Less than a week since the last post!!!

CARS, TRAFFIC and ECONOMICS in the LAO PDR

I touched on this briefly before but I felt it was time for a proper discussion and analysis of all things pertaining to the roads of Vientiane and those who travel them.  We have been cycling now for six months or so and, it is important to start by saying, cycling here is a pleasure compared to back in Ireland. Not perfect, but definitely better. Why?

· Vientiane is completely flat

· People respect cyclists (Alfred: If they see you that is. If they see you they are careful and respectful. If they see you.)

· Vientiane is a small city* so you can actually get pretty much anywhere by bicycle

· Maintaining a bicycle is cheap

· It is a very healthy way to travel (Alfred: Also true back home)

(Alfred: Only an Irishman would call Vientiane a city. With a population of under 200,000 Ireland is probably the only other country that would use the word ‘city’ for what in most countries would be a medium-sized town. I mean, KILKENNY is a city in Ireland! That would make Vientiane a megalopolis except that it is barely the size of Cork).

However, it takes a while to get used to the way Lao people drive and I am still figuring out some of the nuances. One important factor is that about 50% of people do not have a licence and have never received any sort of instruction. And, for reasons I will go into later, a high proportion of drivers only started driving quite recently, so they tend to go slowly. And I mean slowly. And the more high-powered the car (and therefore the more expensive), the more slowly and carefully they seem to go!

Indicators are still a source of bemusement, amusement and bouleversement (Alfred: is that really a word? In English, I mean? Oh, apparently it is. ‘The Other Side of Paradise’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) The basic approach is to ignore them as they almost always bear no relationship to what someone is going to do. I think I mentioned before that some people use their hazard lights to indicate they are going ahead at a crossroads but a few do so because there actually is a hazard and most do so by mistake (Alfred: And your evidence for this is …..?). Of course, when you do actually hit someone who was indicating because you ignored the indicator, you do feel a prize chump (Alfred: of course, the motorcycle driver just smiled sweetly at you). 

The most fascinating situation is when you are cycling down a road and a car is preparing to join from the right (Alfred: We drive on the right here, not like those crazy Thais!). You figure there are two obvious choices:

a) I can get out before this bicycle comes so I will zip out quickly

b) There isn’t enough time, I will wait until the bicycle has gone past

But no, Lao drivers have a third option.

c)  I will creep forward very slowly, at a speed that might be envied by the average glacier but by no other moving thing on earth, timing it so that I completely block the lane at the precise instant the bicycle arrives. If the cyclist slows down for this, I will indicate my appreciation by pausing for a few seconds in acknowledgement. If the cyclist accelerates, I will also accelerate to show respect for his or her decision.

I swear this has happened so often I have lost count. The other dangers are the usual ones: car doors being opened without anyone looking, motorbikes overtaking you on the inside (Alfred: Or on the outside and immediately turning right) and so on, the same as the world over.

Additional issues here are dust, car fumes (Alfred: There doesn’t seem to be a Lao word for unleaded petrol) and cycling in 43 degrees of heat (Alfred: OK, that doesn’t happen in Ireland). Some falang who cycle here have said they wear blood pressure monitors when they cycle in the heat to make sure they don't forget to hydrate and have their blood turn into treacle. 

But the other distracting thing about cycling in Vientiane is the cars themselves. I mean, what the hell is going on? I have never, ever seen so many luxury cars in a small space, between Mercedes’, Hummers, Lexus’ (Alfred: Lexi, surely), sports cars, giant monster trucklike cars – even a Rolls Royce! People’s first reaction when they make a bit of money (usually by selling some land at the insanely inflated prices that now operate in Vientiane) is not to save it or buy a business or invest it – they buy the biggest, craziest (Alfred: Ha, ha, he actually wrote ‘carziest’, cool word, should have kept it) most inappropriate vehicle possible that will depreciate in value faster than the life expectancy of an ice-cream on a Vientiane sidewalk at midday (Alfred: Or a cold Beer Lao in Ruairí’s hand).  And looking at these photos, people have been selling a lot of land!!

On a more serious note, the word on the street is (Alfred: ‘word on the street’! From someone whose Lao is barely good enough to say ‘How much is that tiger?’ in the market. Yeah, tiger. Explain later.) … OK, the word among foreigners who have been living here a long time is that the banks – mostly Chinese and Vietnamese – approach people with land and either persuade them to sell it or, more disturbingly, take out a loan using the land as security, knowing that the majority of people will spend the money on something short-term (Alfred: For example, I don’t know …. a luxury car?) and then they seize the land when the repayments aren’t made – which, apparently, they frequently aren’t.

Anyway, here are some photos of cars in Vientiane – not all of them are my photos! And it should be noted that there are also a lot of very nice and carefully maintained old Beatles and a really dodgy-looking Deuxchevaux!

 

COOKING

I am getting more into the swing of cooking now, especially since I bought a wonderful set of steel German cookware so I actually have pots that I don’t worry will poison us, unlike some of the Chinese ones we originally bought (Alfred: Mind you, Ruairí’s penchant for putting things on to cook – eggs, in particular – and then forgetting them until the lining of the pot caramelises hasn’t helped either). I always had a mixed relationship with aubergines before now but the small long purple ones they have here are wonderful.

One really nice thing I cooked was an aubergine-based pasta sauce for when our friends Alberto and Maurizio were over for dinner. You chop up a lot of garlic (8 cloves) and as many chillis as you feel like. (Alfred:Normally Ruairí would add onion but Maurizio hates onions, and I mean HATES! The only ambiguity is whether he uses ‘odio’ or ‘detesto’ to describe his feelings). Fry them for a little in oil and add chopped up aubergines, skin on. Then sweat for ages on a very low heat, sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and cook until the vinegar has evaporated. Then I add tomatoes and a little red wine, cooked for a bit and stirred in some chopped olives and capers before serving. (Alfred: Wow, you can really see the Lao influence! That’s basically Sicilian caponata but served on pasta instead).  OK, so not very Lao. But balsamic vinegar sprinkled on aubergine like this is awesome. Seriously. Try it.

The yard-long beans are also a favourite (though not as a salad, which is how they are commonly eaten here) and the usual tomatoes, carrots, Chinese leaves (Alfred: Lao people think it is very funny that we call .... oh, hang on, made that comment before), onions and so on. You can also get broccoli and even sometimes celery!!

The other major addition to our diet has been soda water!! I hate drinking water, which in a climate like this is a major problem, but Lao Soda Water is really nice, so we have laid in a supply of that to last us for the next few weeks!

WILMÉ AND JANE

And a really wonderful surprise this week when I managed to meet up with two of my past pupils from five years ago, Wilmé and Jane, as they passed through Vientiane. (Alfred: They may have had mixed feelings about it! Oh, no offence intended but they were only there because they hadn’t realised you needed to have your Vietnamese visa in advance, so they had to stay over in Vientiane. But I am sure they were thrilled to see you. Ab-so-lute-ly thrilled. Who wouldn’t be!).

LEARNING LAO

And I have finally started learning Lao and going twice a week to a proper class, two hours one-to-one with a tutor for the very reasonable price of 60,000 kip per hour (say 5.50 euro) (Alfred: I was actually trying to calculate it in half-crowns for the more mature readers but it's just too much work in this heat). Lao is a very easy language and also incredibly difficult. The easy bit is the grammatical structure: no tense changes, no plurals, no loads-of-things-we-seem-to-think-we-have-to-have-in-English. 

The tricky bit are:

a) the alphabet (see photos) and

b) the tones.

The tones are a tough one. If you get a tone wrong when pronouncing a word the chances are very high you are actually saying something else entirely. As with 'bow and arrow' and 'take a bow' in English.  The word ເສືອ in Lao means 'tiger'.  The word ເສື້ອ means shirt (there is a tiny tone mark above this one partly hidden by the word above). The word ເສື່ອ means 'mattress' (again, tone mark hard to see). So asking a stall owner whether he has a tiger in my size ... well, you can imagine (Alfred: 'Imagine' is the word as Ruairí hasn't actually done this yet. But we can all imagine it. Quite vividly, actually.)

(Alfred: OK - here are the three words in the same order but placed so you can actually SEE the tone marks!!!

                                     ເສືອ     ເສື້ອ     ເສື່ອ

And I don't get the whining! If there is an accent you pronounce it one way, if there isn't you pronounce it another way! It's not like Irish doesn't have accents!!)

Lao people do do their best to understand you (Alfred: It's NOT like trying to speak French in Paris or beginner's Irish in Conradh na Gaeilge) but they have relatively little experience of hearing non-Lao people mangle their language so it can be difficult for them. But I did manage an entire conversation in Lao with a tuk-tuk driver today, which was a confidence-booster. (Alfred:  a 'tuk-tuk' should really be written 'touk-touk' as the former means 'every' and the latter means .... well, tuk-tuk. Or touk-touk. God, transliteration is pain!)

My textbook uses transliteration, a phonetic rendering of Lao, up as far as page 43. I am now on page 31 so, quite soon, I will have to learn the actual Lao alphabet. Look at the examples. Closely. And now ponder the following fact: when I was a schoolboy in Coláiste Eoin, more years ago than I care to remember (Alfred: He left exactly thirty-eight years ago, just for the record) Art was a compulsory subject for all students and we had the renowned artist, Clíona Cussen, as our teacher. Such were my amazing abilities in this area that I became the only student in the entire school exempt from Art. The only option was a nervous breakdown for the teacher.

And now we look at the Lao letters - beautiful, artistic, flowing, graceful. It's going to be hell. And not just for me.....

 

(ALFRED:I know last week we promised something on acoustics - the indicators, recipes and glaciers we did cover. It was going to be about Ruairí trying to record his Raidió na Gaeltachta programmes and how echoey the rooms are and then he bought a microphone but the attachment was wrong and when he finally got the right attachment the microphone is so good it actually catches every birdsong, creak, motorbike and butterfly fart in a three kilometre radius. But I decided it wasn't interesting enough so we aren't going to bother). 

Pee My ....Pi Mai ... Pii Mae ...em, Happy Lao New Year!!

NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS
Well it's the New Year here and it has been quite a celebration! Lao New Year started officially on Monday 14th April and lasted for three days (Alfred: Again, officially!) but it pretty much got going on Friday evening and today was the first day when things got back to normal. The main themes of Pii Mai (my preferred transliteration) are:

• water
• getting your hair done
• throwing water
• throwing coloured water
• colouring your hair, or buying a wig or a crazy hat
• blessing the Buddha statues in the temples with water
• throwing coloured powder
• more water throwing
• visiting seven or nine different temples over the course of Pii Mai and blessing all the Buddhas in each one
• driving around town in pickup trucks with as many people in the back as possible armed with buckets/water pistols/ladles to throw water and have water thrown at you
• as before but installing an inflatable swimming pool in the pickup
• mad karaoke parties that last all night
• a beauty pageant (Alfred: We missed that one)
• drinking heavily and then driving home, preferably without any lights
• throwing more water, especially at any foreigners who happen by

And so on. Actually, it was great fun and a little surprisingly so as many resident foreigners had said they were getting out of Lao for the duration and even some Lao people warned us in advance that it was a bit crazy and over-the-top, so we weren't quite sure what to expect.

What we got was ... wet. Martine, Marion (visiting friend) and I cycled around, visiting seven different temples and getting thoroughly soaked on pretty much every street we visited. We did find the trick was to actually slow down as you approached the water-throwers, so they actually poured the water on you rather than flinging it from a distance. In the temples, people sprinkle water on the Buddhas with bunches of leaves and water isn't thrown around, but frequently Lao people approached us - usually the more elderly - and asked if we minded if they sprinkled us (Alfred: I am not sure about 'asked' - they more or less gestured they were going to do it but were giving you warning).

The atmosphere was absolutely wonderful - fun, light-hearted, carefree and hard to imagine happening back in Ireland without a lot of people getting pissed and violent and generally unpleasant. Of course, the fatality rate in road traffic accidents over the holiday period would make Gay Byrne's hair turn grey (Alfred: Bit late for that) but there were fewer deaths this year than recently, which is about as positive a way as one can put something like that (Alfred: Or you could have just not mentioned it. Just saying).

So here is a huge big bunch of pictures, some of them taken by my Italian friend Maurizio (Alfred: That would be all the really good ones of people actually throwing water!) to give you a flavour of the day. Ordinary blog post tomorrow catching up on more mundane, domestic matters (Alfred: Including glaciers, indicators, acoustics and recipes!).

(Alfred: Usual disclaimer about the way Blogger spaces and arranges these photos - it always looks OK when Ruairí is posting!)

Back again!

CYCLING BY THE MEKONG 
(Alfred: to the tune of 'Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea.  If you really don't know this song, listen to it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsqGlVooIJQ)

I’m cycling by the Mekong

On my way home from my class.

I’m cycling by the Mekong, yea,

While mosquitoes bite my ass.

And the road is long

But I will be there

Soon, I hope

And open a cold beer,

Cycling on my bike

Cycling by the Mekong.

It's gonna take some time
But I'll get there.

Cars that have no headlights

And drivers that are drunk.

Mosquitoes in my glasses

Hope I don’t run down a monk.

So I sing out loud

So he will hear me

When I come

And I can swerve around

And not run him down

Avoiding the bad karma.

Cycling by the Mekong

With a thousand little friends.

SUMMARY
Apologies for the hiatus, but life has been quite busy (Alfred: Not THAT busy, you've just been lazy) but here I am with an update on what has been going on.

So, we are now living in Ban Wat Nak to the south of the city centre, a lovely house with a huge tree-filled garden, about a twenty-minute cycle from the centre of town. We have a street market and shops beside us and a number of excellent restaurants (Lao and Thai) as well as a pizza place (Alfred: Rarely used but it's comforting to know it's there). Sad to report, we now have only one cat as Astérix disappeared one night and we hope she has decided to move in with a different family somewhere else. Obélix is thriving and getting really big and spends most of her free time torturing lizards in the garden (Alfred: though she usually gets bored and then they run away. Sometimes.). And the neighbours' cats keep her company, whether she likes it or not.

Both of us are now working a lot more. Martine is teaching two mornings and four evenings a week in the Institut Français (Alfred: teaching English, that is. ENGLISH! In the Institut Français! What is la Francophonie coming to! Zut alors!) and also has a number of private pupils. I have now accumulated a bewildering variety of jobs: I teach English twice a week to employees of AVIS Rent-a-Car, I teach one private pupil for two hours three times a week and I work for the Revolution Translation Agency where I edit and proofread a wide variety of materials that have been translated from Lao or Chinese into English. And yesterday I landed a new job:

Media and Communications Consultant to the Embassy of Japan in the Lao PDR!

(Alfred: It should be an ampersand rather than 'and' but, as I noticed in the last blog, ampersands don't work in this blog - cf. Mills & Boon!) Sounds very grand, doesn't it!! In reality it is only eight hours per month - they will email me stuff that they are sending out in English and I edit and proofread it - but it will be good fun, I expect!

We are now awaiting (with anticipation) the arrival of our dear friend Marion and we are also awaiting (with a slight degree of trepidation) the Lao New Year, or Pii Mai as it is called here, three days of craziness where people throw water over each other to celebrate the New Year or whatever. They do lots of other things with sand and flowers and setting animals free and so on but it is the throwing of water that seems to be paramount, with falang (foreigners) being the most tempting targets! Last year the police actually set down rules to try and govern some of the more unruly aspects of Pii Mai but it will be interesting to see how it pans out. I do know that a large number of falang we know are clearing out of the country for the occasion!! (Alfred: and what does that tell you? I figure on staying at home, I don't dry out fast and they do like to colour the water they throw!).

HEAT
It's now the hottest time of the year with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees every day, fine if you can stay in the shade (Alfred: Preferably with air conditioning) but cycling across town in this heat is difficult. Mind you, once the rainy season starts I suspect we will look back fondly on this period! One positive side effect is that if you buy a bottle of cold tea and leave it in your bike, in a few hours it tastes like real tea (Alfred: about the temperature of the water they bring you in a French café with your tea-bag when you ask for tea. You know what I mean. Not Irish tea ....). On the downside, it doesn't go below 25 degrees at night and is far more humid so neither of us are getting as much sleep as we would like (Alfred: 'neither' refers to him and Martine, I am sleeping just fine, thank you.).

WILDLIFE
No snakes so far but an assortment of ants and termites with whom we fight an ongoing battle in the kitchen (the garden is considered more-or-less their territory), a battle that we are, so far, winning. Occasional invasions of flying ants, the ever-present mosquitoes to whom we actually seem to be becoming more resistant, the very occasional cockroach that Obélix usually deals with and other occasional visitors - beetles, bees, wasps and unidentified big buzzing things (Alfred: or ingens robigo to give them their Latin title). And a rather charming frog has taken up residence in our outhouse where is seems to live on the tap and isn't bothered when we turn it on and off to fill the washing machine.

But there are butterflies, so many butterflies, usually single or dancing in pairs, an incredible variety and some of them really big, one bigger than my entire hand (Alfred: We can be sure because this one was, unfortunately, dead). And some birds, though not as many as we would like - that is, that we can see. There are a number of birds that make the most incredible noises, one that always starts to call just as we go to sleep, others with amazingly complicated calls, some with insanely monotonous, repetitive calls that go on forever. But all invisible!!!

And we are getting ready for our first crop of fruit!! Our mango trees are producing madly, though every day brings its casualties so we hope enough of them will survive. We have already feasted on pomelos that fall from our neighbour's tree (Alfred: it's like a giant grapefruit but nicer-tasting and a skin so thick you could use it to armour a battleship) and made a drink from some of our starfruit (Alfred: starfruit are hard work to make edible) but the prospect of eating mangoes from our own trees is really tempting!! (Alfred: Hmm ... why is it 'mangoes' but 'pomelos'? Just wondering, seeing as it is your job to know this kind of thing.)

ST. PATRICK'S DAY
The Irish Embassy in Ha Noi organised a lunch for all Irish citizens able to attend a few days before St. Patrick's Day - a small enough group but Chiara from the Embassy told me they estimate there are only about thirty Irish people in the whole country. On Sunday 16th there was a St. Patrick's Day party in a restaurant very near us, so I met a few more Irish people - one woman who lives in Luang Prabang, Miriam Donnelly, was in class with a girl in Dromcolliher whose brother I shared a house with in Dublin many years ago and is a long-standing friend of my cousin, Niamh Cotter. But it's always like that when Irish people get together!

One thing I notice here is that people don't really know much about Ireland - they often think I come from Iceland. ICELAND? I know we Irish often seem to feel that everyone in the world not only knows about us but secretly wants to be us but why Iceland? The answer seems to be that when Lao people learn English, they find it hard not to pronounce the 's' in the word 'island', so their English teacher will explain to them that Iceland is an actual country, whereas the word with a silent 's' is the geographical term (Alfred: Oh, for goodness' sake, why can't you just accept that Ireland is a tiny little country and it is completely natural that people in a place like Laos have never heard of it?  I mean, how many Irish people knew where Laos was when you told them you were going there? They thought you were talking about Laois!!)

I tried to make up for this by devoting five minutes of my English class to the topic of St. Patrick's Day. They got the idea of a National Day easily enough but then they asked me what a 'saint' was? I got absolutely nowhere with the explanation, even trying to compare St. Patrick to an especially revered monk from a temple whose memory people might treasure. Ah well, live and learn (Alfred: after almost fifty-five years you had better get a move on!).

CYCLING
And the cycling is still going well, though I am thinking of getting a bigger bike as I can't really stretch my legs properly and my back is not happy with the situation. One piece of good news is that I finally got a big-enough helmet, ordered from Taiwan via eBay, a really good one. The downside is that it doesn't give the protection against the sun my favourite Tilly hat did so I am using copious amounts of Australian skin protector to stop myself burning to a crisp!!

MEDIA WORK
If anyone is interested, I am doing occasional radio pieces for a programme called Cruinneog on Radio na Gaeltachta, one last month (Alfred: Actually it was February) and am recording another one at the moment. I also hope to start writing for COMHAR again, an Irish-language monthly for which I wrote when I was working in Rwanda. Will keep you posted! (Alfred: I hope people don't die of anticipation!!! But if you are really interested, here is the link to the first one
 http://www.rte.ie/rnag/cruinneog/programmes/2014/0215/504560-cruinneog-d-sathairn-15-feabhra-2014/)