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.

Fon tok lai lai

The blog’s a bit late this month.  Mostly because I spent a hectic week in the UK, which has thrown my timing but I’ve also been a bit poorly and have struggled for inspiration.  Almost the minute I set foot on home tarmac I developed a cold, having avoided one for the previous 16 months in Laos.   I also managed to develop a nasty infection in my feet and finished the week on strong antibiotics and with a comedy limp.  I’m now well on the mend but added to a dose of jet lag, I’ve been feeling rather groggy.  

Non-waterproof waterproofs

The weather doesn’t really help my general sense of malaise.

My shoes are a bit soggy.  It’s the wet season, so it’s to be expected, although it’s a little disappointing when I try and slip my feet into them, nearly 36 hours after I first got them wet and they’re still damp.  I have a long history of getting my clothes wet in public situations, during rain showers, jumping in puddles, falling in ponds, wading in rivers, paddling in the sea etc and so I often carry spare clothes to change into but I’m really bad at remembering dry shoes; meaning I’m often accompanied by a light squelching.

I’ve just begun the second phase of my rice project and visited Pathumphone district to deliver some fertiliser and discuss the plans for the rest of the season.  The 50km journey started in light drizzle and progressed through various phases of heavy rain through to an outright downpour.  More and more I’m convinced that motorcycling is a fair weather pursuit and only masochists or idiots would consider venturing out in the wet.  Most Lao folk take the sensible decision to shelter at the side of the road during the particularly heavy bursts.  I’m really useless at judging when to push through a shower and when it’s best to stop, so mostly just trust in my Gore-Tex and push on.  My Gore-Tex stopped being waterproof years ago, just after my waterproof trousers gave up, so I generally arrive soaked.

It seems to be a recurring theme of this blog that I have a ridiculous appearance but sadly, as ever, it’s true in the wet.  

The rain has a particularly unpleasant habit of gathering around my crotch, especially when riding into the wind or at higher speeds and given the extra layers of material in the area, this is also the spot which takes the longest to dry.

Not what it looks like!

I think I must be an exceptionally heavy breather because whenever I wear the visor on my motorcycle helmet, it gets fogged up, regardless of the conditions.  To avoid riding completely blind, I lift it a crack but this only means I get a mud splatter beard and moustache. 

So, to paint a picture, I announce my presence by squelching, grinning wildly through a beard of mud, with a huge wet patch around my crotch and a smear of black rubber on my hands from the handlebar grips which are slowly perishing because I keep my bike outside.

More slippery than an ice rink

Apart from looking like a twat (after 28 years, I’m mostly over it), the wet season also brings other disadvantages.  There are fewer opportunities for fieldwork and weekend jaunts become a chore and so increasing amounts of time are spent cooped up in the office or at home.  Laundry takes a lot longer to dry and everything takes on a distinctly musty smell after a couple of weeks of damp conditions.  Probably the most trying aspect of the drenching, is having to avoid slipping over on the smooth concrete outside my house.  It quickly becomes slick with mossy slime and when coupled with a muzzy morning head, many a day has started with a bruised coccyx. 

On the other hand, there are some definite positives.

The temperatures are much more bearable and I can even manage to wear trousers and light sweaters.  I can also drink much more tea and keeping hydrated is less of a problem.  Cool night temperatures make sleeping a lot easier and I like the rhythmic sound of rain on the roof.

One of the even more pleasant side effects of the wet season is that I turn into a de-facto pollinator.  Burrs collect liberally on my legs and get redistributed whither I wander.  I’m a big fan of bees and I quite like the idea of mimicking their habits.  If only I could make honey from regurgitated nectar, my life would be complete and I'd have a useful second income.

Tong kong koy

I was going to write about food this month but having attempted it several times and hit a brick wall, I think I’ll save it for another time.  I’m making a flying visit to the UK in mid June and my mind is too focussed on thinking about all the cheese sandwiches I’m planning to eat to be able to objectively discuss the Lao food situation.

Instead, this month I’ll mostly be writing about my bag.  It doesn’t sound like a promising topic but it’s been increasingly preying on my mind.

Mind yer 'ead!

When I came to Laos I brought with me a small Jansport rucksack which I’d had for at least 8 years, if not longer.  I’d used it more or less every day since I’d bought it, sometimes for text books and files and on other occasions for various collections of stinking sports kit.  It was a hardy bag with excellent pedigree and simple, yet efficient design.  It had a surprisingly good capacity for such a compact load and comfy straps to boot.  It had a lovely internal clip for my keys and two slots which held a pen and a pencil in a reassuringly constant position.  In a life where I frequently become overly attached to inanimate objects, I was particularly attached to my rucksack. 

If you haven’t got too caught up in the emotion of my ode to Jansport bag, you will have noticed my liberal use of the past tense.  Alas, the bag is no more.  It had been suffering for a while, the teeth of its front pocket zip had become warped and chipped and on one fateful, evening motorcycle ride, I lost a packet of tissues into the night, as the zip completely gave way.

I battled through my tears (I had no tissues to dry my eyes), straight to one of the biggest and smartest shops in Pakse, to immediately buy a replacement before I was rendered inert with sentimentality.  I bought a sensible, mid priced rucksack which looked hardy enough to withstand the rigours of the Lao lifestyle.  As soon as I got it home, my housemate said, “I bought a new bag in Laos and it broke within a week”.  I thought nothing more of his pessimistic prediction and merrily burnt my Jansport in a manner befitting such a faithful and loyal companion.

Check out my sewing prowess

One week later, the shoulder strap on my new bag started to come loose.  So it turns out my clever clogs housemate is a soothsayer.  He also has an incredible ability to predict rain to within a couple of minutes, so it could be true.  One night it started raining just as the words 'it's going to rain' left his mouth.  It's the most timely prediction I've ever seen. 

I’ve become quite proficient at fixing things since I came to Laos.  The weather, dust, bumpy roads, textile loving beasties and harsh washing powders have all taken their toll on my clothes, as has my propensity to set myself on fire at regular intervals.  Sewing is also quite a pleasant occupation for a balmy evening spent on the veranda and I’ve become a bit of a dab hand with a needle and thread.  I’ve also mended flip flops with screws and electrical tape, headphones with masking tape, a frying pan with a few twiddles of a screwdriver, an autoclave with garden hose, broken through numerous locked doors and revamped a plumbing system with a shitty stick and a cast iron constitution.

Bungee cord repair

I’m quite proud of myself but also a tad pissed off.  At home I carry a full tool kit, overalls, high-visibility jacket and three pairs of safety boots in the back of my car at all times.  I’ve only ever needed them for fixing fuses and changing lightbulbs.  Here in Laos I only have a small multitool and a penknife which I broke trying to cut into a Durian.  Nevermind, the new bag was duly fixed and so I went on my ever so slightly smug way.  However, there is a twist in this tale, because it turns out that ordinary cotton thread isn’t strong enough to cope with the loads I typically carry (laptop and a few books).  I’m loath to buy the proper equipment to carry out a durable repair, as it’ll probably end up costing more than the bag's worth, especially as I’ve already ripped a hole in the outer layer of material by driving through a coffee field with the bag hanging off the back of my motorbike; which was an accident, not a punishment.

So, the bag has been subjected to a second temporary fix with a bungee cord and will be replaced with a proper but considerably more expensive new rucksack, which I’ll purchase when I’m on my flying visit to the UK.  I’ll probably go for an Eastpak because it seems too cruel to subject a new Jansport to the inevitable comparisons with its predecessor

 The only problem, is that my bungee cord fix makes me look ridiculous and means every time I need to unstrap my bag I end up twanging myself in the face.  I’m quite used to looking ridiculous and being giggled at wherever I go, so I’ll suck it up for the next couple of weeks but it does sometimes feel that the universe is working against my attempts to reinvent myself as a sensible adult.  

Koy kaa meng ga bua

This month’s post has the slightly macabre title ‘I kill butterflies’. 

One of the benefits of writing this blog is that I get to learn a different Lao phrase each month but I’m not sure I’m ever going to find regular use for the phrase ‘I kill butterflies’.  Still, it’s nice to know I've got it. 


No elephants were harmed in the making of this blog

I hasten to add that I don’t kill them deliberately; in fact, I'd say they use me to commit suicide.  I regularly find myself peeling the remains of some of the most beautiful butterflies I've ever seen from the visor of my motorcycle helmet and I'm told that riding behind me is like cruising through a wake of gossamer wings, antennae and compound eyes.  If I had to take a stab in the dark, I'd suggest that the true title of the piece (butterflies use me to commit suicide) might translate as ‘meng ga bua sai koy samlap kaa dtua dtai’ but it doesn’t have quite the same snappy ring to it.  Still, it’s another tick for my big list of Lao vocabulary. 

Normally, I like to regularly repeat any new phrases to myself, so I can try to commit them to memory but I think I'll give this one a miss.  I'm fairly sure that if I walk around muttering ‘suicide, suicide, suicide’ for the next couple of days, my colleagues will recognise it as a cry for help and have me sectioned or deported.


The subject of death is on my mind because since I've been in Laos, I have been responsible for the deaths of more animals than I think I managed in my previous 26 years combined.  I’m ashamed to say that quite a few have even been cold blooded murders, which just isn't the kind of zen approach I expected to develop in a Buddhist country.   

 Mosquitoes regularly fall victim to my murderous intent and I have to admit that I really enjoy killing them.  The bastards have it coming.  I went so far as to google ‘Evolutionary value of mosquitoes’ and I’m  still struggling to find anything to say in their favour.  The best I’ve found is that they potentially serve a purpose in human population control but surely we’ve got war and famine to do that for us without encouraging insects to develop a eugenic streak.

Death to all rice pests - even pretty pink ones!

I would hate to seem species-ist and it's not just mosquitoes that I terrorise.  Ants and cockroaches also fall foul and despite their legendary indestructibility, cockroaches seem oddly susceptible to some latent chemical in my house.  I'm pleased to say I haven't killed anything larger than my thumb (my very own rule of thumb) but I've had some near misses, especially on the road.  Goats, dogs, cows, buffalo and people all stray erratically into my path on a frighteningly regular basis.  It's also noteworthy that the only time I've ever understood the basis for the jokes about chickens is here in Laos.  "Why did the chicken cross the road?", is in fact a frequent exclamation, as I swerve around the back roads trying to avoid the livestock.

 As I've become more acclimatised, I thankfully don't suffer quite so many mosquito bites as I used to but there are still some places I try to avoid because they seem to attract the more toothsome insects.  Occasionally though, I still find myself at the centre of a full on attack and often end up smearing the sticky mix of dead carcasses and blood all down my arms and legs.  It’s definitely a look.  I think I’ll call it ‘disease vector chic’. 

Catching the blighters isn't always so easy and quite often I find myself resorting to punch ups, landing only glancing blows on insects that are able to take full advantage of their flight response. If you’re now imagining me in boxing gloves squaring up to a mossie whilst shouting "Fight or flight, you tiny mofo?", it’s not far from the truth, except I don’t have boxing gloves.



My sister taking no chances

The guilt of all these deaths generally weighs heavy on my peace loving shoulders but I recently got my comeuppance when on a short ride home from the office.  The visor of my helmet is a bit scratched and gets so quickly encrusted with dust that I rarely pull it down.  On this particular journey, an unidentified bug flew into my eye, which is another favoured death zone for the animals with no road sense.  Normally, I’m able to brush bugs aside fairly easily and I’ve even developed a special squint which means I can wash bug pieces towards the corners of my eyes, with my tears and still focus on the road.  That day, it was not to be and it took several minutes of prodding and poking with a cotton bud in front of a mirror to free the cadaver from its chosen resting place.
         

Any lasting damage?

Shortly before I came out to my placement, I had an eye test in the UK to make sure my records were up-to-date.  I'm massively intrigued to know what they’ll find next time, as it could be a valuable chance to catalogue some of the broad diversity of Lao wildlife.  I shouldn't complain too much though, as the small sacrifice of my youthful 20/20 vision, pales in comparison to the plight of all the members of the insect community I have so ruthlessly slaughtered and will continue to maim and kill over the next year. 

Lastly, to any daddy-long-legs reading this, I promise I will try to mend my ways before I get back home.  

Hong gaan bpai sa nii

Getting post in Laos is a tricky business. 

Controversial new spelling of my name

It’s also been really difficult to get the message across to friends and family at home that I really don’t have a postal address.  I get the impression they think I’m being reclusive and awkward.  So here it is once more for those in the cheap seats, I don’t have a postal address.  Promise.  I would love to get some letters in the post.  I would like few things more.  Despite having limited space, I made sure I brought out my goodbye cards, so I could check some handwritten messages every now and again.  For most things email is fine but you can never quite capture the doodles and idiosyncrasies of something written with a pen.  

It is possible to pay for a PO box and it is apparently possible to use a post restante service at the post office but I don’t really know how it works and it seems like a bit of a long shot that it will go off without a hitch in a town like Pakse.  Who knows, I could well have a year’s worth of post waiting for me at the post office only a few streets away.  One of my friends who lives in a small village has made an excellent arrangement with his local post office so they contact him by phone whenever they have any packages for him.  I suspect that such an informal system relies heavily on the fact that he is a rather noticeable figure in a small community and if I tried the same in the heaving metropolis of Pakse, I might hit a brick wall.

Look how much fun I'm having!

The best way to transport non-emailable items around the country seems to be by bus but this is a far from fool proof method.  I recently had cause to try and receive an envelope sized package from the southern province of Attapeu.  You’ll be disappointed to find out that the package didn’t contain nuclear secrets, stolen jewels from an ancient kingdom or anything remotely interesting but instead a small plastic and paper colour chart for helping to gauge the nitrogen level in a rice crop.  Stifle those yawns because this is fascinating stuff!  Anyway, my friend in Attapeu gave me the bus number, phone number of the company and a rough arrival time.  After trawling all the bus stations and a carrying out more than a few confused conversations, I eventually picked up my letter three days later.  In the mean time, I'd clocked up 68km on my motorbike and the letter had made at least one round trip.

New lab

That’s a combined total of 468 wasted kilometres just to deliver one, first class stamp sized letter.  It was definitely worth it though and I now can rest soundly knowing I topped up with an extra 23kg/ha.

You may have noticed that this blog post is a little later in the month than I normally post them.  That’s because, shock of shocks, I’ve actually been busy for the past few weeks and haven’t had time to squeeze in a page of inane ranting.  The reason is that we’ve just opened a new plant disease diagnostic lab at my office and we’ve been working on the set-up, sample collection and initial training of local staff.  I’m hopeful that it should provide some fruitful work for the next few months, provided we can successfully navigate the delivery pitfalls of getting chemical and glassware supplies from Thailand.

The last time I tried to order chemical supplies, I was working in the UK.  After registering, I got a call back from the supply company about an hour later wanting to check the order details with Professor Horsestrap.

Reluctantly, I had to admit that the eminent professor was in fact me, as I’d been unable to resist the seemingly endless choice of titles from the drop-down box on the website and invented an alter ego.  To be fair, I’d been egged-on by my colleague but he was nowhere to be seen when they called back and so I spent the next ten minutes persuading the chemical company that Prof. Archibald Horsestrap was a suitable person to sell sodium hydroxide and glass beakers to, despite his surprisingly feminine voice.

All the instructions are in Chinese.

Anyway, I’m sure that a Thai company will be a bit more laidback about transvestite professors but I’m a bit concerned that given my previous postal experiences, Prof. Horsestrap may go empty handed.

Just last week I hoped to take delivery of 25 diagnostic manuals sent from Australia.  A single book was brought in to me with great pomp but no explanation as to where its companions might have got to.  After some probing, it turned out that my over eager boss had already got them stamped with the department brand and distributed them.  I explained that I thought there might be more worthy recipients than the statistics department as I’m not entirely sure how often they’re called upon to diagnose plant diseases.  After we rounded them all back up, we were still missing around 15 copies.  Following a good deal of nagging, a search was eventually made and the books finally turned up but it does make you think about how resources are managed, especially as a microwave, a centrifuge and various sundry items have already gone missing. 

Where's Postman Pat when you need him?

Viek ban

Jingle jangle, jingle, jangle.   Am I being haunted by the ghost of Jimmy Saville?  No, then perhaps Father Christmas and Rudolf are making a late stop off to get some winter sun.  No, well then obviously I have a herd of cattle grazing in my garden.  Bingo!  The grass needs cutting anway, so I can happily go back to sleep.  Bzzzzzzzzzz, bgrzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Hmm, am I being attacked by a swarm of killer bees?  No, the hive is definitely attached to my neighbour’s house and not mine and that itching is undoubtedly mosquito bites.  It must be my neighbour starting some early morning welding.  Hoooowwwwwww, haaaaooooooooooooow.  So it seems packs of dogs really do howl at a full moon?  I can definitely go back to sleep for another hour if the moon’s still out.  Of course just as I’m drifting off, the village loudspeaker system will kick in with its morning ritual of news and song.  If only the sound wasn’t so distorted, it might be quite informative.  I can understand the early wake-up as bed time in Lao is similarly early, so I find it’s best to just give up, get up, kick off the ‘Hello Kitty’ bed sheets which have inexplicably formed themselves into a ball around me once again, have a cold shower and some hot tea and start the day again.

Hungry cows - in my ruddy garden!

The cold shower isn’t a choice, although now the temperatures are on the up again, it’s starting to become quite welcome.  Why a house needs 200 television channels but no hot water system is a slight mystery to me but as long as I get the timing right, the water pressure is good enough to blast off the worst of the grime and dust.

My house is unrelentingly dusty, so any kind of shower is a welcome relief.  It will probably come as a surprise to know that I spend a significant proportion of my weekends cleaning but I really do.  Laundry is all done by hand in two buckets, with some fearsome washing powder and stain removing soap.  All in all, with soaking time included, one load takes me around 2 hours.  If I clean the ‘Hello Kitty’ bedsheets (they came with the house), another load of washing will take me another couple of hours.  Boiling water for the washing up takes around 15 minutes; a trip to the market takes around an hour and a half and I could spend all sodding day sweeping the floors and still be left with dusty floors at the end of it.  So, in a normal week, if I devote a day at the weekend to getting the housework done, then things are pretty much sanitary for the following few days.

My mess making nemeses

I’ve decided to blame the chickens for the dust.  They’re not my chickens, just as the hungry cows aren’t mine either.  They belong to some unspecified neighbour but wander around foraging as they please.  The little minxes have decided that it’s great fun to move the soil from the beds at the side of the house onto the concrete path, where it can easily be stirred up by the merest breeze and from thence be re-distributed over the house, the veranda, my motorbike and of course any drying laundry.  I hate those bloody chickens and I don’t even know what they’re looking for.  The other side of the house would be much more lucrative in terms of food sources, so I can only conclude that they’re trying to piss me off.  Either that or they’re attention seeking because there’s no doubt I’ll be having a little word with them about their antisocial behaviour.  I don’t think their chicken brains can interpret the stream of invective I direct their way, so they probably think I’m being friendly.

Because of the chickens, my clothes and pyjamas are always filthy with end-of-the-day dirt, particularly around the lower back.  When I say lower back, I mean lower back and not arse.  I can’t work out why but perhaps it's because the sweat streams down my back, collecting dirt as it goes, to form a pool of sludge at my waistband.  So my sheets get grubby quite quickly, mostly from my dusty feet but the grimy pyjamas don’t help. 

My mother always denies it but as children she used to get us to clean the worst of the garden dirt off our feet by flushing them in the toilet, so we didn’t tramp filth round the house and into the bath.  I think it’s quite a nifty idea, so I’ve extrapolated to use my in-built bathroom arse-hose to clean not only my feet but the bathroom tiles and to give the laundry a final jet wash.  The arse-hose is like a hand-held bidet and no-one can persuade me that it’s useful for its intended purpose but I hate to see a gadget go to waste.

Hanging the washing - at least it dries quickly!

So you can see, I really put in my best effort to trying to keep the house clean but it’s inevitably a compromise between cleanliness and time efficiency.  In the warmer months, it’s also necessary to make sure the house is open, to moderate the temperature and by its design, there are vents and gaps in most places.  In particular, there are vents in the bathroom which coupled with the fact that the shed is just the other side of the wall, means that insects and bugs like to come in to the toilet area to die.  This really gives the wrong impression and no amount of arse-hose to foot spa conversion will mend those hygiene bridges!  I should also admit, part of my desire to keep the place clean is just because I don’t want the chickens to think that they’ve won.

 An added bonus with all this vigorous cleaning is that at least one night a week I can go to bed at about 9pm really tired, albeit in what is essentially the same dust bed a hamster might enjoy sleeping in.  At least it helps me ignore the next morning’s cacophony of cows, welding, dogs and loudspeakers.