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).
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| Stir-fried spicy wild boar |
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.)
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| 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).
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