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).