Mammy visits Vientiane!

MAMMY'S VISIT - PICTURE ALBUM

I have just left Mammy at the airport for her long trip home, amazed again at the efficiency and helpfulness of Asian airlines - checked in in four minutes with boarding cards printed for all three flights, luggage checked through and the wheelchair assistance had arrived by the time check-in finished! (Alfred: She just emailed to say that the flight to Bangkok is delayed by three hours. So that means three hours in the Air Lao VIP lounge with free food and drink and internet access and her stopover in Bangkok cut from seven to four hours - even the delays work in her favour!). It has been a whirlwind month with a lot seen and more remaining to be seen the next time she comes. And, in the next couple of weeks, we have my uncle Alex, Martine's mother, brother and sister-in-law and my brother Aindriú's best friend, Eddie Smith and his partner.

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the visit (Alfred: Leaving out Luang Prabang which we did in the last post).

Wat Si Muang

Wat Sisaket with Maurizio

Wat Sisaket

Wat Sisaket

Wat Ho Prakeo

Wat Ho Prakeo with Corinne

Phat Tich Vietnamese temple

Phat Tich Vietnamese temple

Maurizio - our Italian friend and my English student - was a godsend and last Wednesday we did a tour of the city, including as many of the important locations from the Dr. Siri books as possible (Alfred: Dr. Siri - you know! Oh, well, a guy called Colin Cotterill has written a series of detective novels set in 1970s Laos and featuring the Lao National Coroner Dr Siri. Even if you aren't interested in Laos, these books are a joy - well-written, well-plotted, witty and extremely varied from volume to volume - nine so far. Follow this link if you would like more info. And ALL the royalties from the books go to fund education projects in rural Laos, just saying.) So we headed off and (Alfred: Hang on, hadn't finished. You should actually visit Colin Cotterrill's website anyway because it is bloody hilarious!! And there are links to his very entertaining blog, even more almost as entertaining as this one. So, follow that link!) ... we headed off and visited Wat Sisaket, the oldest surviving Wat in Vientiane - the Thai army destroyed all the others and depopulated the city but this one remained in use (Alfred: Had a couple of Thai royals buried there, that's what saved them. Wise corpse investment.) and Wat Si Muang which contains the zero milestone marking the centre of the city and which is (apparently) guarded by the Sacred Maid - she wasn't there when we visited. We also went to the Ha Prakeo museum where Mammy met a young Englishwoman - Corinne - who had just arrived from Japan and was waiting for a job interview with the British Council in Myanmar. And we finished off with the Vietnamese Temple - Phat Tich - which is amazingly different to anything you can see in Laos.

So a great day and (Alfred: OMG, the blog is really brilliant! And apparently he writes thrillers set on the West Bank as well! Look at this bit from a blog entry in 2009:

There are, of course, Arabic phrases like this for so many situations and they often convey something beyond the basic meaning of the phrase. For example, in THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET, my latest novel, a character tells a priest “Long life to you.” Omar and all the other characters present understand immediately that this means someone else has died. (The unspoken part of the phrase is, “…but eventually you’ll die like the guy whose death I’m going to tell you about.”)

How does this affect the plot or pacing of my books? Well, in some thrillers, a character can jump through a door and start berating everyone in sight, even beating them up. In Palestine, he has to—absolutely has to—wish them blessings from Allah and inquire after their health first.

If he didn’t, he’d be showing himself to be a really, really bad guy. And that would be giving away the ending. )

Enough already! 

HAIR
I haven't had a haircut since I got one of my usual shaved looks last August. But eventually it just threatened to get out of control and the question arose - where to get a haircut? And, lo and behold, it turns out that my student Maurizio, as well as being a great cook, Adobe Photoshop expert and willing chauffeur, was also in a former existence a professional hairdresser! So, Martine, Mammy and I all got our hair done, and for free, and he cooked us lunch too!!

Me a week before (early morning -
Alfred: never would have guessed!)

 

(Alfred: Hang on - I have just been searching for 'The Samaritan's Secret' and it was written by someone called Matt Rees. Pseudonym? Wikipedia says  Rees was born in Newport, Wales. As a journalist, Rees covered the Middle East for over a decade. He was TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief from 2000 until 2006, writing award-winning stories about the Palestinian intifada. He also worked as Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman and Newsweek. Sounds like a different person. Watch this space - Dr Siri is not the only detective around!).