Pathumphone songthaew

I was recently reading back over some old blog entries and managed to confirm my suspicion that I very rarely get round to actually talking about Laos.  Every month I start off with brilliant ideas and noble intentions to write about some aspect of the culture but when I sit down to write, I get easily distracted by whatever throwaway thought happens to be occupying me that day.  I have pages and pages of the beginnings of serious blog entries but I tend to get no further than the second or third paragraph before opening up a new document to start discussing the relative merits of ‘Mama Cup’ versus ‘Oh Ricey!’ instant noodles.  My recent ode to a motorcycle is a particular low point and as I come to the end of my placement, I really feel I should try and record some of my thoughts about Laos.

And yet, the only thing I keep coming back to is who a Lao equivalent to the man on the Clapham omnibus might be.  In Australia you have the man on the Bondi tram and in Hong Kong it’s apparently the man on the Shaukiwan tram.  I have vivid, slightly xenophobic and no doubt wildly inaccurate images of what both these chaps might look like but I’m really struggling with a Lao image. 

Now this brings me to the very nub of my problem, I’ve become fixated on creating a humorous mental image rather than discussing the different components of Lao society that might make up an idealised ‘everyman’.  It’s also interesting that the man on the Clapham omnibus is a legal construct and this could be the start of a discussion about legal protection and representation in Laos but it’s not and the vision of Lao people wearing bowler hats keeps popping back into my mind. 

Too busy working to play

I’ve been thinking about the same subject for more than a week now and I’ve managed to come up with a few likely subjects.  I’m hoping that jotting them down here will help dislodge the thought from my mind and I can get on with some proper work. 

No. 1: The man on the corner of the petanque court.  I have almost immediately discounted this one, mainly because there is no indication of mode of travel, although I suppose the point is that you can see people surrounding petanque courts all over Laos at any time of the day, not going anywhere at all; just focussed on the game.  The courts seem particularly busy at around 4.30pm or knocking off time but lots of government offices come equipped with one and you can generally find someone who’s up for a game, regardless of the time.  We don’t have one at my office but my first thought when I found a sleeping woman on the floor of my lab this lunchtime was ‘careful, don’t wake her’, so you get the idea.

Some rice and some machinery

No. 2: The farmer on the trailer of a tok tok.  This is included on the basis that most folk are still involved in farming in one way or another.  Actually, lots of people claim to be farmers when I’ve seen no actual evidence of them ever doing any farm work but perhaps they do it secretly when I’m not looking.  They’re probably not that different from the city types at home, who claim to be farmers when they mean they invested their money in land because it’s a pretty good sink for large tranches of investment.  Well, not quite like that, a bit less conceited perhaps but I have something of a chip on my shoulder about people claiming to be farmers when they’re not.  Some folk here have other jobs but are clearly hedging their bets and get labourers to manage family land.  Others work ridiculously hard at keeping down a full time job and also try some subsistence production on the side and I have no beef with either group.  For example, the rice farmer I most recently worked with is an engineer at the rice mill by day but also manages just over a hectare in his home village, meaning his management decisions are largely driven by his time availability.  It’s got me wondering whether I couldn’t do something similar at home, with some low input activities.    

On the other hand, some faux farmers drive me mad, like the chap I had a strange encounter with at a preparatory training course before coming to Laos.  We were asked to group ourselves on the basis of career.  I duly stood with people who had claimed a link to agriculture but it transpired the closest person to me worked in IT.

‘Eh, you said you were in agriculture.’

‘Um, well I did this organic farm exchange thing and picked grapes in France.’

‘Oh, so you went on holiday?’

I didn’t say that last bit but you can see how easily I get distracted by trifles.  I really love trifle.  I will be asking my Mum to make me one when I get home in just over a month.  When we were small, she used to make a thing called ‘surprise pudding’ which was essentially layered cake and custard with huge quantities of stale booze (my parents don’t really drink and can easily keep a bottle of sherry until it comes back into fashion) and hundreds of thousands on top of whipped cream, bleeding their e-numbers slowly across the pristine, white surface.  It was incredible and delicious but I’m still not sure what the surprise was supposed to be.

Moving on, how about…

No. 3: The government employee on the Mun ferry.  These references are all quite South specific, which is a bit of a flaw but there’s probably an equivalent further up the Mekong and Clapham could just as well be replaced with Didsbury.

Mounlapamok is a district with fairly poor road connections, so during the wet season in particular, it is advisable to get there by crossing the river on the diesel belching and somewhat infrequent, car ferry that covers the crossing.  This normally gets filled with government workers of all hues either in Hilux trucks or on motorcycles and a surprising number of people do seem to be attached to government offices in one way or another.

Right, I think I might have hit on an answer.

Heading home from market

No. 4: The woman on the Pathumphone songthaew. 

Pathumphone is a bit suburban in that the district is far enough from Pakse to be independent but close enough to support commuters.  Each day sees lots of transit between the two areas for both work but more importantly for products to be sold in the large Pakse markets, which is how lots of folk really do make their money, whether through sale of their own or neighbours’ produce, or imported, manufactured products from Thailand.  There is a huge diversity in the group, particularly concerning wealth but I think people who travel on the songthaew, which is more or less like a bus and a cheap-ish mode of travel, probably represent the average.  Then, if you assume it’s a woman, you can also create an easier stereotype of a lady wearing a sinh, which is a convenient stand-in for the bowler hats that were bugging me earlier.

Sprained wrist

So, there we have it, after two years and in my last week of work in Laos, I finally write a blog entry about Laos, instead of which puddles I’ve stepped in, or how many times I’ve fallen over in the previous month.  It was only one rather dramatic fall, in case you’re wondering but I have a sprained wrist, broken Kindle and torn jeans to show for it.

Next month will be a compilation of entries from my Lao road trip which starts on the 2^nd March, so I think there should at least be some pretty pictures to finish things off for this blog.  

Koy hag lot jak kong koy

There is a gentle slope outside the gate of my house.  The road has a fairly loose covering and when I try to kick-start my motorcycle, I inevitably roll backwards and end up going through a strange, shuffling charade until I finally get the right balance of choke, brake and brute force to get going. 



Official Yamaha motorcycle boots

Since I’ve been living by myself, the whole operation for leaving the house has become more of a fag.  Previously, on a normal day, I used to leave the house first and was thus only responsible for opening the gate.  I could then start the bike on level ground in the garden and zoom off through the gate with nary a backward glance.  Now, I’m responsible for locking the door, opening the gate, moving my bike outside, going back to lock the gate and then hopefully puttering off without stalling and blocking the road. 

A week or two ago, in something of an early morning fug, I wheeled my bike to the slope and turned back to lock the gate.  Unfortunately, a rogue piece of masonry had nudged the side stand and the bike fell over, snapping the end of my clutch lever.  ‘Bugger’, that’s the fourth clutch lever in 18 months and the episode got me to thinking about the various ‘adventures’ I’ve had on my bike in that time. 

The bike has been loaned to me by my organisation, for which I am extremely grateful but it did arrive in a fairly shocking condition.  The first trip we went on together was wheeling across the road from the bus station to the nearest mechanic.  Incidentally, I would like to propose Laos as the country with the highest ratio of mechanics to population, which is just as well.

Anyway, I’ve spent a lot of time with Lottie¹ since we first met and as I approach the end of my placement in Laos, I thought I’d pen a farewell letter.  

Dear Charlotte,

My second home

You look different now from when we first met but luckily for you, time has been kind and the iridescent green twinkle of your new mirrors lends you a puckish air as you scoot through the traffic on your exquisitely rutted new tyres.  The thrum of your engine has softened in note with the addition of your soft and pillowy, new air filter and the liberal application of the smooth and unctuous two-stroke oil you enjoy so much.  The easy shift in gears and gentle rumble of your new chain and sprocket reminds me of unhappier times, pushing you up hills and out of ditches but that’s all behind us now.  Let’s not dwell on the past of broken clutch and brake levers and your delicate, waif like constitution when it comes to facing the toils of everyday life.  You’re more robust now and better able to face life’s challenges, whether they are greasy, slick roads or ever changing and unpredictable traffic conditions.

Of course, I have some regrets.  I should have spent more time washing you but surely a thin layer of red dust has held you together and bound you more closely to your environment?  I shouldn’t have taken you on such inhospitable terrains and forced you to carry such improbable loads but didn’t that expand both our horizons and allow you to really recharge your batteries?

I hope you can look back on our time together with kindness and joy.  The only reminder of your previous life is your crumbling, moulting grips, giving away your age like the hands of a facelift denier.  Still, you have new memories now, a dent in your fuel tank where you were shunted off a boat and all of your many, many new parts.

Let’s go on one last trip together, a final odyssey to see new places and discover new things about Laos.  After that, who knows, perhaps an exciting life awaits you with someone else or it could be back to the slow decline into component fatigue that you experienced before.  Either way, I will think of you often and thank you always for the service you’ve given, sometimes grudgingly but always finally succumbing.

Goodbye Lottie and good luck,

Susan

On a mission

I’ve written about my motorbike before and may yet write about it again but it’s been so much part of my time in Laos that I think it’s fitting to finally write to my motorbike.  From the most entertaining rides, miserable rides, downright terrifying rides and of course all the many hours spent sitting patiently at roadside mechanic stops, my motorcycle has been there.  My introduction to the great Lao fuel redistribution swindle (mechanics siphoning petrol), my expanding technical vocabulary in Lao (foam air filter, washer, chain etc) and the added kudos I immediately get for riding a ‘big’ bike (175cc but importantly it has a clutch and a lot of Lao wouldn’t be able to touch the ground if they tried to ride it) have all been made possible by having my bike.

I can’t imagine I’ll want to ride when I get back home and I’d certainly never buy a Yamaha DT but it’s been an experience.

Foot notes:

1 The name is a pun on the Lao word for motorbike. 

Christmas iik teua

As it’s nearly Christmas, it’s probably time for a Christmas blog-post, except this year I’m trying to forget Christmas is happening.  Last year I was extremely lucky to be able to spend a slightly bonkers Christmas with my very old and very good friend, who’d come to visit from Hong Kong.  That was followed by an equally nuts, New Year road trip to Attapeu.  This year, that same friend will be in Cambodia, assuming she’s recovered from her slightly bonkers bout of pneumonia.  Sadly, due to passport cock-ups and work commitments, I won’t be able to join her and aside from trying to gather together a small group for a bit of a Christmas meal here in Pakse, the day will probably pass off fairly unremarkably.

Last Christmas

The past month has probably been the most busy, serious and work filled month I’ve spent since I arrived in Laos and at the last count, I’d worked through three consecutive weekends.  It’s been brilliant but has left me with little time to reflect on how many bugs I’ve killed, where dogs shit or how to develop my friendships with amphibians.  I did find a bit of time to squeeze in a couple of lovely, relaxed days in the 4,000 Islands with my sister when she visited, so it hasn’t all been nose to the grind stone but my focus has definitely being more work-wards than anything else and it looks set to continue in the same vein until the end of my placement.

Civil servants living it up

Amongst other things, we’ve been building a greenhouse to allow for production of disease-free fruit tree seedlings.  We designed, budgeted, found the funding and hand built it, which is quite a satisfying way to round off the year.  It’ll be even more satisfying when I find a suitably shadowy corner to carve ‘Susan was here’ into the woodwork. 

The most amusing moment of the build probably came when my sister looked at a group of about ten of my colleagues all busy with different jobs; concrete mixing, chiseling, brick laying etc and said rather incredulously ‘so this is  what Lao civil servants do on their day off’.

So anyway, I’m feeling quite pleased with life at the moment, although it still has its ups and downs.  No matter how hard I try to ignore it, one of those downs is being away from home for Christmas. 

So, you heard it here first, whatever happens in between, I will be at home for Christmas next year.  I will eat stilton and mince pies and roasted things and drink port and dark coloured beers and mulled wine of dubious origin and I will do it all while wearing a paper crown that slips slowly over my eyes.

Having said that, I think I might be warming* to the idea of Christmas in a hot climate because this year’s most sentimental Christmas moment came courtesy of a moist eyed moment listening to 'white wine in the sun' by Tim Minchin.  That took me by surprise because I don’t really like white wine and I definitely don’t like too much sun, so I suppose I just really like Christmas.  It was also only November but we’ll gloss over that.

Thanks Mum

After having safely navigated through the last couple of years when everyone has been getting married, from next year it looks like we’ll be moving into the years when everyone has babies and while it can be fun to be the globe-trotting guest at weddings, babies need you to be around for a bit longer if you plan on making an impact.  One of the most disappointing things about having spent the last two years in Laos, has been missing all the milestones as my nephew gets to the point where he can start to understand and really enjoy what’s happening at Christmas. 

Having seen his terrified visage in the photograph of his first meeting with Father Christmas, I’m not sure I’m missing much.  Nevertheless, I hope I can be around a lot more next year, for both my family and friends, especially those who find themselves wittingly, or unwittingly, up-the-duff this Christmas. 

To conclude, my toast this year is to the offspring and foetuses of all of the people I wish I was spending Christmas with and to all the other people who aren’t where they’d like to be this festive season.

And so, in a post where I was trying to forget about Christmas, I’ve used the word 15 times and here it is again,

Merry Christmas!

* You only demean yourself by laughing at that terrible pun.      

Peuan koy bpen gop

This month I found myself a new housemate.  It happened rather unexpectedly and without any kind of consultation.  One evening I found that Mr. Frog had come to stay.  I’ve had frogs come to stay before but they’ve never previously made themselves permanent residents.  Mr. Frog or Frogster, as I’ve come to call him, has been in the house for about three weeks and shows no sign of moving on.  He’s quite a welcome guest and has some entertaining habits, so I’m happy to share the house, particularly as he doesn’t take up too much room.  Last night I spent half an hour on the kitchen floor watching him catch ants and would happily have stayed for longer but I think I was cramping his style and the ant supply soon dried up.

Frogster

The strange thing is, he seems to share my routine fairly precisely.  In the morning when I get up, he stands waiting in the corner of the shower and since I gave him a little wash on the first day, I’ve subsequently found it hard to break the habit.  I’m very careful to keep the shampoo away from him and just give him a douse with water but he seems pretty happy to have a little splash around.  I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that it seems strangely intimate to be having a shower with a frog and I try not to catch his bulgy eyes in case I see embarrassment.  He has oddly expressive eyes. 

Last week there were some other frogs in the house.  They were more gregarious, bigger, bouncier and generally wanted to make a mischief of themselves, whereas Frogster moves about the house calmly, following his set routine.  They were all in the bathroom with the toilet in it and the interlopers were leaping around the place in time honoured, springy-legged fashion.  Frogster looked at me in disappointment, like he’d hoped we’d all get on but had woefully misjudged the situation.  Then he slunk off to the corner of the room, away from the yellow skinned high jinks of his oafish compatriots. 

N.B I am a normal sized person

Later that night, I got up to go to the loo and found one of the guest frogs actually swimming in the toilet bowl, which caused a bit of a kerfuffle.  I won’t go into too much detail but rest assured I did not piss on a frog. 

In the evenings, Frogster has his dinner about the same time as I do and he sits catching bugs in the kitchen while I cook.  I chat amiably about my day and try to offer him some suggestions for more fertile bug hunting grounds but he largely ignores me.  If anything, he’s a bit arrogant.

Now though, we come on to my problem.  I can’t decide if Frogster is real or if I’m having an existential crisis brought on by spending too much time alone.  I’ve looked him up on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_bull_frog and he seems to be a banded bull frog, or Kalula pulchra if you’re feeling a bit fancy pants.  All of his habits seem to fit but if I was imagining a frog companion, there’s no reason to suggest I wouldn’t get the species characteristics correct.

I’ve had this problem before.  When I first moved to Dublin, my hair turned green and I thought it was a psychosomatic effect of having a tough time adjusting.  To my great relief, it was confirmed by the local hairdresser to be an interaction between the water, pipes and the huge amounts of bleach I had in my hair and was easily remedied with a darker tint.  This leaves me hopeful that the frog thing will turn out the same.  Obviously not exactly the same, although the high levels of chlorine in the tap water here does leave my skin a bit itchy and I’m worried about the impact this will have on Frogster’s skin.  At least he definitely started out being green.  Perhaps I need to start spending more time with people.



To prove I have other interests

Talking of which, my sister is coming to stay next week, so I can get a definitive answer on his existence, or not, as the case may be.  The same sister once knew a cat that looked like a leopard and would only ever visit her in times of need, so perhaps she’s not the best judge.  Or it could be that as a family we give off strong, animal attracting pheromones when we’re lonely or distressed.  Once, when I stayed at her flat, some sparrows kept tapping on the window every five minutes and it was absolutely terrifying; like living in a Hitchcock film, so perhaps the simpatico doesn’t extend to avian species.  

I know I’ve included pictures of Frogster in the blog post but I don’t think they’re conclusive enough.  I mean, there are pictures of Nessie and faeries, so I don’t think we can rely on photographic evidence alone and I have no way of checking if what I can see in the pictures is the same as what other can see or if there is some kind of ‘Back to the Future’ style fading mechanism built into Windows.  Maybe it’s on Windows 8 and I should upgrade for a full expose of my mental health.

In other news this month, I visited and socialised with human friends, watched some fireworks and boat racing, saw a football tournament, harvested rice, designed a greenhouse, applied for some project funding, tested some soil samples, fixed my motorbike and more but I think the frog thing is probably more interesting. 

 

Gep giaow mak mai sai mai tao

Tree poking in action

At the risk of sounding like my literary pretensions are soaring too high, I feel like the giant from the Oscar Wilde story. 

I’ve been studiously ignoring the children clambering over my garden railings and poking sticks into the trees all evening.  I couldn’t care less if they take the unripe fruits and fibrous seedpods, as they’re not really to my taste but I do wish they’d do it quietly while I try to watch my Great British Bake Off download. 

People in Laos are frequently poking sticks in trees.  I can barely walk past a tree without seeing a stick being poked in it.  On my way to work this morning I noticed someone sitting on the back of a motorcycle waving a comically large stick alarmingly close to some power cables.  No doubt they were on their way to poke a tree.  I am mesmerised by the incredible feats of dexterity some people can achieve with their tree poking and can only assume there is some link between the seemingly innate ability of a Lao person to poke a tree and the surprising popularity of snooker.  Even in really quite remote places I’m forever stumbling across snooker tables.  Earlier in the year I stopped at a roadside snooker hall for a drink and decided that it might be fun to have a quick game.  My friend and I were already a little ‘refreshed’ and so I asked the proprietor in my best Lao if we could play at the nearest free table.  “I don’t understand”, she said in return.  If she didn’t understand what I was asking for, then I dread to think what she thought my accompanying mime was all about. 


Unmolested trees in my garden

They use too few red balls for it to be proper snooker but that could explain why they call it sa-nooker.  Perhaps the extra vowels are to make up for the missing balls.  I’m still rubbish at it but then I don’t have the years of tree poking experience to fall back on.         

I recently had some friends to stay and on returning from a weekend trip one of them was surprised to find a couple rooting through the undergrowth in the garden.  “Er, Susan, there’s a girl in the garden.  In the garden there’s a girl”.  He didn’t say that but I wish he had.  I sometimes say it to myself¹.   In actual fact it was my lovely landlord and his wife, doing a spot of gardening.  They must have got through the gap in the gate because everything was locked up and for some strange reason, they don’t have a set of keys.  I’m quite glad they don’t have a set of keys because they do tend to turn up unexpectedly, normally quite early on a Saturday morning and with a crowd of relatives in tow.



Fruit seedling production - can't spot any grafting.

I’ve stopped being surprised at finding folk wandering around the garden, taking things.  The youngsters are normally incredibly polite and always ask first, although this evening they are poking a stick into a tree from next door’s garden, so I assume they asked next door rather than me, probably because I am ostensibly ignoring them.  I did also have one occasion where I was making a call home and trying to maintain a conversation with my Dad, while being shouted at from 50 yards away by about 7-8 kids who wanted to collect flowers.  Considering both my Dad and I are hard of hearing, it wasn't easy and no demonstrations of being busy/on the phone could dissuade them and my arm gestures signalling ‘help yourselves’ were clearly misinterpreted.  I must work on my mime skills, they’re obviously rubbish.

Despite this incident, I generally find the kids are more inclined to ask permission than the adults, who will happily help themselves to edible fungi, fruits, flowers firewood etc, as and when they want it.  I came back to the house one day to find an entire tree missing.  It was a dead tree and the one that the kids used to like climbing in, so it sort of helps with my earlier giant analogy but it was still a bit of a surprise.

Feeble attempt at tree poking²

We don’t do much tree poking at home.  I’ve been trying to think of examples from the fruit industry of potential commercial applications for tree poking in Europe.  To be honest, I think using grafts onto dwarfing rootstock and then maybe using a ladder or scissor lift/cherry-picker to reach the higher branches may well be a more practical solution but with fewer trickle down benefits to the world of bar games.  From a professional perspective, I also think it’s probably a bit better for fruit quality to not prod it too much, if you can avoid it.  I think I’ll save the debate about dwarfing rootstocks for another day though, as the youngsters seem to be finally dispersing back to their own gardens.  

1. If you haven’t seen ‘Shaun of the Dead’, you really should watch it.  Then watch the director’s commentary.  After that 4 hour stint, my quote should make perfect sense and you will also have had a delightful afternoon.  
2. I know the tree looks like it has a concrete trunk but that's only because an electricity meter is in the way of the actual trunk and if you're wondering who I remind you of, it's the mushroom one from the Super Mario games. 

16 deuan leo

I was walking through a rice field yesterday when I noticed two things.  Firstly, my bare feet were being slowly torn to shreds by the prickly weeds growing along the margins and the formic acid sting of red ants.  Secondly, it occurred to me that this month marks the point at which my current job, working for the Lao Government, has become my longest period of continuous employment with any organisation, anywhere in the world.

Careful

I’ve been working here for 16 months, excluding orientation, so I won’t be asking for a carriage clock or gold watch but I’m quite pleased to have made it this far, particularly considering one of the primary elements which attracted me to the placement in the first place was the stability offered by a two year fixed term.

The rice project is going quite well this season and my water ferns are thriving in the stock pond alongside the plot we’re working on.  The azolla still won’t persist in the field but I can worry about that another time; for now the farmer is happy and getting interested enquiries from neighbours.  That’s enough of an achievement. 

Things are also going quite well in the lab and despite a few recent setbacks, it looks like the programme to ameliorate the durian dieback situation in a nearby district might be significantly expanded before I leave.

It's alive!

If I can make a difference to the lives of both water ferns and durians, then I really will be chuffed.

Anyway, the point is, I’d assumed that I was really quite flaky when it comes to jobs but if I can work for the Lao Government and enjoy it, surely I can work for anyone.  I’m not sure what I’ll do when I finish my placement and get back home.  I’m not even entirely sure where home will be but it’s quite heartening to know that I’m probably not as bad an employment prospect as I’ve sometimes considered myself to be.  The top three tips for working with me successfully seem to be:

1.       Buy me breakfast every morning for the first month.

2.       Talk a different language.

3.        Ask me to do a job I know absolutely nothing about (plant pathology, growing rice, teaching English etc) and I’ll be so desperate to try and work out what the hell I should be doing that I won’t cause any trouble or make any smart arse comments.

I recently confided to a friend that I quite liked the fact that I’d had some tricky work experiences early in my career, as it means I know I can put up with anything for at least a year.  She seemed to think that was probably not the way to start thinking about a new job but I think it gives me the acceptance that things won’t necessarily go to plan and that has undoubtedly helped me to be flexible and adaptable here in Laos.

In the past week things have changed quite a lot for me in Pakse, leaving me to once again reassess how things are going and whether I made the right move coming out here.

VTE leaving party no.1

Basically, I now have nae mates.

My erstwhile housemate has headed home after spending two years demonstrating his frankly amazing capacity for patience.  This leaves me all alone in an unfeasibly enormous house.  The next nearest volunteer has also gone home, having decided to give the last 6 months of his placement a miss.  The planned Australian volunteer placement which should have begun in November also looks to have fallen through, so it seems I’ll have more time to spend in solitude over the next few months.  It’s probably no bad thing, as having got back from a rather extended weekend in Vientiane, I’m still knackered after three nights of being in bed by nine and eating only abstemious meals of lentils and rice. 

Dirty, hurty feet

I’ll have to get back on form fairly quickly though as I’ve got friends coming to stay in under a week and the house needs a good old clean in the meantime.  I’ve got a few other visits and trips planned in the next few months so I don’t think I’ll have too much time to worry about loneliness but I do think it’s quite telling that both recent departees gave me very similar advice, albeit couched in rather different language.  I won’t share it here but as they probably know me better than any other folk in Laos it would seem a little churlish to ignore them both.  I’ve no doubt I’ll see the two of them again, especially as I told the housemate he could make up for any missed bills by buying me beer and roasted goat in his home town, so it’ll be interesting to see if they think I’ve applied their advice and whether it’ll help me to stay in one place for longer than 16 months.  Considering the last piece of advice I had was not to walk through rice fields with bare feet, it might be an unlikely outcome.

Wan pak yu pathet angit

Love the lairy colours.  Photo courtesy of K. Bilby

Goodness me, it seems like a long time since I wrote my last post and looking back at the archive I discover I’ve managed to skip a month, which irks my slightly obsessive compulsive nature.  It’d be quite easy not to bother writing the blog at all and I could think of any number of excuses but actually I think it’s pretty important to keep some kind of record of what I’ve been up to and my thoughts about living in Laos. 

Once you move past the excitement of the new, it’s so easy to forget and to gloss over the differences in culture and lifestyle.  I stopped taking my camera everywhere after the first couple of months and in any case I’m terrible at getting photos taken of myself, so there’s very little record that I’ve actually been in Laos at all. 

I can assure you that it’s not an elaborate ruse and if you don’t believe me, I’ll show you all the credit card bills for all the flights I’ve taken backwards and forwards.

Talking of which, I’ve been once again racking up the air-miles and given that I made two trips to the UK between the middle of June and the middle of August, I think I can forgive myself for missing a single blog entry.

The most recent trip was my longest yet, at two and a half weeks.  I had to be at home so I could be bridesmaid at a wedding and also because the ruddy Olympics were in town.  How blooming exciting!  Not only were they in town but we also had tickets for the women’s handball preliminary rounds, featuring Spain, Denmark, Russia and Croatia.  Oh yes, read it and weep, let your jealousy ooze forth.  It may not be the 100m final but it was a surprisingly good fun and a great experience just to be in the Olympic park.

Having grown up a couple of miles from the site and driven past it almost every day during the first few years of building, it would have been almost perverse to miss out on the ultimate spectacle.  I have some lingering concerns about some of the associated commercialisation and disruption, as well as what will happen to the area after the games but so far, the Olympic thing seems to have worked out better than I expected.   I even got to see the Queen, which was surprisingly exciting.  She wasn’t competing, although given her frankly amazing sky-diving ability, I can only assume she’s a dead cert for Rio.  She was moseying about near her gaff, showing off her motorcycle outriders and the royal standard on her car but she gave a cheery wave as she passed, and the crowd all said ‘oh, that was the Queen’, which is the correct response in the circumstances.

Unintelligible lab instructions

Anyway, before I made it to London, there was the usual hassle of actually getting there.  I hastily drew up some pictorial plans for my colleagues in the lab and had some last minute visitors from another department who wanted some help editing documents.  Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to make a last minute trip to my rice project but was confident everything was ticking over ok, so I left work relatively happy.

I dropped off my bike and collected my luggage from home and headed towards the bus station, hoping to pick up a samlor on the way.  For some reason, none was to be had and so I ended up walking the 3-4 km fully laden and under the full heat of the sun.  In the time it took, I had six different offers to join parties of beer drinkers but not a single offer of a lift, which I think is a neat summary of priorities in Laos.

The next hitch came at Bangkok.  The lady at the check-in desk wanted my credit card and it took me some time to explain that I had a new card number.  We had a short burst of ‘Lost in Translation’ style confusion, which didn’t help matters; I truly hadn’t a clue what she meant when she asked if I had ‘shairn’ my card but sadly she knew no synonyms and ultimately I ended up with the worst seat possible and a filthy mood to go with it.  Still, the flight was packed, as was Heathrow at the other end, despite subsequent claims that they had below average numbers in July.

Wedding make-up trial no. 1
 

All in all, I had a great time at home and I’m really delighted that I managed to make it to the wedding, which was not only a splendid day in itself but a fitting celebration of the marriage of two of my favourite people.  Brilliant as it was, it still managed to convince me that weddings are too much like hard work, so I think I’ll stick to being a guest.  Being a bridesmaid was surprisingly tolerable, probably because my lovely friend was not at all demanding and her husband is one of the most laid back fellas I’ve ever met.  I was a little disappointed I didn’t get my first choice of wedding make-up but there was a smashing ceilidh and a bouncy castle to make up for it, which really was an inspired inclusion.  My precise memories of the evening are a little hazy but I do remember watching Mo Farah win the 5,000m during a perfectly timed break in proceedings.  I also seemed to spend a fair ammount of time trying to stop my dress from falling off.  The dress had nothing to do with Mo Farah, despite his prodigious running skills and if anyone tries to tell me that constantly adjusting my bust in the style of Les Dawson isn’t cool, then they are just plain wrong.

Clearly pissed, dress clearly falling down.

I made two mistakes at the wedding; the first of which was having a lengthy anti-marriage chat with my old housemate’s long term boyfriend, although we did later boss the Orcadian strip the willow together, so I think we made up for it.  The second was to pronounce the next morning that I hadn’t been that drunk.  I now realise with a little bit of back counting and taking into account the two previous nights of merriment I’d enjoyed, that I was really quite tipsy.  The photos confirm it.  As did the bride and groom when I suggested it to them. 


Given the range of excitement, the length of my holiday was far too short but I was reassured once again that I felt quite content when I arrived back in Pakse.  Nothing much has changed and the water levels are much lower than last year, so all seems well.  The constant round of demolition and new building work continues in town and my lab colleagues had somehow managed to decipher the drawings I’d left them and have produced some really fantastic cultures.

End of another exhausting holiday - pic courtesy of K. Bilby

Fingers crossed, the last six months of my placement should prove a fitting end to my time in Laos and I won’t spend too long wishing I was back in the UK.  Although, now my summer holidays are over, my thoughts have shifted to my next set of visitors and the best way to spend my last Christmas away from home, so any suggestions are gratefully received.