A Week Off For a Water Fight

Lao New Year (Pi Mai)

It is a time of spiritual and physical cleansing, visiting temples and blessing statues. It's also all about drinking copious amounts of beer and shooting the crap out of everyone with a water pistol.

Chao Anou - Hero

Looking across the Mekong towards Eastern Thailand, a giant statue of King Anouvong stands with one hand on his sword and other pointing across the river. Perhaps it’s a welcoming handshake but it looks like he is about to karate chop a block of concrete. Most Lao people I have asked think he is saying “that's mine, give it back”.

LOVE and other delusions

Last week was Macha Bucha Day. It was also Valentine's Day. Guess which one won Lao hearts?

Macha Bucha Day:

According to Buddhist tradition, about 2500 years ago Siddhartha Gautama had become the first Buddha after working out the meaning of life. He was wandering around northern India preaching and converting people to his new way of seeing the world when one full moon evening 1,250 men turned up spontaneously to listen in. These guys became his ordained monks. The Buddha taught them three basic principles: Cease from all evil; Do what is good; Cleanse one's mind.

The master and his apprentices

 So on the third full moon of the year Buddhists celebrate, go to the temple, walk around it carrying candles, pay respects to monks, the Buddha and the spirits of the area.

I saw none of this.

But I did see a lot of red hearts.

One Night in Udon

Take me down to UD town

Udonthani is a large regional city in the northern part of the eastern bit of Thailand. I've been there a couple of times, usually just passing through or for an afternoon of shopping. It's about 80 kms away but it takes 2 hours by bus (lots of border-crossing paperwork).

This time it was an overnighter... an adventure of discovery. I needed some burning qustions answered:

A Very Laos Christmas

My Christmas in Vientiane was not too dissimilar to what I might experience at home. There was food, wine, talking crap about religion, politics and hairstyles. There was even carol singing!

There was food and wine and then a lot of lying around feeling full

Known Unknowns

“	There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.	”
Donald Rumsfeld 2002

Sometimes I think that knowledge has a different value in Laos than I am used to.

I don't mean the knowledge that's coded into dusty libraries, or big picture knowledge about how the world works - or doesn't work, or who Ghandi or Che Guevara were. I mean knowing what's going on and where and when: information, data, details.
(Although knowing who Ghandi and Guevara were doesn't seem important either).