to which is the fact, unavoidable, that our own two doggies, Jacko and dear little Louie ended up in their pots. So we are thinking of going to the village headman and asking for some sort of intervention. After all, such cruelty just ain't Buddhist...
Right, had enough? Back to the rhapsodising....

Up the Lazy River

Last weekend we enjoyed a family day out, Lao style, and I had a new and startling experience.



We have a little block of land---I bought it for Sommay from his family, basically as I cannot legally own it without a lot of bureaucratic mess. Essentially I did it to save them from having to sell it, under pressure to a greedy farang resort developer, who was trying to get it cheaply because he knew that Sommay's mother was dying and that the family needed money.



It's about 2.5 acres or just over a hectare of riverfront along the Nam Khan, the river that joins the Mekong to create the Luang Prabang peninsula. It's high above the river with a little apron of flat land along the edge, covered in teak, bamboo, and all sorts of lovely tropical greenery.



We set out in the morning and took a long time scuttling around town in a tuktuk picking up supplies--- food, ice, beer and money. By the time we got to Sommay's village, we were famished so we had to stop for noodles for breakfast--foe, as it's known. Then we carted everything down to a long flat narrow boat, by now joined by the boat guy and his helper and Auntie Ti and Sommay's older sister and we chugged off upriver in a sinuous but generally northward direction past our little piece of paradise and continued up for a bit of sightseeing.



The water is a delicious chocolate milk colour at this time of year and lined with thick forest for the most part, but every so often we saw people fishing, washing, loading up sand to cart down stream to waiting trucks, working on their boats and fish traps. The view to the north of misty blue mountains was classic postcard stuff, the air was soft and fresh and it all made one feel quite exhilarated and yet totally at peace. Even my Lao companions, for whom this is an everyday experience, were enchanted.



We kept on for nearly an hour, sometimes barely making headway against the current, even bouncing along on virtual white water, while the motor made odd groaning noises. Soon our bottoms were sufficiently paralyzed from the hard wooden seats and we turned around, making landfall back at the property.



After a hilarious time floundering up the thick dark chocolate mud of the bank (Can't leave that image alone, can I?) the mood turned somber as we discovered that someone had hacked down our large frangipani tree. This is called Champa in Lao and is the national tree of which everyone seems inordinately proud, as if they think it only exists here.



Auntie Ti was incensed and ranted passionately about some farang she thought was behind it, but it turned out that it was some locals who work for the farang, who is my Swiss mate Danny, married to a Lao woman, who owns an adjoining property.



To be fair, the poachers had planted half a dozen of the branches in the ground to renew our supply, as these trees grow very easily from cuttings with almost no water or attention.



Somebody has also been helping themselves to our bamboo, so there was little left of any size. But it's still a fabulous block, with a lovely view out over the river to the east and north ( I think---the river twists so..) and magnificent orchids in some of the trees. We plan to build a little bamboo pavillion there where we can have picnics and relax.



But first we need to get Auntie Ti's husband to build a fence and assume caretaker duties for a small salary. So my staff is growing...



Anyway, by now we were hungry again so we hopped back into the boat and floated a short way around the bend down to the family's veggie patch, past the property where we could see our frangipani branches, newly planted in their new home, Danny's garden.



We climbed up though the garden with its neat bamboo fence and settled in their little bamboo pavillion with its rusty corrugated iron roof, which somehow sheltered all of us , by now including Sommay's older brother Bounlay, his wife and child, Ti's son, and another brother, Xai, who'd been out fishing. All the food was spread out on a banana leaf, including the sticky rice, fish and chicken we brought from the markets, veggie soup and papaya salad and a couple fish from the river and some lovely little tree beries that were roasted in the fire. It was a feast and became a party when we opened the beer and I felt very much a part of the family. Another of those How Could I be so Lucky moments of total peace.



Until suddenly there was agitation and the men jumped up and started pointing to something moving in the garden and like a flash a rifle was produced and Bounlay raced down to the patch, took aim and bang--a huge rat was proudly lifted by its leathery tail.



Everyone seemed delighted with this and I thought briefly that it was joy at having rid the garden of veg-munching vermin, but no, this was a plump river rat and seen as a valuable addition to that night's dinner.



Was I invited? Of course, we'd already arranged to come back that evening to the village for fresh fish laap, a sort of fish puree with chillis and herbs, with lovely mushroom soup, fish soup and delicious stirfried veggies with spices and herbs. And the rat, fried with herbs and chili. (You know what's coming next, don't you? ) Yep, it tasted just like chicken. Bada boom. But not bad.



Again, I was smack in the bosom of this close family who see me as one of their own and say to Sommay that they wish so much that they could talk with me. As do I. We all looked through the photos of Sommay's mother's funeral, that I paid for by buying the land.



Then there were goodbye hugs and smiles and we sped home through the dark cool evening. It was a lovely day and evening, rat and all.

Big Muddy---Mekong Mama reporting in.....

It's been a while since my last post, but I've not been in Laos for a few months, so strictly speaking, wasn't letting you down. That's my story and I'm sticking with it...

Anyway now I'M BACK in my favourite little piece of Paradise after a useful and extremely pleasant interlude from May to July in Oz, then August in Canada and the US to see family and friends, followed by another two weeks in Oz for my birthday. I remember a lot of preparation and packing and partying, but....

Back in Luang Prabang, the magnificent Mekong is flowing fast and deep like a vast stream of chocolate milk and is almost unrecognisable as the the sturdy, rocky little river that I had come to know.

And it's doing it's chocolately thing right outside my window, well, across the road but hundreds of metres closer to the river wall and my little house.

I can see it especially well from my comfortable little re-vamped verandah, especially since the boys went down and hacked back a lot of the vegetation along the bank.

I can also see my growing garden of pots of bamboo and bougainvillea and portulacca and croton and cordyline arranged around the lovely new terracotta terrace the boys made with all the leftover floor tiles.

They were beside themselves with pride at all they have done and seemed utterly deligted to see me, so I think it's going to be great.

I was quivering with fatigue from a typical all-night flight scenario, with the added difficulty of dealing with a groovy-looking, but rather garrulous and sometimes outright grubby New Zealander who couldn't stop talking, breathing whiskey fumes all over me and leaning heavily on my right arm to "help" me with my crossword....(as if...).

He'd already been thrown off one flight and collared at gunpoint earlier in the day. This was because security guys refused to let him take his duty-free onboard and he solved the problem by simply drinking it. All of it. And then blamed the authorities for getting him drunk.

Anyway, I arrived, exhausted but elated and was immediately folded into the bosom of my "family" here and then whisked off to see the last of the traditional boat races when various village teams compete, paddling very long, lovely and narrow high-tail boats down the Nam Kahn while huge crowds line the riverbanks drinking beer and making a very loud and joyful noise with drums and loudspeakers.

I thought it was all over at first and saw only a few tired and emotional crews weaving their way past along with colourful fun boats full of people in costume who were also fairly full. Then it started. Two boats of about 50 rowers each, one lot clad in in green and the other in chartreuse t-shirts were paddling so furiously past us that they moved in a mist of muddy river water turned to a golden cloud in the afternoon sun. They went at a furious pace, leaving our team, sadly, in sixth place out of 13, a big disappointment after coming second last year. Sommay says he'll row next year and the result will be different.

I cannot tell you how nice it is to be back amongst all the sweet people that I have come to know over the past few years. I've dropped in to see a few of them, revisited old haunts, handed over school fees and lots of motherly advice to a couple of my lads, revived old family jokes, marvelled at the new restaurants and businesses that have gone bust, and enjoyed seeing the smiles of recognition on the faces of shopkeepers and people one passes in the street.

Best of all, I went to see my friend Vanh, who I was afraid had too much on her plate to be able to help me, and she said great to see you, let's go talk with my cousins right now. The upshot is that I am the newest employee of the Pasabandith College of English, preparing to teach MY course and the visa process is already under way. I seem to have impressed the guys who run it, brothers called Oupadith and Oupasith, would you believe, and who I will NOT be able to resist called the Oompaloompas. Sorry. They are not strange little people in Santa's helper costumes, but nice guys, one with good English who is also a teacher and the other a businessman with a travel agency in town.

So the adventure seems to be gaining momentum and now that I can sit here in my house and write without having to schlepp all the way to an internet cafe every time, I hope to be able to keep everyone up to date on what I am doing. Right now I'm busy being domestic, acquiring furniture and teapots and training my maid to do things my wayand trying to remember the Lao words for things.

The various recipients of the generosity of my birthday friends are overcome with gratitude and I will let them say so in one of these posts very soon. But now it's gin o'clock and the lads are back from a ceremony in which a female spirit who has been giving Sommay nightmares has been exorcised in a two hour ritual resembling a wedding, in which he has persuaded one of his many girlfriends to take part as a dummy bride. I must hear all about it. Yes, this is an interesting country.... Stay tuned.

Holiness and Hooliganism

Happy (Splush) New (Glug glug) Year is finally over and I have to admit I'm glad. One was charmed at first, but being blindsided by a bucket of icy water whilst riding pillion on a small motorbike attempting a steep curve on a mountain road, is just plain scary.

We were on our way in convoy to Kwang Si waterfall, and it was a lovely ride, under a cool overcast sky through the rapidly greening countryside, (except for the water chuckers in every village) and I thought it would be a great way to get away from all the hoo-hah, but apparently it's a very popular thing to go out there at New Years and splash about in the waterfall, cleanse one's soul and then get drunk, so there were thouands of people there before us! So, yeah, it was fun but spending the day in wet clothing, and never knowing when someone is going to race up and throw water, or daub one with flour, or coloured powder or sump oil gets dreary after a while.

However, one was beguiled by the sweet ceremony of pouring water on the Pha Bang, the small silvery standing Buddha that is the symbol of Lao Buddhism, (there are rumours that it's a copy, but who knows?). The statue is taken out of its usual place in the Royal Palace (Ooops! The National Museum, to you capitalist running dogs) and stands in a temple courtyard in a glass case lit by a ghostly white flourescent tube for three days to be ritually washed by the faithful, this being a water festival and a time of cleansing.

One climbs up a short set of stairs to the tail end of one of the 5 metre-long carved river dragon aquaducts, and pours holy water thick with flower petals into the square opening and the water travels down the naga''s back onto the Buddha. On a busy evening there is a constant sound of splashing and a constant stream of worshippers kneeling, praying, lighting incense and candles and laying flower bundles.

So beguiled was I, in fact, that I went twice. I had to be decked out in my long sin or lao style skirt with brocade hem (and ride sidesaddle on the motorbike like a good Lao lady) and pai, a scarf that one wears over the left shoulder. Mine is white and was a gift from the weaver of said cloth at the baci ceremony at which I was adopted by Sunlay, a village boy whose family has refused to pay for him to go to high school.

I can't remember if I've told this story already but here it is just in case...

All I did was help him contact an Aussie guy from Brisbane who had met him and offered to help, leaving his email address. I contacted the guy and he sent 200 bucks, via my account, which was great. Sunlay thought it was better than great. His little eyes went all shiny and he had trouble speaking.

He has already managed to scrape up another $300 from other kind foreigners through sheer determination and persistence, and now, at last, he knows he can continue his education, which is all he asks from life.

It wasn't easy, as he comes from a very poor and isolated village, poorer and more isolated than my adopted village and farther up the same muddy track. Sunlay has been going to primary school in a village called Lathane where he boards with a distant relative. In these villages there is no phone and no mobile service, and it's an eight-hour boat ride into town and eight hours back again every time. He has no idea how to use a computer and was deeply grateful when I took him to send a message to his benefactor in Brisbane. But he watched my every move and primly pointed out my typos on the screen as I tapped out the message.

Ok, that was a sidetrack.....but speaking of ceremonies, another bit of Pimai that I enjoyed was a huge do at Sommay's family house in the blacksmith village, Ban Had Thien.

Despite being terminally ill, and only just home from her latest stint in hospital, Sommay's tiny fragile mother orchestrated a massive gathering at her house, where a crowd of relatives and neighbors assembled on straw mats where a dozen or so monks from the temple offered lengthy chants to help the family celebrate the New Year and to honour the one son and two sons-in-law who were going into the monastery there for a week to honour the family and please Buddha. It's a thing one does to express thanks.

So these three guys shaved their heads, and dressed in full orange robes and the monks chanted beautifully for about an hour or more as the congregation prayed, chatted, sipped soft drinks, and stared at the large farang lady sitting with Sommay's mum in a place of honour.

She was frail but full of happiness at all the fuss as she and her sister and another son (she has raised 8 kids on her own for fifteen years) filled bags of gifts for the monks, (laundry powder, cigarettes, matches, an apple, money, sweets, rice crackers, incense, razors) and envelopes of money for the novices (boys who are getting an education at the temple and may go on to become monks).

It was a glorious day of clear skies and refreshing breezes, unusually cool for the time of year and quite exhilarating. After the monks had received their pressies and trotted back to the temple with the three newbies, there was ANOTHER ceremony, a baci to honour both of Sommay's mothers---his real one whose name is Me and me, whose name is Suzy. You get the idea.

Anyway, it was, as bacis are, very moving and I was overwhelmed with little white strings that are ritually tied around one's wrists at these things by everyone at the ceremony. My wrists were already festooned from a New Years baci dinner at my friend Mr Thongdy's house, the boatman or captainboat as he calls himself, but by the time THIS baci was over I was swaddled halfway to my elbows in fluffy white cotton strings, like heavy duty tennis sweatbands.

Then there was the regulation sing-song with traditional instruments---ancient ebony stringed things and the empty plastic bucket or drum---where the elderly ladies again take centre stage and carry on high. very village seems to have a few drummers, and every one I have seen is a solid, cheerful and usually very entertaining woman who knows all the songs.

This is all lubricated by oceans of BeerLao, which is drunk Lao-style. This means that one person does pouring duty and takes a glass around the room, (shuffling on their knees, as everybody sits on the floor) half fills it and offers it to each person in turn. One has to polish it off, pronto, and pass the glass back, and refusals are not accepted. It is considered very funny to fill the glass right up, or to add a bit of filthy tasting rice whisky to the beer, but luckily this was avoided.

After all this we went home and passed out for a few hours.


CAREER UPDATE

I am now about to be set up as the first Tourism and Hospitality teacher in Luang Prabang and there are hopes that this will expand from a few classes at Claus'school to a much larger operation. I have a friend called Vanh with not only a teacher's license, but also a license to run a travel business, as she and her husband each run a travel agency. She is a lovely person, quiet but intelligent and determined and we get on well. She is hugely enthusiastic about the dea and will be my director and I will pay her a small amount to go through the process of setting me up with permission and a visa, and then I will be able to live in my house and work here, which I would not have been able to do on a tourist visa.

Claus will let me use his classrooms for a share of his monthy rent and I will apply to Australian Business Volunteers for startup money and airfare. I have met an Aussie girl here who also works with ABV and we get together to drink cold white wine and network, which so far has been hugely to my benefit, she having put me on to Claus.

If this all works as it should, and there is no reason why it shouldn't, Ill be back here in September witha full-time job teaching English for Tourism and developing specific courses in separate disciplines lke tour guiding, waitressing, bartending etc. Vanh thinks we should also try to get a contract for me to teach the immigration and customs people and so on. It's all good.

But I am very much looking forward to coming home to Oz for a few months to see all my loved ones and eat smoked salmon and cheese, ah, I remember it well.....and getting away from this weather for a bit.

That's yer lot for the moment as I've been sitting on a small cane stool for hours here in this internet place (air conditioned! Mmmmm..) and I can't feel my legs any more.

Bob the builder and his boys have been hard at work in the 36 degree heat---that's inside the thick brick walls of my house!---and I want to go and inspect their progress. And MY boys have gone fishing with a special home-made spear gun so there may be a nice dinner waiting.

Warmest Wishes to you all.

Latest Laotian Apologies

Brickdust, Brumbrums, and Brickbats

SO SORRY to take so long to write anything and at the same time SO gratified by the number of urgent requests I have received for more posts. (Thanks Mum!) I am horrified to realise that it's been a month, but the usual litany of excuses applies.

Most of them have to do with the woeful computer facilities up here where you can tap away for fifteen minutes on something really punchy and then the computer blithely informs you that it hasn't been listening to a word you've said for 12 minutes, so one has to either put one's foot through the screen or start again, which same doesn't usually work.

So, yeah, a lot of postponing has been going on....and then there's the HOUSE.

Well, the builders have started and the work has gone painfully slowly because they've been painstakingly putting tiles on the bathroom walls, kitchen walls, kitchen bench, bathroom, kitchen and dining room floors, mixing every bit of cement by hand---doing everythng by hand without even a proper level---they use a bit of tubing with water in it. Every tile is cut with a little hand cutter thingie and every bit of material has to be bought and brought home by me and Sommay, us on his motorbike and the stuff travelling by tuk-tuk. ( The little darling is a mean bargainer and always gets us a better price, especially in the Chinese market)

You may have noticed I said that they're tiling the kitchen bench. THAT was a surprise. Came in to find this strange brick concoction rising in the darkest corner of the kitchen, made darker by the years of open fire cooking that has been done there over the years. Wall is Black with thick soot. Everything here tends to be done on the floor so there was no bench, no sink, no fridge, no ceiling, no nuffink. So it all has to be bought and}orbuilt and usually with rendered brick covered in tiles.

Anyway, this was how I learned about Lao kitchen benches and my builder, whose name I think is Somphet and who I call Bob, found outALL about asking the client what she wants before erecting a permanent monument to the all too common male ailment of knowing nothing about kitchens and workspace comprising more than two square feet.

"So is this Bob's kitchen?" I ranted "No, it's Suzy's kitchen, isn't it. So why don't we ask Suzy what she wants? Maybe Bob likes tiny little cement benches with only two cupboard doors all smeared with grouting and cement, but SUZY SURE DOESN'T, now does she? So just ASK Suzy, why don't we. Here I am, larger than life, with a fulltime paid translator standing by at all times, so..."

You get the picture. And I have a much extended bench, built for giants. Bathroom basin is also Brobdignagian.

Then the workmen Bob brought in from some faraway province to do the tiling---and they're not bad at it for guys who live in bamboo huts, ---have been living in the house, much to the horror of my boys who live there, too. There being only one room at present they all have to share.

Unfortunately, these country guys are a little rough around the edges and shared their loud voices, stories about prostitutes, heavy drinking, general mess and then affably shared the visible evidence of their syphilis which was all a bit tooo much for my Sommay, he being a straightarrow not long out of the monastery.

So more diplomacy was required and applied before all was pally again and finally fond farewells were said as the country boys headed off to the bush for the holidays, leaving a brand new kitchen ceiling leaking every time it rains and a thick layer of red brick dust over everything from the (hand) sanding job on the floor. But we have a functioning farang style toilet and a hot shower!

Today I bought a Chinese Hoover and showed Sommay how it worked and he fell in love with it immediately, being a demon cleaner-upper.

Yesterday he and Joy cleaned the whole place, eradicating all traces of the naughty boys from up north, and then rang me up and said coyly, Are you coming to visit us today? We're making fish soup for lunch. Of course I was coming over (I'm still in a Guest House until my quarters are ready) and Oh, you should have seen their little shining faces as they showed me all the work they'd done and then served up the soup. Sommay had gone out and bought new bolts for all the windows and installed them, barking orders at Joy, who sweetly complies, with never a word of demur.

And today we fixed up a temporary room for me upstairs in the house so I can sleep peacefully away from the loud parties with wailing karaoke that goes on until late in my new guesthouse's neighbourhood. I look forward to waking up with a view of the Mekong and the sounds of birds and chickens and ducks, rather than the brummmmbrum of the neighbour's tuk tuk, the slamming of doors and hollering from house to house that fills the air in the otherwise charming little lane where I stay.

It's not strictly legal for me to do this as I am still on a tourist visa, but plans are afoot to change that....

Which brings me to....

My Beautiful New Career

I've been going on about teaching, helping, writing, researching, volunteering, travelling---you've heard it all---- in reponse to questions about what I am doing up here, so now I can tell you that aside from hoovering red dust off every surface of my future living space, I have been busy talking to a number of people about something more specific.

I need a job to have a business visa, and there are a number of ways to get one. One would be to work for one of the Lao-run English schools here, which may or may not be willing to pay for the visa, will certainly pay me fairly badly and pretty much totally limit my choice of teaching materials to their own.

Or I can apply to various NGOs for a job but these things take forever, require specific degrees, and may not be in Luang Prabang, where my heart is, not to mention the house for which I have just paid five years rent. So what do you do in this situation? I go straight to Keo's bar, the Pack Luck (no I have no idea what that means) and chat and hang out with various expats there.

There I met Aussie Marissa who is up here teaching marketing techniqes to upmarket boutiques and who put me on to Claus who has an English School. The fact that he is German and his English is not perfect (not to mention his strong German accent) makes no difference---his school is very popular and successful.

So we talked and in the end he offered me a job, as long as I pay for the visa, (No, you don't want to know how much) and then he'll give me an advanced class and the students will pay me directly. Great little old building buried in a tropical garden.

Then he had a think about my ideas for teaching hospitality and tourism English and trainng kids for such jobs and offered me the chance to start my own series of courses.

So I am well-chuffed over this and already devising lectures. Meanwhile, my landlord, Thomas the Thai, who is also my neighbour and a bit of a mate, is talking about hiring me as a consultant for some of his businesses here and maybe getting me a visa that way, and other people are talking about me teaching English to the doctors at the hospital---pronunciation mainly.

So, as Sommay has learned to say, It's all happening! I WILL keep you posted...

And that's not all...

Happy New Year!

Bit late, you say? Not a bit of it. Up here it's now, at the hottest time of year and is combined with a water festival. And it takes place over five days....It's all about washing the various Buddhas, cleaning one's house, wishing each other luck and involves ceremonies and parades and water. Lots of it. Mostly thrown on unsuspecting passersby by hysterically happy teenagers with buckets by the road, one's friends as they arrive at one's house, you name it. It used to involve decorated elephants, but they haven't been seen for a few years, so I haven't got my hopes up.

And, of course, drinking, which they do here with extraordinary fervour. They share a glass and each person has to chug a half a glass of beer, or a shot of Laolao (distilled from rice and disgusting) and keep on doing so until they fall over. Doesn't usually take long, but there are always new people joining and singing starts fairly early in the process along with drumming.If one is participating, it's a lot of fun; if not, it's pretty trying.

So tonight we're having a last meal at Nishas Indian resto as it is Francine's last night in Laos, and then who knows what might happen..Keo has invited me for a drink at his place and he's actually got cold Freixenet champagne in his wine fridge, so the celebrations could go on....I may be some time, but I promise to write sooner...There's lots more to tell.

NowI've got to find a way home that dodges the water-chuckers.....

The Villa

Many of you have asked me what the heck I am doing up here, and I can't really answer that definitively yet, but others have wondered if I plan to stay for a while and a few have asked if there will be a guest room if I do stay.

OK, I think the answer is evolving as YES.

It happened this way....My guest house, the venerable Pa Phai, is a very old and charming building which is falling apart more decisively every day, due to the inexplicable and total neglect of the present lessee, and the staff are scared that they will soon lose their livelihoods and homes if the Tourist Commission shut it down due to non-payment of taxes. Two years are owed at the moment.

So I toyed with the idea of taking over the place, but after due consideration and some terse advice from a well-known Mr.Big of the Toronto property scene, I have stepped back from this rash course and have undertaken to lease a little house by the Mekong which I will renovate and where I will live for part of the year, hopefully visited frequently by as many of you as possible.

My "son', Sommay, will live there and manage my affairs here, his pal Joy will be my Guard and all-round handyman, and Joy's sister, Me, will cross the river in a little boat from her village and do the cleaning and washing and tend the veggie patch we will have in the dry season when the river recedes.

It will cost a fraction of what it would cost to do the same thing in Brisbane and will be lots of fun, especially around 5 PM when the sun goes down in a big red ball over the Mekong and we sit on the big verandah I am having built with G&Ts clutched in our fists.

Various other boys will hang out there and sleep there and look after me, living downstairs in the huge main room, dining room and kitchen and I will have several little rooms upstairs including a spare room an office and a bedroom, which will open onto the aforementioned verandah.

I will provide them with a home, small monthly salaries, computer access, English lessons and basic food and they will call me Mum and take me places on their motorbikes and teach me Lao.
Tomorrow we get the architect's drawings, Wednesday we get the builder's quote, and Thursday we will sign the contract and take the plans for permission from Unesco to make sure i'm not creating a World Heritage eyesore. Then we pay some body a small "fee" and hope the permission comes through in a week or so.

Then we build, hopefully finishing the majority of the work before I come back to Oz.

The expat community are all buzzing with the news and promising to come for the housewarming. Given the proclivities of most of them it will be loud and long and a screaming success. Some have threatened to come in drag, which should be a thrill for my new neighbours.

So it's not time to start packing your sarongs and your immodium just yet, but this is your official invitation.....Oh, you may need to practice your Asian toilet technique and limber up your knees as I'm not sure just how far the budget will extend....But there will be a real shower and it will be hot, not just a dipper and a cold tap.

The house will also be the headquarters for The Bamboo Village, the non-profit I am starting to funnel contributions to my various deserving folks over here. The name is a tribute to the extraordinary universal building material and to the incredibly resourceful Lao villagers who use it for a million things, often creating ingenious and beautiful tools and utensils that say a lot about the essential aesthetic here.

OK, I'll stop waffling and let you get on with finding your atlases and your passports.

The Visitation

One of the joys of my life is having friends around to laugh with so life was especially joyful for me when not one, but two lots of dear friends arrived to see me here in dear old Luang Prabang last month.

Marion and Lawrence from Australia and David and Grecia from Canada braved Lao Airlines inflight food and came to make sure I haven't gone troppo up here in the land of three dollar massages, five dollar rooms and free Mekong views.

Xieng Thong Temple with its grand and glorious buildings and especially the walls decorated with inlaid bits of coloured mirror fragments depicting a fantastic series of stories about giant rabbits, warriors, princesses, elephants and farmers, is an absolute treat. We wandered the dusty streets, shopping for mulberry paper lanterns, nibbling sweet potato biscuits, searching for cans of cold tonic water and discussing the effectiveness of our respective diarrhoea remedies and preventitives.

In the evenings we tried all sorts of restaurants, Indian, Lao and European; some were delightful, others gave us great material for future anecdotes. Ask Lawrence about the small shrivelled item---rather like an old shrunken shower cap---that he was given when he asked for an omelette. We all agreed that Nisha's Indian was a standout favourite and we loved Toui's for breakfasts, mainly for the position, the ambience and the pancakes. And the rather adorable Toui, of course.

Marion and Lawrence and I went up the Mekong for a day with my mate Mr. Thongdy to the Pak Ou caves, smoky grottoes in a sheer cliff face where people have installed hundreds of Buddhas over the years. We visited the tiny temple and wandered through the sweet dusty village of Pak Ou on the other side of the river and had a meal in one of the rickety bamboo platform restaurants high on the banks of the river, where we watched the fishermen throwing their nets and beating the water and the buffaloes munching and the children playing in the golden sunshine.

And the sweating troupes of tour groups puffing up the banks from their boats, which meant it was time for us to leave. A lovely ride home down the big brown Mekong, where there is always a pleasant breeze. Mr. T let me drive the boat, but I noticed his gnarled little brown hands were never far from the wheel, as the Mekong is a treacherous, fast moving beast in the dry season with rocks and sandbanks everywhere.

Then Marion and Lawrence and I and my new friend Francine, the indomitable nurse from France with many hair-raising tales to tell about her missions with Medicins sans Frontiers,
went off to Siem Reap in central Cambodia to penetrate the mysteries of Angkor with Lawrence as our intrepid guide, he having read all the books.

Siem Reap was a dreary, hot, dusty little place, but it is mushrooming with obscenely grand new hotels plus the usual assortment of cheap guesthouses and extremely persistent tuk tuk drivers and street vendors.

The real reason to be there is of course the vast temple complex of Angkor, ancient city of the Khmer and others who participated in the bloodthirsty pageant that is the history of SE Asia.

For $40 Usd., one got a 3 day pass to wander all over the place and marvel at it all. We hired two tuk tuks and made a feeble attempt to see what we could, but it would take months to do the place justice because you need to keep taking breaks to let it all sink in. And have a shower and a cold drink.

The heat, the incredible crowds, the crush of traffic and vendors of knock-off guidebooks, scarves, t-shirts, you-name-it make it harder to have the serene experience that you might like, but all in all I'm delighted to have had the experience and will mull over the images of the tall blackened temples, statuary and carving, especially the one where nature has been allowed to grow over the ruins for a truly powerful picture of nature and civilisation quietly, inexorably trying to strangle each other.

There were tears when I had to say goodbye to M. and L. as they headed for BKK and home, and then Francine went off back to Luang Prabang and I decided I'd better see some of southern Laos, since it was right there and all.

Pakse, on the Mekong, well....you can keep it, thanks. I guess I'm spoiled after the delights of Luang Prabang, but it's hot and dirty and flat and there's very little attractive architecture. It is, however, the jumping off point for the Bolaven Plateau, high and cool and covered in coffee plantations, national parks and waterfalls.

I went up to an exquisite little resort called Tad Fane which is named for the twin waterfalls across a deep gorge from the resort, and the waterfalls are named for the deer or fane which apparently went over the falls at some stage.

That would have been a dramatic way to go as the falls are 120 meters high and thunder refreshingly in the background as one lounges on the verandah of one's fetching little timber cottage or perches up in the high main verandah where meals and incredibly cheap and generous gin and tonics are served.

One stares, fascinated, at the falls, one a delicate veil of white droplets the other a thumping great gout of water that hits a rock outcrop halfway down and then crashes to the bottom of the sheer drop.

If one isn't recovering from a bout of persistent bronchial discomfort one goes off merrily for long hikes with a guide into the forest. I decided to try it anyway, and it was a great walk, wandering through coffee trees, then scrambling up and down vertical hills, clinging to tree roots and vines and climbing over rocks with Marco and Julia, young Germans from Singapore, who were gasping for breath just as much as I was, I am happy to say. Our fleet-footed local guide, the cheerful Sack, with very good English, wearing rubber sandals, basically skipped up and down the track without any difficulty.

It was worth the burst lungs and hours of coughing that followed later, however, for the thrill of standing at the very top of the falls and looking across the gorge at our accomodation, where people were trying to take beautiful photos of savage natural beauty but had to include us sweaty hikers as well.

One the third day I rose and walked down the dusty (I know I say that a lot but it IS dusty) road hoping not to have to wait too long before I could flag down a bus, only to have it arrive at precisely the moment I put my foot on the pavement. One seat left next to a small gnarled forest-dweller with amazing tattoos with whom I would loved to have talked. An hour and a half later I was in poor sad little Pakse with a beer and a huge Masala Dosai for lunch and by the evening back in cool, lovely Luang Prabang.

Thus endeth the lesson. I'll be back with news of the house I'm about to rent and renovate....I can hear Peter's blood pressure surging upwards from here at THAT news, but at least it means that the curious will log back on to find out what it's all about!

OK, after a massive struggle with my own technological ineptitude, I have at last found my way back into my blog!

However, so much time has now passed since my last post that I'll probably be here all night trying to catch up with it all. Here is one story which willprobably go onabit,butI have to tell you about .....

The Village

At my old guest house in Luang Prabang I found things much the same as last year, except that my dear friend Madame is gone, and there's a new young manager called Sommay, who has rapidly becomes my number one protege. Extremely bright and capable, he's the sort of kid that will make Laos into a better place if he gets a chance. For those who know the Young-Murphy clan--he's a proto Jim Murphy.

So when he and his mates Soum and Sith invited me to come with them to their village for a festival, I blithely accepted. And when they asked if I would take some candy for the children of the village, I replied loftily that I wasn't taking candy, but school notebooks, pencils, erasers and sharpeners, which they thought was great. So we spent a few days speeding around town buying piles of books, stocking up on warm clothing (much colder up-country) and having hilarious times in the markets trying on sweaters. (They don't make much that's big enough for me)

Then, early in the morning four of us, loaded with our packs, all the books etc. plus bags of lunch, got on two motorbikes and wobbled down to the boat ramp, where I was pleased to see that the boat was one with lovely padded seats, not the usual hard narrow planks that you sometimes get. I was also pleased to be the only falang on the boat. So for eight hours we dozed, drank in the scenery, ate lunch---this involves spreading out a mat on the floor and laying out a low table and on it all our provisions and those of some others on the boat and all digging in with our fingers into the feast---and I tutored an eager student from a tiny village upriver who was thirsty for English tuition. He was particularly pleased when he checked a couple of points of grammar with me and said, "So my teacher was wrong!"

Then came the unloading of ourselves, the books, the bags and, yes, the motorbikes. Since I was paying, we took them with us.

Now this is the dry season and the Mekong is very low, about 10 metres low, in fact and the only way ashore is up the steep sandy banks by way of a couple dozen lung-bursting concrete steps. As I sat at the top attempting to restart respiration, the boys basically carried the two motorbikes up the slope. I was astounded at their strength, perseverance, and sheer will. It took about half an hour, and a lot of puffing and grunting but then we were off, winding through a tiny village and down a muddy track.

When I say off, I mean off and on and off and on again, repeatedly, because in some places the track was too steep, in some it forded a small river, in some it disappeared into a quagmire, so the bikes surged through somehow, or were carried and we passengers walked, carrying the loads then wiping off the mud. Which is what everybody else bound for the same festival had to do; just walk, for around two hours. There are no vehicles.

Except for the petrol-driven cultivator/tractor, pulling a wagon to carry the supplies brought by the boat, but there was no room for our stuff, so it took us about an hour and a half to get to the village. It was an exhilarating trip through forests and fields, occasionally encountering little wiry, brown hill people squatting by the road with massive loads of firewood on their backs and looks of horror on their faces at the sight of me. We laughed a lot and the village welcomed us warmly as we rode in.

Soum's family killed a chicken and made a special dinner for us, but it was almost too salty and spicy for me to eat. Never mind, I loaded up on rice.

I was lodged in the headman's house (Sith's family) and told I could take a bath, which involves pouring very cold water over oneself while hoping not too many of the villagers are gathered outside the woven bamboo wall or likely to wander in to wash the rice for dinner or whatever.

The next three days were a blur of meals eaten in various houses, sitting on the floor and dipping into communal bowls, drinking far too much beer and lao lao, filthy-tasting home-made rice 'whisky') , and having a whale of a time as the lads sang and laughed and occasionally passed out or chundered out the window. Nobody objected because the entire village was doing the same thing, this being a festival. Everywhere we went around the village, we were welcomed and feted, especially me because I am a falang and because of the schoolbooks.

A special presentation was made and photographed as I handed over the parcels and everybody grinned happily and talked volubly as the boys struggled to translate. Sommay understood little more than I did as they all speak Leu, rather than Lao, in this village, and only a very few had any English, and still fewer were willing to use it. Somehow it didn't matter.

It was a fairly dense, higgledy-piggledy collection of bamboo, timber and concrete houses, some more solid than others, but the ground was just sand or packed earth, so there was constant dust, and they all cook over open fires and warm themselves the same way, so it was pretty smoky as well, and very cold at night, but lovely and warm in the daytime.

The only light at night came from the fires and a few wan lightbulbs powered by a tangle of cords just overhead that led from little turbines in the fast flowing creek, which was carefully dammed and channelled to create duck ponds, bathing ponds and water supplies.

The village exists on rice and sesame seed farming, and some people sell a bit of rice as well as the sesame seeds and that is the ONLY income. Some people don't actually have money at various times of the year, but they make what they need, mainly from bamboo, and grow veggies, collect fruit and raise various animals, which skitter around underfoot most of the time. Miraculously, none of the dogs or cats were snaffling any of the chooks or pigs, and seemed happy to exist on rubbish and bits of sticky rice that fell their way.

We, on the other hand feasted on a large buffalo that spent my first night tethered outside munching hay and the next day being cut up into various chops and things and distributed to all the families. I'll send photos soon of all the men gathered around this vast exploded beast, slicing and dicing away, and sorting the bits into various piles, none of which was wasted. I saw every villager arrive with a bowl in which he or she carried away a cup or two of fresh blood for the making of a sort of spicy jelly which everyone ate with great relish at the drinking parties.

Unfortunately that was the only tender bit of the big fella, but I couldn't bring myself to have more than a taste. Lao don't eat hot food, they serve it hot and just keep on eating it even when it's stone cold. And they love to scoop up spoonfulls of stuff and pop them into one's mouth in a gesture of caring hospitality, especially for me, the friendly falang, so I had a varied diet for those three days.

There were ceremonies at the temple giving food and to the monks and novices, and there were special little parades, which we were hauled into, that shuffled through the village under a shower of rice and tiny lollies, and which culminated with the setting up and blessing of tall bamboo pagodas draped in material goods and lavishly decorated with coloured paper and tinsel, that were being symbolically sent to departed family members. To the sounds of drums and cymbals and chanting and general mayhem, five of these were erected , about five meters tall, in the temple yard for three days before another ceremony was held at each one, praying for the loved one and then pouring a small glass of blessed water slowly into the earth in remembrance of that person.

I distinguished myself by weeping pretty much right through one ceremony because I discovered that one young man had lost his mother, and more recently, his bride, due to pregnancy complications. In 2007!!! These people need a proper road into the village and I'm not going to stop until I collect enough money to build a few simple concrete fords over concrete pipes to make sure that they have at least a chance of getting down to the Mekong and getting a boat into Luang Prabang to the hospital. Can you hear the rattling of my tin from there?

Then there was another parade to the edge of the village, clapping and drumming and crashing cymbals to welcome visitors from the next village, dancing at various houses along the way, everybody fairly legless, but utterly happy with life, and then a procession to edge of the creek, a blessing from the monks and the firing of ancient guns as a prayer for rain. (used to be rockets).

The final night was pure magic, with all the young people of the village gathered in the temple by candlelight as the monks and novices chanted, sitting cross-legged and impassive in their brilliant orange robes. At one point we all got up and went out to circle the temple three times while the monks blessed us and then back in for more chanting. What struck me mostwas that this was a joyous fun night out for the teenagers,some of whom giggled right the way through, while some older folk were obviously deeply engrossed in learning a new chant, but seemed completely unperturbed by the hi-jinks in the far corner.

The next day we left, despite entreaties to stay on for a big all-village picnic, because my body couldn't handle any more e-coli and smoke and dust and becasue I was invited to a wedding back in Luang Prabang the next day. So we trundled backto the river village, this time catching a cargo boat which we shared with eight rather reluctant buffalo and one pig, plus a massive load of firewood and a half-dozen people. We sprawled on a mat and dozed our way back to town where I had to have a very good wash before stepping out in my splendid new Lao fancy dress among all the equally splendid burghers of Luang Prabang, smiling and trying to dance Lao style ---which I can't do---and glowing with the memory of my village days.

OK, you can go back to your normal lives now. I'll leave you alone for a bit and write more when I get a chance.

What am I doing here?

Why am I in Laos?, you ask....I still can't tell you exactly, but I have no doubt that it's where I want to be right now. I don't plan much, except where I'm having coffee today, or which wat to visit for evening chanting, but things just keep falling into place with startling fluidity and I no longer question this serendipity ----although I do often have trouble remembering what day it is, which seems to happen to a lot of people who come here.

Waiting for the LaoAir desk at BKK airport to open for the flight to Luang Prabang, I was asked by a fellow traveller if I'd recommend it as a destination. I started to talk about the place and what it was like the first and second times I was here and didn't stop till we began our descent into the smoky, golden winter evening that I loved so much last time.

At that stage I was both wildly keen to land and worried that it was all a just pretty picture that I'd talked myself into. Whether I'd love it again this time, I didn't really know, so this blog is about answering that question.

Life is pretty full, so you'll get no more than one a week, but I will try to add photos. Those of you who got my first scrappy group email with so many crumbly addresses may want to skip the first few pars...