Sunday, April 26, 2009

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......