Slice of my Lovely Lao Life

Let me tell you about yesterday.....

It was a beautiful rainy, cool morning but it didn't begin well. First, at 8 AM, I taught one of my 3rd-year classes-----Well, I went to school and stood in front of my 3rd year students and spoke for over an hour, but any teaching was pretty well imperceptible. They are some of the brightest and the best and they love my jokes, ask good questions, many of them seem to understand what I'm saying, and some actually make an effort to speak and demonstrate that they have picked up some crumb of knowledge.

But yesterday, nothing.

Just blank looks and yawns. OK, the monks get up at 3:45 AM so that's understandable. And some students work late. But there was no reason for it. You teachers out there will understand. Just one of THOSE days, when one thinks, "Allright-maybe I could get a job running a restaurant....or become a nun for a year, or ANYTHING, as I am clearly incapable of this.. ...

I moaned a bit to my fellow teachers at break time, but they just grinned and said..."Some students are very lazy." Small comfort.

So I trudged back up the filthy stairs to tackle the second years, usually an even motlier bunch, but while they didn't exactly sit up and hold an erudite discussion on the state of the world today, they were asking questions, answering questions, listening, trying to understand, speaking and showing real animation and enthusiasm. What a treat! Wow, I said to myself, What a great class....I'm obviously born to teach!

I had a quiet coffee at the Canadian bakery and reflected on how quickly one's reality can change. Then it was Game on! again.

After lunch, I helped Joy with a few questions, and then my tutees for the afternoon began arriving. First were two smart young almost-graduates from the University for another coaching session in how to be the MC's of a seminar they are organising about the challenges facing Luang Prabang in the areas of Investment, Human Resources and Tourism. It's a school assignment, but it involves a lot of speakers from the Uni and from Government Departments and will be attended by several hundred people.

In the midst of that, my boss, the Wily Ping, showed up with my invitation to the big opening ceremony of our new school building on Saturday, with the whole schmeer----speeches, a baci ceremony, monks chanting and a big piss-up lunch afterwards at the new school. I'll have to dust off my Lao lady outfit for that.

The emcees had no sooner left when the four musicians from Puang Champa House Cultural Centre arrived for their session. They are beginners but quite adorable. I do a lot of pantomiming and leaping about and so on to explain things to them, so it's fairly tiring, but a lot of fun. (Tomorrow is their last class so I'll take them out for a meal.)

Then after a break for a G&T and a bath and it was time to prepare another lesson, this time for Jauck, who came at seven, desperate to be able to improve his pronunciation so he can keep his new job at a posh hotel here and be able to take room service orders. He's really a maths teacher, but there's no money in it and he has a young family to support. The menus he has to try to work from are in French and badly translated English---some of it quite unfathomable, so the poor kid is up against it, but I'm having a go.

Afterwards he dropped me in town to meet my lovely friends Gabriel and Britney, two young travellers who are so taken with this place that they're staying as long as possible. I have found Britney a job and counselled her about whether she should take that one or another one which sounded fabulous but on closer examination was a worry, so we celebrated her accepting the one I found her.

Then they told me all about their trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. Great stories about how their tuktuk driver fell in love with Britney and sat outside her hotel room all night playing love songs at full volume on his phone and weeping. And how Gabriel had to almost fight off the physicaland emotional blandishments of his female guide on a trek to Hmong hill villages in Northern Vietnam! Hilarious evening.

Afterwards I dropped into the wine bar and saw some dear friends there for a glass or two of cold white, a bit of gossiping and planning for our various farewells and returns, and then a council of war over the Dog Problem, which has flared up again, this time with the heartbreaking disappearance of the beautiful Bounma, Nith's dog that we all look after and love.

So that's a picture of a day in my life. There were other things---we've discovered the origin of the awful smell at the back of the house, I've confirmed my ticket home in April, and started lining up farewell dinners and drinks, been out to the hospital for my latest ear infection, but I can't really tell you write any more now because they've just phoned to say that one of the speakers for the seminar has dropped out and would I give a talk and lead a discussion on Cultural Communication at the seminar tomorrow?! Another outing for the Lao lady costume.....

One of my emcees is picking me up at 7:30 tomorrow AM, ( !!!!!) so I'd better get busy writing my speech....Let's see now. How to begin..........Um, Gidday everyone!.....

Going Postal...Lao style.

The other day I went to the post office and was reminded of why it is so charming to be here. I went to send one parcel and check the mail. These two simple procedures took me about 45 sweltering minutes to accomplish, but I cannot complain. It was all so Lao, so sweet.


First I went to the counter with the sign saying Petits Paquets, thinking that would be the place to take my small packet. It was manned----okay, personned---by my neighbour's eldest daughter who smiled sweetly and sent me to Produits Postales, personned by a beaming former student of mine. I thought that would be where you bought postal products and obscure philatelic items, but it turns out it's the place where they shake your parcel, notice that it rattles and refer you to the Package Man.

This guy is a treat to watch. He sits at a battered wooden desk half under the staircase beside a large pile of carboard and, armed only with a huge roll of tape and a pair of scissors, transforms people's ragged bundles into tightly wrapped parcels, glistening with layers of sello tape. He was busy squashing a pile of textile products into a box for a tiny Lao girl and then taping, taping, taping it shut, until every vulnerable point and edge of the box was securely sealed with tape. Did he have a tape dispenser with a sharp serrated edge to cut the tape? He did not; he had only the big old pair of scissors. Then he laboriously addressed the parcel, pausing often for with lengthy consultations with the tiny sender until, at last, he was happy and she trotted off to send this masterpiece of parcelling art.

It was my turn. He shook the long, cardboard tube which I had already taped up thoroughly and addressed. It still rattled. Apparently that is not good. So off came my multiple layers of sticky tape, after which he casually but accurately sliced into the tube and pared it down to size, deftly measured, cut and fitted a square cardboard to stifle any remaining hint of a rattle, trimmed the edge of the cut again, popped the lid back on and began taping, taping taping.

A work of art, I said. He smiled self-deprecatingly. (Just pleased that I could fix yer rattle, ma'm.)

On my way back to the Philately Department, I was stopped by another acquaintance who works at the post office who shook my hand and asked how I was and so on, told me how busy things were, shook my hand again and scurried back to his post behind the counter.

The Produits Postales girl gave me another beaming smile and a sticker and a chit, which I took to the Paye window where they gave me a signed receipt. Then, and only then, was my parcel taken from me for the next stage of its journey

By now a good half hour was almost up, but I thought I'd just check to see if any mail had arrived for me. So I went to the window clutching my passport where the former Package Man who now works there greeted me warmly. The tiny sender was also there, discussing the next stage of her parcel's journey, but with less success than I'd had.

A lady in beige and a lady in purple were sent off to the back rooms to rifle through piles of mail for about five more minutes but nothing turned up. I said I was now using my 'son's' post box and they suggested I check that out. So I went down the hall to a huge room full of rows of PO Boxes, peered through the window but saw no-one. I waited with another lady carrying a wide-eyed grandchild who deftly snatched my passport from my sweaty hand and had to be convinced to give it back.

Eventually the lady in purple ambled in from the back courtyard where she'd gone to rest after the rigours of searching for my mail. The other customer took quite a while to explain her errand,waving her Identity card and pointing at a box, but the purple lady just kept shaking her head and picking her teeth until the customer left.

So I thought I'd have no luck getting mail from Sommay's box, since I am not him, but anyway I launched into a long explanation in mangled Lao about how my Lao son has a box, when she interrupted me to say "You mean Sommay?"and handed over the contents of his mailbox without so much as a glance at my proffered passport, Lao Identity Card and work permit.

It was only the latest New Yorker, but I was terribly impressed with how well it went, and shared my feelings with the hand-shaker who happened to be milling about again. He wanted to have a look at the New Yorker, of course, which gave me time to notice that the tiny sender was back at the pick-up window, patiently filling out a form beside her once exquisitely sealed box, which had now been cruelly sliced open in front of her for some obscure procedural reason.

She didn't exactly look charmed, but she wasn't much perturbed, either. These things happen, she was probably thinking, as she trudged back across the Post Office to the Package Man to start all over again.

I was, however, totally charmed as I emerged into the late afternoon sun, and a passing student stopped to give me a lift home on his motorbike, just in time to watch the big burning red sun drop into the Mekhong again.

Poverty: The Latest Fitness Fad

It's interesting that here in this very poor country, people seem to be able to keep up outrageous working hours and workloads, blithely walk and cycle distances that we would quail at, and are almost never fat. Most of them are fit and glowing with health and vitality, despite being on fairly meagre rations.

Yes, there are bugs everywhere.And the locals are not 'used to' or immune to the malevolent microbes and whatnot that teem in a country where fridges are rare, food is prepared in the open air, (or indeed on the ground) chickens walk non-chalantly through kitchens, and everyone shares spoons and glasses, eats from communal bowls with their fingers and washes dishes in cold water.

Nope, they all get sick, too. They just cope better. What's amazing is that they don't get a lot sicker a lot more often. The answer has to be what they eat.

Far from this being a minefield of dietary disaster, I am eating healthier than ever.

The food is all local, organic, fresh, un-processed and seasonal, something we yearn for in the so-called First World. Everything is grown, sold, bought and prepared within a kilometre or less from where one eats it.

Local people seldom eat bread, cakes, puddings etc---dessert is mostly fresh fruit. Nobody can afford much in the way of soft drinks, and few drink coffee or tea. Virtually none of the locals eat french fries, none eat meat pies or hamburgers, and a lot of them have utterly fabulous teeth. Sugary stuff is creeping in and biscuits are becoming popular, but they are still a luxury for most folks.

And getting back to ME for a moment, I pretty much do the same. For those of you who have an interest in the state of my corpus, the diet here seems to be very good for me, (there being less of my corpus than usual) and I feel pretty good. And i's not because I'm sick al the time. It's something new called 'éating healthy food'.

There is this pesky gluten intolerance, of course. I find that it's less of a problem up here where there is plenty of rice, of course. Mind you, I was shattered recently to learn that I react very badly and pretty much instantly to rye flour and soy sauce (!!!!) This is a blow as I love them both. I exist on rice, fruit, nuts, eggs, cheese, lots of vegetables, a bit of meat and the occasional pig-out on steak and chips and such at the French cafe.

I simply walk past the croissants, baguettes, doughnuts, cakes and pastries that beckon daily, and eschew all but rice noodles when it comes to pasta. I have very little to put butter on. You can't buy anything that is purposely gluten free, not even rice crackers, but you can occasionally get corn-flour baguettes. Trouble is even the vendors can't remember which ones are wheat and which ones are corn. Heavy sigh....

So, while you'll always need to bring your immodium or gastrogel and such with you, this is the place to come to lose the avoirdupois. As long as you avoid the French pastries and the French restaurants, of course.....And the lovely, crisp Lao beer.....(No I can't drink beer either, except Heineken, strangely enough.)

Or you can try the Amazing Lao Instant Weight-Loss Regimen, which is simple: drink one glass of Mekong water and retire to a bed near the loo.