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.