Lame and sad: Us, not Laos:

June 9, Oudomxay, Laos: Probably one of the sadder blog entries written this month. Photos

After entering Laos 11 days ago, the highlight so far has been the re-runs of "24", the 2004 season on satellite TV, which everyone seems to have. "Bauer's hour of power", Boxxy likes to call it. My preference is "Bauer power hour".

Utterly shameful!

Still, we're pretty much in keeping with the spirit of the place, where people apparently can't stand the thought of missing an episode.


The first 3 days of fuck-all were in Luang Namtha, about 60km over the Chinese border, the following 8 here in Oudomxay. In both places the majority of our time's been spent in our rooms at Chinese-run guest houses. The past 8 days, once a day, we've trudged up to one of two restaurant and ordered 2 or 3 of the 4 dishes we order.

Of all the shame being bandied around (or shamelessness – there's always going to be plenty of that when you put transplant small communities of loud-mouthed, money-worshipping low-rent Chinese businessmen into a soft-spoken Buddhist traditional culture they consider "backward"), none of it falls on Laos or its people. Except perhaps on their government for allowing so many tourists in. It's really a wonderful country.




But as i say, it's probably fair to say that we're into the spirit of the place. The pace of life mirrors the geriatric water-buffalo you see plodding through the rice paddy. The country's gorgeous and the people, well, they seem like good Buddhists (aside from all the meat that's on offer). Friendly, and very patient with my terrible, execrable attempts to speak their language.

In return, i've provided them with at least a couple of gold standard moments. I contribute the foolishness and enthusiasm at least – they, perhaps, the joke. One example: I learned very early on, of course, the word for banana – "mak wei". Then a couple of days ago a fruit seller appeared, mostly from gesturing, to be telling me no, in fact "mak wei" meant "fruit". Given people's difficulty understanding me so far, I wasn't going to say no to free advice. So imagine the mirth of the following day's fruit seller, who encounters an apparently insane foreigner, who asks (in Lao, but occasionally accidentally blurting out Chinese words):

[Pointing at bananas] "How much are these bananas?"

[Points at apples] "And how much for these bananas?"

[Picks up pineapple] "And this banana?"

and so on.


However, for a country where children with swollen stomachs play naked on the highway, and where villagers still gather round to watch a bus to town go past, there's an astonishing level of English spoken. Once she'd finished laughing, and I had moved onto struggling to say "please cut up banana [pineapple]" the pineapple lady signaled for me to go next door, a shack where a man with a came out with a baby in a sling across his shoulder and not only translated my request, but explained the Lao to me.

Either Laotians are born linguists, or their education system does something very right as far as English is concerned. Despite 7 years or whatever of compulsory English learning, China's English is terrible in comparison. I suppose it's just that Lao students actually practice speaking and listening while China's students rote-learn for their pointless letter-sequence-writing exercise of a final exam.

Laos has also taken the slow route with its buildings. While Laos is technically a "People's Democratic Republic" (if you get my drift), you wouldn't know from looking at it. The villages, those between L. Namtha and ODX at least, have continued building in their classic geomantic style – thatched houses with woven bamboo-paneling walls, on stilts that are sometimes metres high – very neat and picturesque.

In China i'd become so used to seeing nothing but giant pre-fab filing cabinets that I'd begun to forget what buildings can look like when someone actually considers their appearance. In the two towns we've seen so far, particularly Oudomxay, the majority of the buildings along the main street look French-colonial style, or a kind of French-Lao fusion (a few examples are in the photo album linked at the top). The Oudomxay provincial government's palace, I thought was particularly awesome:


...nevertheless, just across the road, as if purely for contrast's sake lies the very visible hand of China:


As for the towns, they are both provincial capitals yet they're the size of a small country town in the WA outback. You can walk end to end in about 15 minutes, passing free-roaming chickens, the odd goat, and green vegetation bursting through cracks in asphalt. It's what Timor would be like had it been left to its own devices since 1975 (when the Commies won and founded the Lao PDR).

But the real reason we've done so little is, of course, the cash. There are a bunch of trekking tours past waterfalls, caves, staying overnight in villages, yadda yadda, sure it's great, especially judging by the large numbers of foreigners that pass through here and part with their foreign exchange. The Banana Pancake Trail appears to have become a Banana Pancake Web . . . so it's onward to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Would be awesome to march it, errrrrrrrr [insert Family-Feud shut-down noise]. Not. Gonna. Happen. Ah fuck it, lets just hope the entry price to some of the secret Commie bases isn't too steep. A good sign will be no banana pancakes in shops nearby.