Tiger crying, adverbial monks and a drunken Englishman

A SLICE OF VIENTIANE LIFE

A recent visit to a restaurant provided an interesting variety of insights into different aspects of Lao life. A large, open-air restaurant with a small pond in the middle (on Rue Bourichane near the Thai Consulate if you happen to know Vientiane), it was sparsely populated with two Lao family groups, a falang man (I think Australian) with a female Asian companion and a middle-aged/elderly European man fully dressed in jacket and trousers sitting on his own.

We only wanted a beer but the waitress brought the menus anyway and they were amazing in the way that only badly-translated Asian menus can be! The menu (which was very long and varied) offered – among other items – the following:

· Order river front

· More order river front

· Frog fried salad soffle boil

· Sleeve fish fried egg with garlic

· Fried fish head

· Sour fish head (the head)

· Papaya salad along the dam

· Pork bean frame

· Noodle d-food noodle

· Spaketty

· Spicy fried wild boar bird frog

· Shrimp sleeve fish chilli burn

· Two tilapia heart (Alfred: just how big IS a tilapia?)

· Eggs staffed with minced shrimp and a pork chop (Alfred: just how big are these eggs??)

· Tiger crying

· Tilapia soffle boil stab

· Pork beef boiled nice dip

· Court refers to fish sauce

· Fish refers to a sauce (A)

· River shrimp refers a seafood sauce

Next time we are going to order tiger crying and spicy fried wild boar fish frog with a side order of papaya salad along the dam. Photos will be posted.

As we perused the menu, the waitress having brought two large Beer Lao and a giant bucket of ice but opened only one and filled both our glasses from it, we became aware of someone shouting loudly, a pretty rare event here in Lao. It was our middle-aged/elderly European gentleman who seemed to

a)         have had too much to drink

b)         be in a foul mood

c)         have taken exception to the fact that the groups around him were laughing and having a good time.

And he was shouting in English, and my first thought was ‘Oh God, how embarrassing’, swiftly followed by ‘Please, God, let him not be Irish.’ As the words became clearer, my heart simultaneously rose and sank (Alfred: an interesting phenomenon, whether experienced or observed). He was definitely English but he had only just got started. ‘You facking sit there laughing, you facking (unintelligible) bastards! ‘ And more of the same, on and on. Everyone ignored him, or at least seemed to but it was unpleasant and a sense of vicarious guilt settled upon me (and I think the Australian who finished up his drink and left sooner than one might have expected!). Thankfully, he eventually finished his drink and staggered out the door. Of course, he may indeed be a long-time resident and everyone is quite used to him (Alfred: You may find him on the interview panel when you start applying for jobs!

NOTE: Ruairí did take a photo of the gentleman in question but I figured … nah.)

HEDGE SCHOOL TEACHING

Our very first excursion outside Vientiane was to the Buddha Park near the Friendship Bridge that connects Lao and Thailand. We were invited by my Italian pupil, Maurizio and his friend Alberto who were going there for the day. It is a modern construction with a bewildering array of concrete statues and one giant reclining Buddha but some of the statues are absolutely fascinating! But rather violent! So many of the images involved people being trampled, dismembered or eaten by monsters and demons, severed heads, skulls and whatnot, all with a background of a serene reclining Buddha!

 

 

Even more enjoyable was a group of monks we ran into, one of whom promptly asked me for an English lesson! He wanted me to explain to him how adverbs were constructed and used, so I spent a pleasant twenty minutes going through –ly endings and miming the meanings of ‘noisily’, ‘quietly’ (both in terms of eating noodle soup), ‘beautifully’, ‘nicely’ and so on. Maurizio (my ‘official’ student) took the photo below and added the caption! (Alfred: and we added in some other photos of the incident as well.)

VISA RENEWAL

As we were near the Friendship Bridge, we thought it would be a good opportunity to ‘pop’ into Thailand and return immediately so as to renew our visas, which expire next Wednesday. Maurizio drove us down and there didn’t seem to be too much of a queue so Alberto (Alfred: very kindly!) said they would wait for us. The process can be done quickly but we ran into an official who decided to be more pernickity than (Alfred:we gather) is usual. He said we actually had to take the bus and go across the bridge into Thailand and get our passports stamped and THEN return for our visa. Technically, without crossing the bridge, we haven’t left Lao and therefore can’t enter it but this is usually (Alfred:we gather) not insisted upon.

So, we got on a bus, went across, got our Thai stamp, returned immediately and eventually got our Lao visa for the next month. A bit more time-consuming than expected and using up vast spaces of our passport, so the sooner one of us gets a job and a permanent visa the better!