There's been a few changes here in Vientiene since I was last here. Notably most of the riverside outdoor restaurants (along the dirt track part of Vientiene on the Mekong) have been, or are in the process of being dismantled. There are plans for a redevelopment, all due to the flooding last year caused by the Chinese up river.
The other change is the banning of tuk tuks from the city centre. Supposedly. They are still there of course. Banned, it is rumoured, because the government doesn't like the look of them. Slowly being replaced by small pickup trucks with a metal frame and roof. Sound suspiciously similar to a tuk tuk? Just not quite as gaudy.
Yesterday after returning from a bike ride on one of those lovely girls bikes that you wouldn't be seen dead on in Australia, I was standing up on the landing (my room is on the first floor). The grandmother signalled to me...not sure what she wanted, so I just smiled and nodded, then she picked up a long stick with small basket on the end, swung it up into the mango tree, whipped off a mango and swung the basket up to me, from where I just plucked out my lovely, delicious, totally unripe and green mango!
Later that night I had dinner in Cathy's room, and Chang Peng brought us sticky rice and a Lao curry to have with our bread and cheese. Her daughter, Nom Phong, came by to visit and watch tv, and sort of play around. I think she has ADD. She is seven years old and speaks pretty good English. Then after dinner there is a knock on the door and little Pon Pachon is there. He is three and doesn't speak any English at all. To begin with he was very shy.
You know there's this thing with Lao kids where it's a great insult to touch them on the head. I guess it's true, but when you are told you are not allowed to do anything, all you want to do is walk around slapping kids on the head. Hmmm. Probably better not. Anyway, I was sitting on the floor at the end of the bed, with Nom Phong and Pon Pachong sitting up on the bed, when suddenly I feel this little touch to my head. Little Pon Pachong had kicked me in the head! It wasn't hard, but what the hell happened to no head touching? Obviously this only applies to Laos and they can do whatever they want to whities. I made a funny face at him and it was like a signal. The two kids then totally lost it, and started running and yelling and laughing and hiding all over the room. With a lot of effort put into hitting me in the head. It was quite fun but very tiring.
Although Pon Pachong doesn't know any English, he was looking at a dinosaur book yesterday and has picked up the word "humongasaur", and was standing on the bed, roaring and yelling "humongasaur!!". Kids are kids.
At night on the concrete slab by the guest house, under the flourescent lamps hanging in the trees (put there to ward off spirits, Cathy tells me) miniature frogs jump around, heading for the darkness. And the lizards scurry on the wall. At the Pakistani restaurant last night, it felt like the walls were alive, insects kept falling off the ceiling onto the meal and the walls crawled with lizards.
I'm in this Internet cafe, slow connection of course, and they keyboard is very stiff. It's slowing down my typing, and now I'm wondering if they have deliberately installed these stiff keyboards to slow people down and make you buy more time. Is that possible? Am I too paranoid?
I watched a film the other night, "Control" about Ian Curtis (Joy Division). I didn't know much about him except I knew he killed himself (by hanging it turns out). It was one of those ex-pat nights. Everyone there was a whitie. I always said I hate ex-pat scenes and want nothing to do with them (hardly saw any whities during my time in Malaysia), but at least you get to have decent conversations in English with them - even the little frogs speak good English! (And as you can imagine, there are a lot of little frogs in Vientiene.)
Cathy told me about her dentist's (the butcher of Vientiene, I could hear his drilling through the wall as I waited for the doctor) grandmother who "gave up on life" and hanged herself in the closet. She was 104.
They have quanrantined me in Laos because they think I might have the swine flu. Bummer.
When I arrived here the other night, I went in the queue for people with a visa, and I was quite upset when they rejected my visa and said go buy another one. But I had just bought one only a few days earlier, and it lasts 30 days! Yeah, it lasts 30 days if you don't leave the country! It's a single entry visa. Fuck I'm dumb. So my 18 hours in Laos cost me $30US on top of the rest of it. Anyway, when buying the new visa, they asked for a passport photo. All my photos were in my checked luggage, so I didn't have one. Therefore they charged me an extra $1US for the photo...um, but they didn't take another photo of me, so really, they charged $1US for ignoring the fact I didn't have a photo. Hmmm.
Anyway, I got a room in the guesthouse where Cathy lives. It's quite nice. Except for the chicken (well, rooster) who crows to let everyone know its three hours before dawn. Fucking chicken. The neighbours are going to wake up to find a dead chicken (rooster) one of these days. They'll probably think it's died of SARS or Avian Bird Flu, or even Pig Flu, unless they look closely at the big fat strangle marks around its neck.
I had a banana/coffee smoothie. It was fucking disgusting. I feel like vomiting now. Don't ever have a banana/coffee smoothie.
The Thais seem to love dubbing movies, instead of subtitling...I watched Jaws in Thai. Actually, it was pretty effective, probably because it's one of those films you've seen heaps of times so you basically know what they are talking about. And the scenes of people getting eaten by a shark don't need a lot of translation...
There is obviously a real skill at dubbing, and the Thai dubbing is quite good. The match the thai words with the lip movements very closely, and they even do all of the sound effects that each person makes, heavy breathing, grunts, squeals and screams. Still, it's pretty obvious these people are not actually Thai people getting eaten by the shark, so the whole dubbing thing is pretty silly. Obviously can't stand watching anything dubbed into English.
I've spent a lot of time in the lobby - which is where there is a bank of computers. For the first two days here they've been playing the same Western songs CD over and over (they've changed it at last, but the music is still shit). It was a compilation of forgotten hits from the 70s and 90s (that's right, not the 80s). Actually I read somewhere that because of some shame or other, the Thais are in total denial about most of the 80s, so they are not allowed to refer to it at all. Crazy Thais.
I just got online to get the footy score - glad I'm here and not in Melbourne.
In China they are not very good at translating things into English. I remember in Shanghai there were quite a lot of things with English translations, including menus. All very amusing because their English is so incorrect. Not much English in Kunming. I guess this is because there aren't anywhere near as many tourists.
The two I noticed in Kunming was the restaurant "The One World of the Fish" which still makes me chuckle. I guess it's a fish restaurant. The other was an ad for mango puree, which they called "Mango Pure Day". Actually, that's pretty clever. Could it have been intentional??
I think in three days in Kunming I saw about ten white tourists. Here I see ten farang when I come down into the hotel lobby.
When I was in Kunming I twice tried to buy some throat soothers (like strepsils). I went into the chemist and in my broken chinese conveyed that my throat and chest was sore. Both times I walked out with what I suspect would be prescription only drugs in Australia (looked them up), and not throat soothers. I gave up. I didn't take the drugs either - too scared after that TV show I saw about fakes.