Xook Xan Van Valentine!

I never would have guessed that Valentine’s Day would be the biggest day of the year for Lao youth, but last night the streets of Vientiane were busier than any of us have ever seen, even those who've been here for six months or more. Street vendors on every corner were selling red roses for 5000 kip (50 cents) each all day long, and everyone at work gave me lollies, chocolate, flowers and just all round general love.
In the evening, we rode out to the Spirit House, our favourite upmarket cocktail bar on the banks of the Mekong, dodging millions of motorbikes and people walking hand-in-hand all the way.
Cocktails were half price. Later, we went to Mina, one of the biggest Lao nightclubs in town, where miniskirts abounded and the crap music was turned up as loud as possible. It could have been anywhere in the world, except that everyone in the room was Lao.

Eagle beavers

Just a quiet evening at home tonight, the first in ages. I've been to the gym, and am about to sit down and read yesterday's Bangkok Post. Phimphone, the owner of the minimart near my work, puts a copy aside for me each day and never lets me forget.
You should see Sengdara, the gym I go to here. It's a great, big, searingly modern building with a green glass dome that looks completely out of place in my neighbourhood, or, indeed, anywhere in this sleepy riverside city. Despite the hefty membership fees ($220 for the year), a lot of the equipment breaks down and no one fixes it, and often, in the early morning, you have to ask the staff very kindly to put the lights on. Also, they don't like switching on the fans, although apparently this is because you don't lose weight unless you are pouring with sweat.
[Related: The Lao also believe that drinking iced water makes you catch a cold, and drinking hot water will cure you. It's simple, really.]
Anyway, the staff at the front desk are all young and hip, but there's also an army of cleaners in grey tops everywhere you look, which you get used to after a while.
It's a great gym.
Plus, plus, you can get a massage anytime for only $3.
I'll admit it- I've been getting them once a week...

Anyway, today's post is dedicated to Sengthong, another of the younger journalists at work, who submitted a story to me today with that headline. What is an eagle beaver? I wondered, for at least several minutes. Finally I asked him. “You know, when you work really hard,” he answered, looking all uncertain and frowning, because he knew he’d written the wrong thing.
Eager beaver. Gotcha.

Oi oi oi Part II
Last week, I uttered words I never imagined I would hear myself say, and those words were: “Yes, of course I will see you tomorrow night at the Laos v Australia Under-17 Asia Cup soccer match”.
So we went that night, and screamed abuse at the poor little tackers on the field for not scoring a single goal, and again two nights later when we beat Indonesia 3-1. Anyway, the Lao soccer crowd was remarkably subdued, although maybe it was just that we were behaving like hooligans…
In case you’re interested, which I wasn’t by the third match, Laos pulverised Indonesia 6-0, and thus qualified for the finals. We didn't. But we've never been good at soccer, and playing Asia rather than South America doesn't change that.
Whatever. It was a big deal at the paper. The whole office taught me to yell “Australie- Sou Sou Sou!” which hopefully is equivalent to "Go Go Go!" because we were yelling it for the whole match.

Weather Update:
It finally rained on the weekend, a gentle rain washing away all that dust that sticks to your clothes and filling up all the holes in the roads and the caved-in pavements. It was awesome- an excuse to put on jeans and long sleeves and ride around in the rain.
I’m convinced that one of these days I’m going to fall down one of those holes.
And today it was boiling hot again.
I'm dreading April.

Funeral
There’s nothing my office loves more than to teach me all about Lao culture. The editor’s mother-in-law passed away last week. He was thrilled, actually, as was everyone else in the office, because it meant they got to show me what happens over here when someone dies.
On Friday, the whole office, in their tireless dedication to breaking the news and, you know, getting the story out there, dropped everything and drove out to the editor’s house to pay their respects to the dead, offer up a prayer and, most importantly, sit down to a hefty meal.
The coffin was the most elaborately decorated thing I’ve ever seen, complete with flashing coloured fairy lights and everything. We all gathered around it, and bowed our heads while one of the journalists said something respectful, and the widower responded. Then a silver bowl was passed around and everyone put money in.
[Actually, earlier in the week, I think I made a big faux-pas when the office took up a collection for the massive wreath. I put in 20,000 kip, which is about $2, and everyone raised their eyebrows and murmured to each other in Laos, and then when I checked the list later, I realised that everyone else had put in between 5000-10,000 kip, and I felt all embarrassed, like I'd deliberately been ostentatious, but how was I to know??]
Anyway, death for Buddhists is traditionally a happy occasion, a festive event, hence the flashing lights and great big meal. But I looked up during the prayers and the dead woman’s sister was crying a bit.
And, just for the record, yes, okay, I took photos while I was in there. But someone from the office was filming the whole thing! They film everything. They have a camera fetish. No one batted an eyelid. Okay?

Related to this is the fact that I’ve been scouting for the perfect monk shots all week, but I never seem to have my camera out at the right time. There was a monk checking his email in the Internet café below my work the other day, and another in the supermarket looking at peanut butter. I’ve seen a couple on motorbikes as well, which is hilarious.

A lot of them are just kids whose families are too poor to look after them. A temple is the equivalent of being sent away to a boarding school or a foster family, and often the boy’s families get money or land for their contribution. I’ve been gathering information on this from the boys at work, a couple of whom have done their obligatory one week stint already.

Related even further to this is that my Lao is coming along oh-so-slowly, although some people, (namely everyone in the office who think the sun shines out of my arse anyway), seem to think I'm doing ok. I'm having two lessons with Phitsamai a week, and I learn something new each time.

Chao ar gnu chack pee? (How old are you?)
Khoy ar gnu sao hoc pee. (I am 26 years old.)

I've learnt numbers, days, timeframes (years, months, days, hours, minutes) and kitchenware (knife: meed, fork: sorm etc), and I can also tell the time, although sometimes it takes me a while.
Lao is too simple to be easy. There are only three verb tenses, and very few connectors between words. No "a" or "the" or "I would have done it had I been there" type of thing. Sensible really. And that's why English is an absolute nightmare for my workmates.

Anyway, I'd like to really learn it, mainly because I'd like to live here for a while and understand what's going on. Unlike in, say, France, the locals love hearing you speak their language, however haltingly, and will wait patiently while you struggle to ask for a glass ("chork") or some water ("nam"). Just as they love it when the girls wear sins.

On that note, I've got to go and study. I just love it when Phitsamai says "geng lai!" which means "very good". Also, I've got to read the newspaper so that I can take it into the office tomorrow, where the journalists will all pounce on it. Paying $1.20 for the paper each day is completely unthinkable for them, which is why I'm buying the office a subscription.

Meu eun maen van chan

Yesterday morning, I woke up and could have sworn it was raining outside. But no, it was just the breeze in the tall palm trees outside my window.
It’s funny, when I first moved to Melbourne, I thought I’d never get used to the weather constantly changing. Sunny and hot in the morning, grey and drizzly by early evening. Since I’ve arrived in Vientiane, there hasn’t been a cloud in the sky, and it’s mostly been hot, with a few ‘chilly’ nights thrown in last week. And I’m just expecting rain every night.

Also, I’m still noticing the smell here. It’s not like anywhere else I’ve been. A mixture of sewerage, smoke from burning rubbish, petrol, and all kinds of food, like rice and fish. It's life, unhidden, right there in the air for everyone to breathe in together.

Tonight we rode to a bar on the edge of the rice fields, where we sat and drank Beer Lao. I'm not usually a beer drinker, but there's something about it here. It's 5% alcohol, but goes down like water. Amazing. Not to mention dangerous.
Anyway, although the bar was only about ten minutes from our house, we knew we were, relatively speaking, far from home, because the menu was completely in Lao, meaning off the beaten track for tourists.
But we're not tourists, and the people at the bar could tell.
We tried to ask for peanuts, and even drew a picture, but it's one word none of us know. They brought us chips instead.
On the way home, in the dusk, a group of kids were breakdancing on the road at the bottom of our street. They called out to us to join them. Wish I'd brought a camera.
The Lao are very friendly, and groups sitting outside their houses drinking beer in the evening will often call out to us to come and join them.
Related to this is the fact that it's unusual here to eat alone, something I normally do quite regularly. At work, I have to lie, sometimes, and say I'm meeting a friend for lunch, or something.

We're rich, they're poor
Housemate Tom busted his leg playing soccer on Friday night, while Kate and I were drinking cosmopolitans with the crew for happy hour at Sticky Fingers, the most Aussie/Western-style bar in town, as we do every Friday night. When we rang Tom to see where he was, he had drunk so much to numb the pain that he couldn’t name the bar he was at.
The next day, he couldn’t walk and the Australian clinic was closed, so Kate took him to a Japanese-run X-Ray clinic that was listed in the Lonely Planet. The X-ray pics showed a flawless, unbroken bone. When they went to pay, Kate whispered to him not to pay more than US$30. Deep down, they both thought it would be more like $50.
It cost $4.
Tom is convinced his sperm count will now be permanently lowered from the dodgy machine, but at least his leg isn’t broken.
I am constantly baffled by the way the economy in this country works. A couple of months ago, in Melbourne, I could barely afford to pay my mobile bill. Now, suddenly, we are the richest people in town, eating out every night, having clothes tailormade, comparing manicures. We have a maid who comes twice a week and does the dishes and cleans the bathroom. She gets $15 a month from us, which is more than most, apparently.
It's kind of sickening. I can't work out what the locals think of us, if they think about it at all. I know westerners get charged more for things like tuk tuk rides and fabric at the markets. But how do the locals make ends meet? Who eats all those acres of food in the markets? Who buys pancakes from the lonely street vendors late at night?

A couple of people (namely Patrick) has whinged that I haven't put any touristy photos of temples or street vendors up yet.
Oh alright. I'll take some in my lunch hour tomorrow, take my mind off work. I mean, there's a watt on every corner, and young saucey monks in saffron robes all over the place.

Anyway, I must go to bed because I need to practice my Lao. Meu eun maen van chan- tomorrow is Monday, and my teacher, Phitsumai, won't be happy with me if I don't practice. Her brow will darken.