Kittens, friendly vampires and playing tennis with yeung.

Shorts and kittens....

Asterix scar #11

... don't mix, as Alfred pointed out to me. Shorts are the perfect attire for Lao but when you are living with an insecure and easily-frightened kitten, there are rather obvious drawbacks. So either I revert to trousers or send Asterix to feline assertiveness training (Alfred: That is probably available here. There is an amazing array of foods, accessories and services for pets here. Then again, there is an amazing number of cats and dogs. I suspect if a census were held, each Lao household would be the proud possessor of 3.2 dogs, most of them reasonably friendly, with the exception of the German Shepherds some falang seem to enjoy keeping as guard dogs).



House-hunting
So we are house-hunting again. The house we are living in is lovely and in a great location. The noise issue (see below) is not a major one but there are two things we really feel we can't manage without:

• a garden of some sort (which means there would be some sunshine as well)
• a proper space in which to teach students.

We have looked at some lovely houses but they are either too expensive or too far from the centre, or both. Of course, not knowing exactly where we will end up working does make it a little difficult to decide where to live, given that we travel everywhere by bike (Alfred: and yet another contender for 'Understatement of the Year'!). Today we looked at two houses, one in a perfect location but small and cramped and with no proper garden, the other north of the centre and nicer but also with no garden.  But both of them shared one characteristic with almost every house we have seen so far - very dark inside! Lao people seem go to extraordinary lengths to keep the insides of the houses in permanent shade: shutters and screens OK, but there are always heavy curtains, permanently drawn. And the windows seems to be designed to open onto areas which receive the least possible amount of light. (Alfred: I'm thinking vampires. Extraordinarily friendly vampires, no doubt, and ones who have abandoned every aspect of their former heritage except for their aversion to sunlight). Lao people do seem to have an ambiguous relationship with the sun. Many carry umbrellas to protect themselves and it is almost impossible to buy cosmetic products such as moisturiser or suchlike that do not have whitening agents added to them. And these are widely used - you see a lot of VERY pale Lao people and not all the body parts show the same hue! (Alfred: In a strange way it is like the inverse of Ireland, driving past the disco at Wezz and seeing the acres of flesh with unevenly-applied fake tan in different hues). 

Noise and Having a Good Time
Apart from being ridiculously friendly and nice (Alfred: You make that sounds like an accusation) Lao people certainly know how to have a good time. In our neighbourhood there has been a party somewhere nearby pretty much every night and, given how often one hears and reads comments on how quiet or even silent Lao people are, they do like making noise!! Where we are living at the moment, the major sources of noise are (in no particular order and depending on the time of day):

• dogs barking (Alfred: sometimes, during the night, ALL the dogs start a barking competition, dozens and dozens of them. Impressive, or at least that is the adjective that initially springs to mind. After ten minutes or more, other adjectives are applied, most of them unsuitable for your tender ears).
• cocks crowing - the earliest so far was 0300, which is WAY before sunrise (Alfred: Send him a memo)
• children playing
• children playing a game called 'I'll shout a word and you see if you can shout it louder until one of us gives up'
• children reciting the alphabet in English for practice (Alfred: And always leaving out the 'W' for some reason)
• motorbikes (Alfred: though it is cool - on the rare occasions Ruairí bothers to get up early enough - to see the mothers piling all their kids onto one motorbike to drop them off to their various schools at 0730).
• monks chanting and beating drums (though actually there has been less of this than we would have liked (Alfred: be careful what you wish for! Remember Luang Prabang where the monastery beside the hotel had erected a sound system  borrowed from an AC/DC concert and played chants and music at 120 decibels for 72 hours straight)
• traffic - this is only when we venture out but traffic at rush hour is quite something. (Alfred: more on Lao driving habits later. Oh, right now, actually.)

Driving in Lao
Now that we have two bicycles, we have started exploring the city properly. Cycling here has major advantages and also major disadvantages (Alfred: and we haven't experienced the rainy season yet!). It is pretty safe as, compared to back at home, cyclists are accorded the same respect as anyone else on the roads (motorbikes, tuk-tuks, cars, lorries, vendors with huge carts being pushed down the wrong side of the road) and cars do not overtake you if they aren't sure there isn't enough space. Indeed, one noticeable thing is cars waiting behind you because they can see that you are going to have to swing out soon to go around a parked car (or whatever). And the city is pretty flat so no major hills or climbs.

On the downside, there is little street-lighting and it is very dusty, and the dust/sand piles up along the side of the road, which makes you have to cycle out towards the middle to avoid slipping. Lao people also have an unnerving habit of not bothering to switch on their lights - enough said.

But there are no arguments, very little beeping of horns unless actually necessary, even when stuck at roundabouts or intersections behind someone doing something that would inspire road rage at home.

The one things we really notice is the amazing number of gigantic and very expensive new cars: every kind of 4x4, Hummers, Lexus, Mercedes, yellow Ferrari sports cars, you name it. And a lot of them are being driven extremely cautiously by people who don't seem to be exactly sure what they are doing. A friend of mine who has been here longer than us says that land prices have more than quadrupled in the last five years, so many people have come into a lot of money through land sales and this is where all the big cars come from. Maybe so. It is noticeable that, compared to other developing countries, the vast majority of these cars are being driven by Lao and not by falang (Alfred: that is when you can actually see anything in through the tinted windows!). 

Learning Lao
(Alfred: Ha ha! Ruairí thought he had deleted this heading! Before leaving Dublin, Ruairí and Martine invested in an impressive array of books and CDs to learn Lao. But while Martine has been diligent about learning the alphabet and basic vocabulary - OK, 'diligent' may be putting it strongly but it is a question of contrast - Ruairí's achievements to date consist of the following phrases:

Hello
Thank You
Turn Left
Turn right
Go straight on
Mosquito

Speaking of yeung (mosquitoes), he has invested in a new toy, an electrified tennis racquet with which he swats mosquitoes to the accompaniment of huge flashes of blue sparks (the cats are NOT impressed with this at all). Maybe he could learn his numbers in Lao by keeping an audible running total of casualties! And what is the Lao for 'Gotcha!'?)

Wall chart on the downstairs wall which Ruairí should look at more regularly. Top right corner is the letter 'y' as in 'yes', illustrated by a friendly mosquito (yeung). 

A round-up of life so far

(Alfred: Yes, sorry, it's been over a week now, which has the additional side-effect of making the blog entries so long only the most amazingly bored among you will have the patience to work your way through it all, but there you are). Yes, my apologies too but here goes on life so far in Lao.

INFO NOTE: Basically, it should be 'Lao' for everything - the country, the people, the adjective, whatever. 'Laos' is increasingly not used as the name for the country and 'Laotian' is definitely out!

INFO NOTE TWO: I have no idea why inserting photos in this blog is such a pain. So please excuse random layouts and the appearance of large spaces for no apaprent reason. There is no reason (Alfred: Other than that Ruairí possibly doesn't know how this site works). 

FOOD
As we expected, one of the things we were most looking ... (Alfred: Whoa! I distinctly remember from an earlier blog that I, Alfred, was to be put in sole charge of everything to do with food writing, to spare our audience from your interminable photos and recipes. So, here goes. Basically, Ruairí hasn't cooked anything yet that he wouldn't have already cooked back in Dublin - with the exception of pasta sauce from a jar, which he has definitely never done before. But noodle soup (pho or fer as they pronounce it here) has been a staple of the menu. The highlight has been Martine's salads!! Diced carrot, mooli, broccoli and onion in a mayonnaise and soya oil dressing with teeny-tiny tomatoes!! Awesome).

Stir-fried spicy wild boar

Fair enough. But there have been other highlights. Fruit is absolutely amazing (see photos) and eating out is extremely cheap and gives the opportunity to try things I really can't do myself. A little local restaurant served me (for 3 euro) one of the best dishes I have ever tasted - stir-fried spicy wild boar! And they have other amazing things we are waiting to try - preserved eggs (black), deep-fried frogs and many other things that I suspect I will never cook myself (Alfred: Suspect! Ha! And what about my monopoly on writing about .... ah, never mind).

For breakfast today we tried something we had bought at a fundraising fair yesterday for WIG (Women's International Group) - sticky rice roasted in bamboo tubes. The rice is mixed with coconut, red beans and something sweet and then roasted and then you peel it off and eat it. Delicious!!

                 

 And as for fruit: well - mangoes, mangosteens, longans, bananas, tangerines, custard apples, dragon fruit (Alfred: Which look great but - at least IMHO - taste of very little), tamarind, apples, Chinese pears, more mangoes, melons, cantaloupes, guavas, pineapples, watermelons, persimmons and many more as-yet-unidentified. Oh, and purple carrots which seem to be regarded as a fruit here (Alfred: Well, we bought a carton of purple carrot juice. You can also get broccoli juice and beetroot juice, so the line between 'fruit' and 'vegetable' here seems a little blurred.)

Outside Mr. Noy's Fruit Heaven, Rue Heungbone

 And, last but not least - beer!  Beer Lao is the most common brand here, far and away but my personal favourite is a beer called Namkhong which I discovered here in January. And, lo and behold, while I have seen it nowhere else, my local supermarket sells it by the crate! Twelve large bottles (that's 660ml) for 75,000 kip! To convert into euro, just remove the last four digits. Yes, four!


THAT LUANG FESTIVAL
Our first major excursion into Lao culture was the three-day festival centered on That Luang on the north side of the city. The stupa there (Alfred: Big, floodlit golden thing in the photos) is Lao's national symbol and we were told this was a major event that hundreds of thousands of Lao would attend. So off we went on Sunday afternoon, hoping to time our arrival for the fireworks.

Deep breath. I have NEVER, in my life, been anywhere so noisy! It was incredible - every single booth had a loudspeaker cranked up to the maximum, even the ones where the monks were selling indulgences or whatever (more on that later). Over all this was the general public announcement system and a variety of stages with pop groups, people selling stuff and just general mayhem. Added to this were the smells: food of all sorts roasting and boiling and grilling (gorgeous) and the remnants of food trodden underfoot and gently decomposing in the evening heat (not quite so gorgeous). It was great!

We ended up at a Muay Lao kick-boxing event. Muay Lao is the national sport (even if soccer is more popular) and is basically the same as any other kick-boxing you may be familiar with. However, once the fighting eventually started (Alfred: And rarely has the word 'eventually' carried such a weight of understatement) it was clear that this was more of an exhibition event than a real contest. The second bout (and the last one we saw) featured an Italian boxer against a local fighter. And I say - no word of a lie - I could have put on a better performance than he did (Alfred: For once, Ruairí is not exaggerating). But it was good fun and the best bit was this creepy music they play while the fight is in progress, a chant/rhythm/whatever we heard a few days later when we saw people rehearsing a wedding procession near a temple. Strange - need to find out more about that.

 The entire area was filled with stalls. One section was commercial - mobile phone companies, beer companies, health food, health insurance (Alfred: Really?), cars, motorbikes and so on. But elsewhere was like an old-fashioned carnival, with sideshows and rifle ranges and coconut shies (Alfred: Oddly appropriate here) and fortune telling ... and monks. Lots and lots of monks selling ... well, good luck I suppose. Some of them just sat in tents waiting for people to come and make a donation and write their wishes for the coming year on a piece of paper and put it in the box but others were much more pro-active, with one monk on a microphone exhorting and encouraging people to do whatever the monastic equivalent of 'Roll right up!' is. (Alfred: Give over, you have NO idea what they were saying. They could have been reciting verses from the holy texts for all you know).

The sideshows were fun - we particularly enjoyed what we had previously seen in Phonsavan which is throwing darts at balloons to win prizes. A simple, uncomplicated game and there was at least 100 metres of stalls given over solely to this!!

So, a few hours later, following  two plates of randomly-chosen deep-fried objects (turned out to be pork and was really nice if you like chewy, which we do) and some tepid fries, we struggled through the still-growing crowds to make our weary way home. At least we now know, Lao certainly know how to have fun (if not how to pick up litter). (Alfred: to be fair you guys did go up a few days later and the place was spotless. But litter is a bit of a problem all right).


BICYCLES! (please note use of plural)

Yes! We are now jointly mobile. A second bike has been purchased, identical to the first one, for $100 and now we can explore the city properly. It really makes a massive difference in terms of getting to places as the temperature here is usually around 30 degrees during the day and long walks can be a little bit tiring. However, I may need a different saddle for my bike as this one can't be raised very high  and my legs hardly bend at all when I cycle. (Alfred: the second bike is a mixed blessing. It was fun watching Ruairí trotting along behind Martine on her bike, murmering breathlessly to himself 'All exercise is good exercise' but we now have the pleasure of watching his knees coming up almost as far as his nose while he cycles. Hours of fun for the population! And Lao are not shy about expressing their feelings of hilarity visibly. Remember the day Ruairi and Martine bought two large potted plants: Ruairí carried one home which inspired much hilarity and Martine cycled home with one in her basket on front of the bike, peering round it at traffic like Livingstone going through the jungle. How to get known in your neighbourhood!)

That was true about the saddle but I bought a spanner yesterday so things are a little bit better! But we are both getting a lot more exercise here than in Ireland and, for whatever reason, eating a lot less, so I am waiting for my famous resemblance to Buddha to start disappearing!

TEACHING
I now have my first student, an Italian gentleman from Rome who I see three times a week for two hours per class. In the very first class, I decided to introduce him to the beauty of hurling via a YouTube video and a Wikipedia article. Amazingly, he still agreed to continue with the classes!!

MONKS
We are still here a short enough time that monks still appear at least a little bit exotic. What still gives me pause is when I see monks on mobile phones, buying printers in computer shops or, in the case of the boxing at That Luang, stealing my chair. I stood up to see a little better and when I turned back, there was a monk standing on my chair. I turned to Martine and uttered the perfectly reasonable sentence in English: 'There is a monk standing on my chair.' For some reason, she found this hilarious (Alfred: Probably because she thought you were making it up, as usual). 

We live right beside a temple, Wat Saphanthong Neua, and I cycle through it most days. A few days ago there was a monk on his mobile phone and smoking a cigarette. Call me hidebound, but I think standards are slipping.

OTHER MILESTONES

• We found a house
• We acquired two cats
• We got excellent high-speed internet
• We bought a printer
• We opened a PO box (Alfred: You are in the process of opening a PO box. There is a lot of paperwork before they issue the ID cards you need to gain access to your box!). For this we had to supply photos and we had brought a supply of passport photos to Lao. Oh no, they were FAR too big! We had to go and get tiny tiny little 2cm x 2.5cm photos which took ages. But soon we will have an address to which you can all start sending stuff!!!
• We paid the water and electricity bills

The internet connection is really good, probably better than we had back in Dublin and certainly cheaper. I watched Everton-Liverpool streaming last night with a virtually perfect picture and Skype and Gmail chat work fine.

CAREER FAIR
I just saw on Facebook that there will be a massive careers fair in Vientiane next month, focussing on education and development! Every school and NGO in Lao will be there. It's almost as if they planned it for us!

Speaking of Facebook, even Martine has had to admit that there are times when social media comes into its own. There are a wide variety (Alfred: Is, there IS a wide variety. And you expect to teach English) of pages: Vientiane Buy & Sell, Vientiane Property, Vientiane Careers, Vientiane Foodie, Vientiane Social, Jobs Lao PDR and so on. And so many helpful people!

CATS
I was going to include an item on our cats but it would take too long (Alfred: Just what we need, yet more gushing, diabetes-inducing drivel about cats on the internet. Yes, they are cute. Pretty much all cats are cute. End of story, let's leave it at that. There are other fur-bearing animals who deserve a look-in from time to time (and I don't mean dogs).

STOP PRESS! RUAIRÍ GETS KICKED IN THE BALLS BY A LAO MOTHER WITH TWO SMALL CHILDREN!!

Friday 15th November

(Alfred: Rarely in the annals of recent human history has a more heinous act been perpetrated on an innocent, kind, personable gentleman than was visited upon Ruairí today. Walking down the street towards the Joma café, his thoughts focussed on the impending possibility of purchasing a cafetière, savouring the rush-hour aroma that perfectly blends the aroma of sewage with the fumes of leaded petrol and observing the bevy of primary schoolchildren being collected from school, his progress was rudely interrupted by an agonizing pain in his groin. Turning, he saw the face of a diminutive Lao mother sitting on a motorbike with two small children, a face that initially registered consternation but a consternation that rapidly bubbled over with hilarity as the surrounding crowd of parents and children roared with laughter at the sight of the falang (foreigner) desperately trying not to hold his testicles in  front of the assembled spectators. The woman had been attempting to throw her leg over the back of the motorcycle and had not seen the approaching figure, thus neatly burying her heel in his groin in a manner that would have drawn applause from Jackie Chan enthusiasts the world over).

Yeah, it was an interesting experience. For those of you out there who have ever suffered a sharp blow to that particular region (all hurlers please raise your hands) you will appreciate that the initial instinct when unexpectedly struck in the groin (Alfred: Unexpectedly ?As opposed to expecting to be struck there?) is to cup and then gently massage the area until the pain has dissipated. When surrounded by about fifty small schoolchildren and their parents, that instinct is countered by the more obvious fear of being thought … well, you know, especially by anyone who may have missed the initial incident!! So I strode (Alfred: STRODE? Limped bowlegged more like) onwards, smiling gently at my assailant to reassure her that I was OK and grinning inanely at others who had missed the original incident but were having the story related incoherently to them by parents whose tears of laughter made the telling somewhat difficult.

Neighbours (animal and human)
The sweet soft strains of Lao karaoke are wafting through our new house - presumably a neighbour having a party. As they were last night and will do for the next few nights (this weekend is a major festival and Monday is a public holiday). However, even for those who are not lovers of the eastern art of badly mimed music, this is the least of our auditory worries. With large families on each side of us, and an incredible concentration of dogs, cats and cocks (Alfred: I think 'cockrels' is more suitable in this context, in case of any unfortunate misunderstandings), leaves being blown along corrugated iron roofs, mosquitos humming by like low-flying B-52 bombers (Alfred: Steady on!), sleep has been a commodity in short supply. (Alfred: Oh, and what is this idea that raising your voice in anger is frowned upon in Lao society? Would someone mind passing that on to 'les voisins'?). And, of course, the heat. (Alfred: And let's not forget your snoring. At least I am out in the other room, unlike your unfortunate spouse who actually has to share the same bed!).

For the first few days, the neighbours seemed to pretty much ignore us completely which was, to be absolutely honest, a blessed relief after our experiences in Africa. The front of our house is a wooden fence with large spaces and the house beside us has three small children but not once have they stared in or called or anything. Then, two days ago, as I walked out, one neighbour come out on a motorbike with a Chelsea tracksuit top on! So, instant bond! (Alfred: Hmmm, not sure about 'instant'. Ruairí pointed at the guy's chest in what must at first have appeared a rather threatening gesture and then mimed a love of the Chelsea football team. How did he mime this? Well, he ... em, you kinda had to be there. Ruairí seems to forget that people sometimes just buy stuff with logos on them and are not always devoted to the organisation, team or brand of coffee that adorns their clothing). But the language is a problem - we are definitely going to have to learn some Lao and soon if we are going to be able to be properly polite to these - or any - neighbours.

They said there would be a mouse?

Living with cats
The house came with two cats who we have christened Asterix and Obelix. I like cats and Martine likes them even more and I am used to them when visiting my mother's house but living with them is a very differnet experience! Asterix (on the left) has a fondness for climbing the papaya tree at the front of the house, a tree that is approximately seven to eight  metres high and from which we have already had to rescue him twice. But they are great company and a lot of fun. However, we have been told that Lao aren't really keen on having cats as pets (Alfred: Unlike dogs - every house seems to have at least three!) - something about their being close to the spirit world and therefore being respected but not necessarily seen as pets.

HABEMUS DOMUM!

Well, sometimes a fondness for watching Premier League football leads to unexpected dividends. While idly watching Liverpool destroy Fulham on Lao National Television (thanks to their recent agreement with the licensing authorities), I was also keeping an eye on Chelsea’s progress via the Guardian’s Matchday coverage when a little icon told me there had been a posting on the Vientiane Buy and Sell page on Facebook. And there it was (I shall reproduce it in its original form):

 (Alfred: Oh no, you won't! Cortney is a proud respector of the Buy & Sell in Vientiane Facebook page guidelines and deleted the ad once she had secured a tenant! Old Ruairí is slowing down. Must be the heat. Not his age, of course, 53 isn't OLD!)

 Anyway, Cortney posted that she was moving and her small 2-bed Laotian house was available to sublet and I got in first and we went to see it the next morning and we are going to take it on a temporary basis, month-to-month, to see if it will work for us. The pros are:

• We both like it
• It is in a good area (though a little nearer the centre would have been better (Alfred: Come on, you both knew you were being a little unrealistic on that score)
• It is all wood and tiles!
• Easy to maintain
• Comes with two kittens free of charge
• Costs the incredible price of $300 per month
• Is being sublet to us by a charming Texan teacher who is being incredibly helpful with every aspect of the business (Alfred: Her time spent with the Mongolian nomadic tribe means Vientiane is probably relatively straightforward)

Cons:

• No separate garden
• No balcony
• Very hemmed in with neighbours
• Limited privacy
• Suicidal staircase (Alfred: Don’t exaggerate! You just need to be … careful, especially coming down).

 Since the above was written we have been back again and are liking it more and more, with ideas for screens and plants, moving the furniture around, painting a bit and so on. Cortney has been an angel - she has left us a huge amount of crockery, bedclothes, a really good bicycle, and - most important of all - knows all the key-but-hard-to-find-out stuff, like how do you pay electricity, what do you do about garbage, where are the best shops and so on. We move in tomorrow afternoon!! (Alfred: It being Tuesday breakfast as he types this hoping to finish before the internet connection gives out, the only issue we have had with the Vientiane Garden Hotel.)

 

 

(Alfred: The first two photos speak for themselves but the third .... is Ruairí lactating? I know acquiring two kittens can inspire a maternal instinct in even the manliest of bosoms (to coin a phrase) but this would be taking it a bit far. Ruairí maintains it is just sweat and one might be tempted to accept that explanation - especially on a day where the temperatures were around 33 degrees and the two of them were walking a lot - if it were not for the unusual location. Why no sweatrings around the armpits? Around the somewhat diminished but still significantly observable middle section? So, something to keep an eye on, eh?)

SENGDARA FITNESS CENTER/CENTRE

Our house is just behind the expat Mecca otherwise known as the Sengdara Fitness Centre. Almost every single real estate ad gave a location in terms of distance either from here or VIS (Vientiane International School). It is actually not bad at all - annual membership 2m kip (200 euro) with everything a gym offers - pool, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi, machines, cafe and so on. Cycling may turn out to be all the exercise I need but I do like a routine so I might give it a go. They do sell a range of 'healthy products' as well - maybe I will give the 'salmon ovary protein preparation' a go next time.

.

FOOD

(Alfred: Those of you who know Ruairí even casually may have wondered at the relatively small amount of space allocated so far to the topic of food. Anyone who followed his January trip on Facebook was bombarded with photos of pretty much every single meal he ate! So this time, I had a word in his shell-like and he eased off and said he would leave it to me to handle this aspect of things.

So, initially it was a frantic sampling of all the favourite – and some new – Lao dishes, mostly in ordinary streetside restaurants: grilled fish, fiery hot papaya salads, larb, noodle soups and so on. Then, two nights ago, a truly exotic experience – a Belgian restaurant where they feasted on pork fillet au poivre and … a hamburger!! Last night was Ray’s Grill where Martine for the first ever sampled (via a piece stolen sampled from Ruairí’s plate) a Philadelphia Cheesesteak. So impressed – and I mean IMPRESSED – was she with this culinary ambrosia that they promptly went back there again tonight so she could have her very own Philly Cheesesteak. The owner, Daniel, is from Seattle and imports his beef from Australia and, I have to say (if I can believe Ruairí) that both the burgers and the Cheesesteak were amazing!

Ruairí’s main concern at the moment is sourcing what he needs to let flow his culinary arts in the shape of gas rings, woks and whatnot. Very much a work in progress, watch this space.)

Home, sweet home (well, almost)

Saturday 9th November 2013
(Alfred: so here we are in the Land of an-unspecified-but-large-number-of-elephants which we are learning to call 'home'. And so far there isn't a lot to report except that house-hunting here is not quite the smooth operation it is at home! The best results so far have come from wandering up and down streets looking for little signs on streetlight posts or in windows. Apparently the idea of keeping real estate websites up-to-date hasn't really caught on here, so all the lovely houses Martine and Ruairí saw were long gone!! More of that anon.)

TRAFFIC
After three days, part of the fun has been in appreciating some of the differences between life in Vietnam and Lao. And easily the first thing is .... traffic!  There is just no comparison between the 24/7 cacophonic inferno of decibels that passes for air in Ha Noi and the blessed peace of Vientiane. And it is not just a question of noise. Traffic here is mainly cars, believe it or not, or at least in the centre. We have seen big motorbike parks - especially near the markets - but the ratio of cars to bikes and motorbikes seems much higher here than in Ha Noi.

But above all, there is the question of attitude. We alluded in previous posts to the somewhat ambivalent attitude residents of Ha Noi have towards traffic lights (Alfred: That phrase alone shows that a great career in the diplomatic corps could have been Ruairí's). Last night while walking home, I came to the junction near my hotel, a crossroads with traffic lights. A lone motorbike sat there, patiently waiting for the lights to change and watching me, as I was the only other moving object in the vicinity. I'm not sure how long he waited but he was still sitting there as I wandered off. If he did that in Ha Noi, he would run the risk of being detained and sent for psychiatric evaluation.

HOUSE-HUNTING
We are looking for a house: two, or if possible three, bedrooms and a little bit of greenery and/or privacy/balcony reasonably near the centre. Price negotiable but our upper limit is $800 (and that would be for something quite exceptional). So we saw four houses today, none of which is quite right but all of which were interesting for different reasons. The second one was a veritable mansion for only $700, four doors up from the Prime Minister's residence (Alfred: Exaggeration! Six doors up AND on the other side of the street). So security not a problem! Three huge bedrooms, sittingroom, kitchen, a few extra rooms that didn't seem to have any specified purpose - the only problem really was that is was just TOO BIG.



We also saw this house out towards the east of the city and a Laotian-style house beside it. They were $600and $400 per month respectively. A bit out of the way, however. Basically, we just want to look at a bunch of stuff to get an idea of what is out there and at what price.But we are not getting a car so it needs to be central!! (Alfred: And why won't the text wrap around that photo when it wraps around the others? Eh? Hello, have you even NOTICED?)

We were shown around two of the houses by Barry, an Australian man living here for eleven years and married for nine of them. Barry was a mine of fascinating information on dealing with the police, attitudes towards sexuality, medical facilities and other aspects of Lao life that would not be immediately apparent to an outsider. He also very kindly offered his phone number in case of any emergencies (Alfred: Now THAT is real thoughtfulness! And remember - if we get sick, it's the French Clinic!!!)

DETECTIVE FICTION
Another exciting discovery has been of a series of detective novels set in 1970s Lao written by Colin Cotterill. They feature Dr Siri, Lao's one and only coroner, a role he is forced to adopt instead of retirement when the Pathet Lao come to power. I am halfway through the first one and it is really really good!  And there are almost a dozen of them! Strongly recommended. (Alfred: As the more perceptive, or even just the perceptive, among you will notice, he has just strongly recommended the entire series based on the first hundred pages of the first volume. Maybe hold on for more updates before committing to buying the entire series, eh?)

(Alfred: And for those of you too inept to do this yourselves, here is a picture of the cover and a link to Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Coroners-Lunch-Colin-Cotterill/dp/1569474184)  


FOOD
OK, I am going to get this off my chest. Maybe it was a mistake to have devoted myself so intensively to cooking Vietnamese and Lao dishes back in Ireland because it has slightly taken the shine off the food here now that we have arrived. The grilled fish is marvellous but the pho and larb/lap/lab (Alfred: there are SO many ways of spelling that one) are ... well, fine. But I want to cook  my own and I have this little voice in my head (not Alfred - my head is full of voices) that says 'Well, not bad, but yours is better'. Which is the height of hubris .... but maybe also true!!

 And I want to experiment with water beetle dipping sauces (Alfred: Make sure you only buy male water beetles, they are the one with the musk glands that give the sauce its special taste when you toast them and grind them up) and herb dressings .... and all the stuff in the Lao cookbook I brought with me (Alfred: And - other than his vast electronic library - that is the ONLY book Ruairí brought to Lao. Which, if you know Ruairí, really says something. And it also says something about his cousin, Ronnie Malone, who bought him and Martine the book as an engagement present!! Nice one, Ronnie, nail firmly struck on head there!). So whatever else our new house will have, it better have a good kitchen!
http://www.amazon.com/Food-From-Northern-Laos-Cookbook/dp/0473172364


Next installment: Ruairí and Martine learn Lao!!!! Not to be missed!!

Wednesday 6th November
My chest infection having finally started to respond to the combination of amoxycillin and paracetemol, I am now coughing like the chorus of a nineteenth-century workhouse. This should make the plane trip fun!

As we prepared to pack, I remembered I needed to get some dollars to pay for my Lao visa. Surprise, surprise - the banks don't sell dollars! But when I explained my predicament, the hotel manager said to follow him and we scooted off down alleyways and into what looked like a little shop but turned out to be a huge, marble-clad all-purpose money shop, where people were coming in with bags of notes to have them counted and sorted or changed into higher or lower denominations. Then the manager asked me for my euros and I handed him two fifty-euro notes. The expression on his face changed somewhat but I couldn't interpret it! Anyway, after five minutes he came back with $134 and 10,000 dong, the exact rate quoted on www.xe.com half an hour previously.  On the way back to the hotel he apologised (Alfred: HE apologised!)  saying he thought I was going to change a serious amount of money and he could have changed the 100 euro in the hotel!!

Anyway, time to say a temporary goodbye to Ha Noi. One last nice breakfast, one last smiling conversation with the staff. And one last interesting thing to learn. Having agreed the final bill (an extra $273 for room upgrade, two tours, two taxis, laundry and minibar) I said I was going upstairs to write a review on TripAdvisor. 'Oh no' said the manager immediately. What? I thought to myself, why not? He explained:  because of recent allegations that hotels were planting reviews, TripAdvisor will normally not allow a review to be posted if it has been received from the hotel's own IP address, especially if it is a very positive review! So, if it was OK with me, maybe I could wait until I was in Vientiane!

So, next stop Vientiane!!

Monday 4th November
Ha Long Bay
Wow!  Having been boggled by our excursion to Tam Coc (see previous entry) (Alfred: Think they could have figured that out for themselves) we were a bit worried that Ha Long Bay would turn out to be a bit of an anticlimax. But it wasn't. The pictures speak for themselves (Alfred: But that won't stop you, I'm sure)! The only problem was taking pictures of the enormous cave complex which is lit internally by coloured spotlights which play havoc with any attempt to take photographs!

Ha Long Bay has a total of 1969 islands in it and was voted one of the seven natural wonders of the world by some internet survey or other (Alfred: And fair enough too).  We had a mixed group of Germans, Swedes, Chinese, Australians, Dutch,  Russians and Portugese as well as our own French and Irish/Swiss addition. They asked us to fill in forms with our ages and nationalities. They said it was for the boat. Ages?  Martine had an appallingly bad taste explanation for this which I won't share, youa re welcome to come up with your own theories. (Alfred: Well, OK but there were a few other observations one might make, like it takes about four hours each way on quite bad roads and with a bus driver that immediately reminded us of many Rwandan trips we had taken in years gone by. And the air-conditioning gave Ruairí a massive head cold and the perfect excuse for moaning and sniffling and being 'brave'! At least he sleeps at night - I just sit here on the dressing table watching him grunt and snuffle and imitate a dyspeptic hippo ... OK, I may have stepped over the line there).

As well as the Bay itself, you get to visit a massive cave complex crammed with strange formations (follow this link if you want to see some amazing pictures!) though the coloured spotlights rather detract from the visual experience. The cave was used during the War and then forgotten about until in 1998 a fisherman saw a monkey disappear into the cliff-face and decided to investigate. Today, apart from being a major tourist attraction, it is used by villagers to shelter from typhoons a few times a year (Alfred: Hang on. Look at the pictures. Look at them! And then tell me with a straight face that people managed to FORGET about somewhere like this. Seriously, no way, no way).

  

 The high point was probably a twenty-minute ride in a bamboo boat, the two of us and a Canadian couple from Ottawa. Our teenage driver/rower was a little bit scatty and managed to run us aground in the way in to a very narrow cave entrance with boats and kayaks piling up on each side, then jumped off the boat onto land, which worried me slightly until I realised be was either jumping back on to rock the boat and break it free from the mud or was just plain acting the eejit (Alfred: From the comments being shouted at him by the other boat people, I suspect the latter, though it was all very good-humoured!).

Are you sure that is what you want to order, sir?
Probably our favourite Vietnamese food is pho, a noodle soup with either beef (pho bo) or chicken (pho ga). Of course, that isn't how you actually spell them because written Vietnamese has a bewildering array of accents that hugely affect the pronunciation and the meaning of words. Our guide to Ha Long told us that this can cause some hilarious results. The correct pronunciation of phở is  [fəː˧˩˧]  - fah-ah with a slight downtone after the first -ah and a rising tone on the last one . If you pronounce it like the French word feu (which is pretty much what we have been doing) it means something that can be ordered in a massage parlour but only by a man as it would be impossible to do to a woman. I leave it to your imaginations. (Alfred: Or, indeed, he could have been pulling your ... leg.)


Tuesday 5th November
As Alfred mentioned, I did catch a heavy cold and went to bed early with stuffed sinuses, a Lemsip (never leave home without one) and we didn't exactly rise with whatever the Vietnamese equivalent of a lark is. At breakfast I committed a major faux pas. Martine had said that the soup wasn't very spicy and the chopped chillis were sweet rather than hot. She asked the waitress for more chillis and I chipped in 'Or some hot sauce'. I couldn't see the waitress' face from where I was sitting but Martine said it was pretty much the same as if you asked Marco Pierre White for some ketchup to put on your steak.

Or trip today was to Hua Lo prison, better known to history as the Hanoi Hilton. Prisons are never a hoot but are always interesting. What was fascinating here was the extent to which the Vietnamese were maintaining that they had been exceptionally nice to the Americans. And I mean exceptionally.  Propaganda films and photographs showed them playing games, receiving medical attention, getting parcels and messages from their families and so on, a regular party! And the food! Shots of starving Viet Cong and emaciated peasants were intercut with USAF pilots stuffing their faces with bread and rice and the commentator observing that they were living better than the Vietnamese themselves. (Alfred: You can't help but notice how prominently John McCain is featured - I wonder how recent a phemonenon that is!)

Leaving aside the issue of accuracy (Alfred: Oh, yeah, let's) for the moment, I can imagine that, if I were a Vietnamese citizen visiting this exhibit (and there were some) and I was of an age where I had experienced the war and lost friends and family to bombings etc, I would be pretty livid to hear this! Why were these pilots who had bombed schools and hospitals and churches and pagodas having Christmas parties and playing volleyball and getting little poems from Ho Chi Minh to cheer them up? I can only presume the authorities figure the overwhelming majority of visitors will be tourists but even so, come on, guys!

Warders play Xmas music for homesick pilots

So many different kinds of food!!

'the pilots in pyjamas' - ha, ha, ha!!!

Cards, billiards, music, volleyball, running - how did they find time in the day for so much amusement!!!

Receiving messages and parcels from home

Regular medical checks to make sure everyone is in peak health

John McCain receiving medical attention upon arrival at Hua Lo

Christmas Eve service

Preparing Christmas dinner

What will Santa put in YOUR stocking???

OK, I am running out of ideas for captions

Going-away souvenirs are greatly appreciated as they prepare to depart home.

Anyway, the experience prompted me to come up with this.

The Ballad of Hua Lo Prison (aka Hanoi Hilton)

The Hanoi Hilton has a special place
In writings on the war in Vietnam
Which John McCain did with his presence grace
Along with other guests from Uncle Sam.

And their accounts did tell -I'm sure you know - 
Of hunger, fear and torturers most cruel.
And so I went to see this Hua Lo
And find out if these tales were really true,

But now the scales have lifted from my eyes
For suffering was not these prisoners' fate,
And I - along with you - can but surmise
That life in prison here was truly great!

Despite the heinous nature of their acts,
The Viet Cong treated them with fondest care.
They dressed their wounds, they treated them with tact
And from revenge they always did forbear.

And as for food! They fed them up like kings
(I know because the film says it's true);
While Viet Cong peasants starved on mouldy rice
They gorged on chicken, bread and hot beef stew.

They played guitar, they played at cards and stuff,
Their team at volleyball was much the best.
And if perchance a pilot should feel rough
A doctor came and listened to his chest.

At Christmas they were made to feel at home
With decorations hung upon a tree.
And Ho Chi Minh sent them a Christmas poem
And warders came with flutes and played with glee.

And as went by the years, the months, the days,
And seeing that their captors were so kind,
They came to see the error of their ways
And wondered why America was blind. 

And when they left they rued the awful day,
Instead of smiles their aspects were of woe;
For if they could, they would have liked to stay
With their friends and bosom pals in Hua Lo.

Friday 1st November
After a lazy start, we decided to do one of our very favourite things - explore the markets! And after a twenty-minute walk in the boiling heat we eventually found it (Ha Noi streets are EXTREMELY confusing). And you know what, it was a bit of an anticlimax, maybe because we have already seen various Asian markets and, to be honest, the market in Da Nang was cleaner, better organised and more interesting.  By the time we left and wandered towards the lake, we were parched and exhausted. Officially, this is the beginning of winter but when it is 29-31 degrees each day, that is a bit hard to believe! (Alfred: Though it does get a LOT colder once winter actually starts, falling as low as a freezing 13 degrees celsius, at which point they start to close schools! Ruairí wants to come back in late January (when it is coldest) and walk around in a t-shirt just to annoy the locals).

Nems

Anyway, we went to a café on top of a big building near the lake and had some beer, water and nems (fresh - not deep-fried - spring rolls and possibly our favourite Asian food) and chilled out. Even here, a complete tourist trap, three beers and a giant bottle of water and a plate of nems was about 7 euro. But the high point was when two German women walked past our table, one of whom was carrying two ski poles. We have still not come up with a good theory to account for this.  Then back to the hotel, booked tours for Saturday and Monday and out for some fast food.

Bun Bo

Vietnamese fast food consisted of one of my favourite dishes, Bun Bo, a dish from Hue. There are restaurants that only serve this, so you go in and sit down at the one long table and they plonk a dish in front of you two minutes later. You eat and leave. The whole process took ten minutes from start to finish and the food was delicious!


Ha Noi traffic lights
There are some traffic lights in Ha Noi but I am puzzled as to what exact purpose they serve. Cars do stop and so do about 80% of motorbikes and bicycles. The other 20% pay no attention and weave their way through the traffic as they do where there are no traffic lights. I could understand if no-one paid attention but there seems no pattern as to the 20% who do their own things - age, gender, vehicle. But the traffic is amazing!! Our guide told us there are 4 million motorbikes in Ha Noi, 6 million in Ho Chi Minh City and a total of 40 million in a country of 90 million. That seems like a lot but maybe so (Alfred: Maybe it is like Facebook accounts - there are that many of them out there but how many of them are actually in active use??)

Food and Drink
I knew the food was going to be good from our last visit and I have been cooking Vietnamese and Laotian food since I got back from the last holiday. The beer is good too, though Bia Sai Gon is to be avoided - bland and tasteless. Bia Ha Noi or Bia La Rue are my favourites (Alfred: And yes, the Vietnamese word for 'beer' IS the same as the Irish word for 'food')

Towers of Ha Noi

Ha Noi City Palace Hotel

The style of architecture here in Ha Noi (Alfred: Style? You think that is the right word? Melange would be better). Alfred has a point, there is a crazy mixture of every kind of style you can imagine. But the dominant feature is that buildings are usually tall and incredibly narrow. Our hotel is actually the width of our bedroom and this is quite usual. Maybe all land is divided into plots this side, goodness knows. Also, they usually don't put any windows on the side walls so light is at a premium. For our hotel, it means that only our room and the one above it have any light. The internal rooms have no windows at all and the ones at the back are advertised as having windows but actually these open into a narrow one-metre gap that separates the hotel from the building behind!

Crossing the countryside you see the same style: tall, thin houses standing individually in the middle of nowhere and with solid side walls, no windows. And I was reminded of the mathematical puzzle called Towers of Hanoi - does anyone know why this puzzle is called that? Is it because Ha Noi houses resemble the three rods needed for the puzzle?

Saturday 2nd November
Early start today and off in a minibus to the temples of Hoa Lu, Vietnam's ancient capital and the boat trip up Tam Coc, often referred to as the inland Halong Bay. We raced to be ready for the 0745 pickup and then kicked our heels for thirty minutes as we turned out to be the last to be picked up!  It was a little like being back in Rwanda as the only two seats left together were in the back corner and we squashed in there as best we could (Alfred: For a whole hour. Poor Ruairí and Martine. And then they moved to nice, comfy seats at the first rest stop so we can all dry our eyes). The other tourists were a Japanese couple, an Indian couple and two elderly gentlemen travelling with very young female Asian companions.

At the first rest stop  (Alfred: Really? You are just going to leave it at that? It was creepy! OK, one of the couples may have been genuine as it was really hard to tell her age and they didn't seem to be behaving as if their relationship was on a 'business' level, but the creepy guy in the back?? Pleeeazzee!! No wonder you had a shower when you got back to the hotel) ... at the first rest stop we wandered around the shop/cafe/tourist trap and saw two things that caught our eye:











Personally, I found the idea of Fifty Shades of Grey being on sale here far more upsetting than the dogs being fattened up but maybe that's just me. (Alfred: Yes, it's just you.)

The temples at Hoa Lu weren't the most amazing thing ever. The site may be historically important but absolutely nothing remains of the original buildings from a thousand years ago as everything was recycled to build the new capital of Ha Noi. But it was a pleasant stop with the offerings and carved figures and colourful Buddhist temple flags.

After a really nice buffet lunch in Tam Coc (Alfred: Ruairí really pigged out on the caramel pork!!) we headed off for our boat trip. I really was hoping for a life jacket but these were only available for the Chinese tourists who had presumably booked them in advance so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best! It was an amazing experience, easily one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The two of us in a sampan being rowed by a middle-aged women ... with her feet! I have never seen this before, the feet aren't even attached to the oars by straps or anything and they are incredibly skillful. The scenery was stunning as you can see from the photos (Alfred: taken on Ruairí's Smartphone as the idiot had forgotten for two nights running to recharge his camera battery!!). Guidebooks and Tripadvisor had warned about the intensive hassle from vendors but, to be honest, unless you had never travelled before it was pretty mild stuff! And the sight of people wading across the river did banish my 'I don't have a life-jacket' fears.

 Then we went for a short cross-country cycle which was really good, both for the exercise as well as the scenery and then bus back to Ha Noi.




Football
That evening I donned my Chelsea shirt for the first time and went in search of somewhere showing the Chelsea-Newcastle match. Unfortunately, I found one and watched my team being humiliated by a poor Newcastle side while drinking beer in the company of two Ethiopian Waste Water Management specialists who had just finished a two-week training course here in Ha Noi. I told them there were job opportunities in Dublin at the moment if they could cope with living in Ballymore-Eustace!