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).