POPCORN for ANNA

(This is one of Jack's pix from that wonderful visit, just so you know I can actually do this. Els and I are standing at the gate of Our Land and hope that now that I can do this that you will see more....)

I am getting complaints about my non-blogging, so I guess that means that some one does read these things. Only Anna will understand the title, but there you are....So MUCH has happened that I don't know where to begin....

It's now the last gasping, stifling, sweating month of the wet season and it's already raining less, getting dark earlier but still just as hot. The Mekhong is still high so it must be raining somewhere, but we are all hanging out for the cool crisp days of our short winter---November through January.

Work is hot and heavy as well, now that I am, in a sense, working at three different places.

OUR SCHOOL

This is the big event I suppose, as we now have a building, have paid our rent for five years and have had the place renovated and painted---well, we've knocked out some walls, added others and painted the inside. We all specified carefully the colours we wanted; dark blue for Marcel, peach for Claus and lime green for me. And we got light blue, pink and aqua, but we are delighted with our classrooms nonetheless. Well, Claus spent a sweltering day repainting....

Then we had to dig even deeper and find the money for a new airconditioner as the ones there were not designed for the larger size of the rooms. We are on the edge of one of the many pools that dot the western side of town, like wetlands that have been contained and once used for settling ponds to clean the ground water. Now they are just green ponds and ours is to be stocked with fish.

We have a maid to clean and two students who live there and look after the place and Claus and Marcel are already teaching several classes a day. Mine will start in November when I get back from Oz. We are planning to rename the school to fit our expanded outreach and plans for regional branches so we are now the Mekhong International Language Centre.

THE HOTEL
The hotel is finally about to open officially with a gala party next weekend, complete with motorcade for the governor of the province and all the dignitaries. We are still deep in workers scurrying to polish off the last of the finishing touches and a list of 'rectifications'----sounds very uncomfortable--- but I have at last a classroom there, too. And that's where a spend my days frantically devising the learning materials that cannot be had any other way---no, don't send CDs--- these are all custom designed for the hotel and our staff. I have figured out that since we can't get at the students during high season because the hotel is too busy, we will hold proper classes from May t0 September and the rest of the time do a lot of passive learning by making the training room materials---flash cards, games, reference books available and having a teacher there around start of shift to answer questions. Already seeing some success with this.

PASABANDITH COLLEGE And I still have to do two nights a week at poor old Pasabandith until my visa finishes, but that will be early December, so I won't have to do that for long. Yes, the wily Ping still owes me money, but this time he PROMISES to pay. Ha! Wait till he finds out that one of his former and one of his present teachers have decided to come and work with us!!! Claus is starting a full-time teacher training course soon so we are really moving into high gear.

MY SOCIAL LIFE Social life is still lots of fun, especially now when the fly-away expats start coming back. Tonight my dear friends Chris and Anthony are back so we're toddling off to one of our favourite haunts. And I have only just had time to recover from a flying visit from Charles and Thep.

The opening party at Amantaka will kind of kick off The Season. Mind you, some grumbles are being heard as the popularity of this place grows and costs go up, mitigated only by The Downturn, and Luang Prabang is no longer the home of the extraordinary cheap life for us expats. Poor us---can't go out for a sumptuous French meal every night!!

But the life is still wonderful. Now that I really am getting to know the place it has opened up even more and become even more interesting. Traffic is a pain in the arse, petty bureaucratic procedures are irritating, the lack of good cheese is tragic, but most of us thanks our lucky stars often that we are here. A few long-timers are muttering about having reached bliss-out and threatening to move home, but that's after nine and ten years here....

The ceremonies are sometimes quite wonderful. Next weekend is Ok Phan Saa, the end of Buddhist Lent, and it is wonderful. Everyone makes beautiful paper lanterns to hang outside their houses and then converges in the evening at the end of the peninsula by Wat Xieng Thong (our oldest and loveliest temple) for the blessing and launching of hundreds of little boats made of banana leaves and flowers and stuck with candles and incense. Absolutely beautiful.......

MY FOOTIE TEAM I seem to be getting more entrenched as my garden grows and my 'family' gets bigger and now I even have a football team. As in soccer. Amantaka declined to sponsor an employee team, but I went along to watch the boys play, joined the two teams and supporters afterwards for "one quick drink" that turned into hours of wonderful, beer-fuelled fun, dancing and laughing and eating until far into the night---there were still six of us at a night club at 1 AM----and the upshot was that I took on the sponsorship of the team. While we were still fairly inebriated they said they'd be called Suzy's Boys, but once we'd sobered up we decided on Suzy's Champions.

We have spiffy blue and green shirts and blue shorts for weekend matches and are already working on putting together a super team (Suzy's Superstars) for some serious competition. So far we play most weekends and spend the following week reminiscing about it, and we've got some good players. My coach, Bounlieng, has visions of grandeur for the super team but while we still have to play on lumpy, unmown fields with mud wallows that could swallow some of our smaller players we aren't holding our breath.

I, of course, pay for all this, but insist that after game drinks are their own responsibility. We have had some glorious celebrations; like the night they first got their Suzy's Champions shirts AND we won our first game. We danced and cheered for hours at a nearby beer garden and I was the Queen of the Night. One boy still kisses the front of his shirt and falls to his knees in greeting to show his gratitude.

The girls from the hotel often come along to cheer, but it's usually just me, roaming up and down the sidelines, conferring with Bounlieng, tidying up rubbish, handing out water and encouragement and enjoying the moments when the players leave the field and have to surrender their shirts for the next guy. I suggested they play bare-topped with a tasteful tattoo with the team name across their backs....but got no agreement on that.

Some of them have no proper shoes to play in and often share them, but that's a big ask for me so right now I have promised them bright red socks if they win their next game. Bounlieng is busy trying out new players from outside the hotel and we plan to start with proper practice and skills training soon. SO much fun. (Needless to say, my son Sommay is one of the absolute stars of the team along with my darling Jack....)

And finally, today we have had a big event which is the occasional push by the World Heritage people to clear away all the riverside restaurants, some of which double as residences and some of which obscure the view of the river. Only happens every few years but it meant that I had to go and tear down the fence protecting my garden. And I have been assailed all day by the raucous clamour of my neighbours moving all their noodle restaurant bits and pieces from the other side of the road into their yard and building a new shelter etc. RIGHT outside my window..... That's a pain but I won't miss the other places with their blasting karaoke and the heavy motorcycle traffic late at night ----mainly hallooing drunken youth and shrieking, giggling girls...My neighbours are only open during the day and their noodles are wonderful.

Speaking of which; I'm hungry....so that's yer lot. I' ll see the Oz lot of you soon.

Forty Miles of Bad Road

I feel like a solo performer on a stage in a vast, nearly empty theatre wondering if there's anybody out there since I haven't posted anything in so long, but this is to let you know that I'm still here in Laos and still loving it.

Weather is, at the moment, hideously hot when the sun is out, and nicer, but still humid, when it's not. Yesterday it was 45 degrees C. out on my front patio. That's nearly 110 F. Oof...

Work is fairly all-consuming, but still very rewarding. Training for the hotel continues as opening day approaches. I think I am learning as much as they are---possibly more.

The big news is that my friends and I are opening our own school soon. This was, of course, my original idea when I came here so it's quite thrilling. Actually I am joining forces with my friend Claus, who started his own school a few years ago, added another teacher, Marcel, and then created quite simply the best little two room school in town, despite not being native speakers, and not being able to award Government-recognised certificates. People come to Claus' school despite this because they actually WANT to learn.

(I should explain that many people here go to English language schools for the govt. certificate so they can get a government job but only a small percentage actually learn any English. That's why it has been so frustrating teaching at Pasabandith. Only a few of my students make any effort to learn anything.....You've heard my rants.)

Anyway, we're going to usher in a new era in language teaching with two of our Lao friends, one of whom is taking over the business end of things so we can get on with what we do. Claus will teach beginners and train new teachers, Marcel will teach beginners and intermediates, and I will teach advanced classes in job English and public speaking. We will no longer have to sweat over our visas as we will issue our own!

Right now we're looking for funding and organising the license. We'll stay at Claus' little school for the first year and then look at renovating a bigger building. We hope to be operating by September, by which time I'll have left PasaBandith and the wily Ping. The hope is that he will have paid me what he owes me by then. More on this as it progresses....

What have I been doing?

OK, it's been full on since the Xmas/New Years parties ended, teaching at the hotel and at P-Bandith, and I am actually geting pretty tired, but there have been a few lovely excursions and adventures to liven things up.

In February Sommay and I and our friend Gabriel went off to Sainyaburi for the annual Elephant Festival. It's a weekend of elephant viewing, photographing, riding and information, which draws huge crowds from all over the country, many of whom pay little attention to the actual ellies, spending most of their time getting together with family, shopping in the huge outdoor market, eating at numerous food stands and watching the rock bands and other entertainers.

There are almost no guest houses or hotels in Sainyaburi so they have a system of billetting people in private houses, but we arranged to stay with the family of a friend of Sommay's, who treated us royally.

Gabriel and I steeped ourselves in elephant lore, rode a lovely big creature called Balloo, inspected the feeding stations, hung around with the ellies and mahouts and enjoyed ourselves. We also had fun running into people from Luang Prabang.

The amazing thing to me was that people---regular folks, not rich tourists----were willing to travel immense distances for this occasion. There is basically only one road north and south here and only a very few east and west. There is only one road into Sainyburi province and while it's a great road, it's not paved. So for much of the three hours on that road we drove in a blinding dust storm; not a lot of fun for us, but bloody awful for the people in the villages along the way and those trudging along carrying piles of wood and small children. Most people travel by motorbike, bus or truck which is not hugely comfortable, but they came in their thousands nonetheless.

The road crosses the Mekong at one point by ferry, which caused a massive bottleneck and delays of up to seven hours!!!! We waited for 5 hours to get across on the way back, got to know our fellow drivers well and learned new meanings for the word patience. Also a few for indignation as we saw a group of Farang fool the police into thinking that one of them had a serious illness and had to be allowed to go to the head of the queue. Arrgh...

Wedding!!!!!!! Yes, another wedding....but this one was special because it was that of Sommay's next older sister Nang, who is beautiful and delightful and has had rotten luck in her life so far, but has finally found a sweet guy who loves her. She and the bridegroom's family all came up from Vientiane on the overnight bus and we had a fabulous time. I had to be the mother of the bride and stand in the reception line at the party and everything.

It was hellishly hot during the ceremony but the party in the evening was grand, held in the vast school yard in the village with lots of balloons and a really good band. We danced and carried on until a magnificent thunderstorm broke over our heads and brought it all to an exciting close. I will TRY to get the photos posted but the last time I tried, it simply didn't work.

Water, water, everywhere Festival Ah, yes, then there was Pimai Lao, the annual water throwing mayhem, that many farang like to avoid altogether....We did so in a sense by getting out of town. My boy Joy wanted us to visit his family and since this is a big time for going home to one's village, we decided to take him up on the invitation.

Joy comes from a small Lu village (one of the larger ethnic minorities in Laos) way the hell up north in Phongsali Province near the Chinese border. It's actually surrounded by China on three sides, so there are lots of Chinese people up here. This is also a place where one sees a lot of other smaller ethnic groups like the Phu Noi, (the women wear white strap-on leggings) and the Akka, ( short black skirts with pleated backs and interesting silver-bedecked head-dresses.)

It was an epic drive of about 7.5 hours up to Pak Mong, Oudomxai, and then up a fabulous river valley of thick jungles on a twisting dirt road, good, but a bone rattler.

The family were wonderful with Mum, five brothers and three sisters all gathered for the occasion. The whole village turned out to greet us and everybody had to have a look at the farang who looks after Joy, especially after the dancing started later that evening....Yee Ha!

This is the one time of year when these folks stop working like buggery and instead throw themselves with equal vigour into enjoying themselves. I never saw them stop preparing food, eating, drinking, dancing, clearing up after the meals, creating special ceremonial flag poles hung with money and various worldly goods to place at the temple, carrying water from the creek, sweeping, singing, firing off rockets and stopping for innumerable baths in the same creek.

(They run amazingly efficient households despite having no running water and fairly iffy electricity. Food is cooked over an open fire in the house with a very clever venting system for the smoke.)

I came to a complete halt for a day or so there after joining the communal bath one evening (maybe it was the duck water) and thereby contracting some sort of violent flu which kept me up all night and down with a fever the next day. But I snapped to in time for the final few parties. One night we had dinner in two different houses!

We spent one day driving up to the actual town of Phongsali, but the drive was the most entertaining thing about it. It's not an exciting place except for the location up high on several mountain peaks. 100 K up and back!

After a week, of this non-stop fun and interesting food, (some good, some just interesting, like fish poo soup)...a lot of meat and salt and chillis and a lot of it was very cooked and somewhat unrecognisable by the time it was presented. There was the usual dismemberment of a large buffalo to share among all the villagers. The blood is especially prized and they prepare it by carefully stirring in (with a finger) a bit of water from the creek. Yes, the same one where they bathe, wash clothes, brush teeth and keep ducks.

Drinking is a big deal at Pimai and most people feel obliged to get fairly legless at least once or twice during the week, but they don't have much in the way of beer, just the local Lao-lao or rice whisky. It's famous in Laos and now I know why. Most Lao-lao is not very good, but the Phongsali stuff is beyond awful. Give me furniture polish any day!

Finally it was time to go. In addition to the three girls we brought up with us, there were three more, plus all their goods and chattels and a massive amount of stuff that the family wanted us to have, big bags of rice, beautiful handwoven coolie hats, chillis, pumpkins, weavings, tea and about ten huge watermelons. As we hugged everybody goodbye, more stuff kept appearing, and I was seriously worried about the tyres. I made Sommay give away half of the watermelons to road crews along the way, and we got back without a problem---8 hours later.

There was nary a peep about the crowding in the back, probably because they are very well-brought up and anyway they were all too busy quietly bringing up their lunches into specially purchased plastic bags, as they did on the way up and the way to and from Phongsali.

As the driver I had no such problem and just gloried in the great scenery, the fascinating little villages and the challenge of dealing with the potholes and puddles and landslips and buses and pigs and general disastrous road conditions. Mano a mano.....

So now it's back to the workaday world again, but we have entered the low season, which will probably be even lower due to the ructions in Thailand and the financial crisis. Selfishly, I don't mind as it's more peaceful without a lot of tourists, but folks here will suffer.

Happily, the rains seem to have started so things will cool down a bit. This is an awful time of year in some ways, but the flowers are quite wonderful just now and one can actually start gardening now that we're no longer bathing in dry-season dust...

OK, that's my cue to get outside with a hoe and start digging...More sometime, I promise......