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.

Zooropa

Lao Zoo aka 'Vientiane Zoo', 'Baan Kuen Zoo' or just 'The Zoo' (there is only one public zoo in Laos).

Seemed like a great idea at the time - catch the bus to Vientiane zoo for a few hours on Sunday.

LARP YOU LONGTIME!

Some days (most days) things can be a bit confusing at work. I often tune out to the chatter in the office as I don't understand most of it (I tune back in when I hear my name - kind of like a dog pretend-sleeping on the kitchen floor). Often I am slaving away over a hot keyboard when the clock hits 11.23am and the cry goes up "eat lunch!". The other day it wasn't until 11.25am (I'm not exaggerating - I check my watch each time as a part of my own personal unofficial active research project) and the call across the floor was something about going to eat LARP.

Larp is something special. It's the Laos "national dish". Describing it as a cold meat salad just doesn't do it justice. There's always a lot of mint, lime juice, fish sauce, often coriander, usually a few too many chillies, shallots and in some cases the parts of animals that would otherwise not make it onto Masterchef.

Eaten by hand with balls of sticky rice, washed down by icy cold beer - mmmmm - heaven on a plate (and in a glass).

 

I love that the Lao word for "mint" translates to "vegetable good scent larp" or, more grammatically correct "the herb that makes the larp smell good" (not an official interpretation but close enough).

A plate full of goodly tastiness - A Whole Lotta Larp

So, back to 11.25 at the office... where the call had just gone up for larp...

 

I said thanks but no thanks because I brought my lunch today (a rare occurrence, admittedly). Confusion reigned. "No" was not the right answer. Eventually I realised we were all going out for larp. No choice. And not just everyday old larp, but DUCK larp. Wow! Duck larp. Somehow that meant something. I feigned excitement and gave in.

 

I had to check - are we going in the car? (thinking perhaps someone had brought food to the office-cum-kitchen downstairs) Yes! Everyone is going in the car. OK. So here we go for another training department lunch. I clicked "save" and grabbed my bag...

Downstairs I realised we really were ALL going in the car.  The Federation's minibus had already done a couple of trips and was pretty much full again when we got to it. We crammed in. I counted 18 blue-shirt clad employees (Monday is blue shirt day) plus one with a purple cardy (it WAS below 32 that day so she was probably cold). So... not just the training section then?

 

18 of us in a 12-seater

 

On the way I tried to find out what the occasion was. Not that Lao people NEED a reason to party and drink beer in the middle of the work day. But I assumed something was up. I asked. I was told. I still didn't really get it. Someone had a card and so we wouldn't have to pay? That's what I think I was told. Huh? Umm, OK. (I was thinking of vouchers or shop-a-dockets or something. I realised I was probably way off track but that's where my head went at the time.)

We arrived. EVERYONE was there. Even a couple of colleagues' kids were there.

 

Larp, larp will keep us together

The food was laid out, the beer was poured over ice, the whole gang was there. I sat near unfamiliar people who freaked a bit because they didn't know what to say to me without their lack of English being obvious. So they said nothing, smiled and put more food on my plate.

Larp is all around

 

It turns out that one of the guys at work had bought a new CAR. Therefore he was shouting everyone out to a larp lunch. Of course. Why didn't I just know that?

And here's a little window into the day's eating pleasures...

Not larp. Congealed blood covered with tasty stuff (just to fool me)

Vegetable matter - of some sort. Fresh and tasty, though!

Larp is all around...

The lovely Syfong and her friend who speaks a bit of English and whose name I really must learn

A photo of no great importance - but it adds to the general ambiance (chaos, confusion)

This place is now known (to me) as The Larp Shack

I ate happy ignorance. I refused the beer (that pillow I have under my desk has already had a bit of a workout lately. This time I wanted to stay awake all day). My colleagues mostly chatted to themselves and sometimes to me - usually raising their voices and repeating complicated sentences in a tone usually reserved for the elderly, deaf, demented and incontinent. I still didn't quite understand. So I smiled and kept eating.

 

Dessert - an unnamed melon and some bland but pretty dragon fruit - it was great!

But enough about the food. There were interesting things going on just around the corner - or behind the kitchen counter...

...like the kitchen staff's footwear:

Non-regulation angry bird slippers

 

The dish pig cat helping out in the kitchen...

Scrawny filthy disgusting moggy helping out with the dishes. Ewwww.

The ever-present Beer Lao umbrellas

Never let it be said that the Laos are not "wholehearted" beer drinkers

 

Lao Beer Company also provides plastic containers for tissues and toothpicks. How thoughtful! The square ones are nicer than the round ones - even if the round ones do fit a toilet roll perfectly.

 

Tissue? Toothpick?

 

By the time we all crammed back into the minibus and got back to the office there was not a lot left of the day and not a lot of energy in the room. I decided to leave my questions about strategic planning until another day. Anyway, as they say here (and also across the river if I remember correctly) "don't be serious!"

And as I say (and am considering for my own personal mantra and maybe even tattoo)...

Larp is all you need

or

Can you feel the larp tonight?

or

Larp like there's no tomorrow

or

Eat, Pray, Larp

or

Tonight I celebrate my larp for you

or (my favourite)...

LARP YOU LONGTIME!

Zen and the Art of Motorbikin'

Needing to feel the wind in my hair, sun on my face, see some rice fields and feel glad to be alive, I suggested hiring scooters for a day and heading off into the wild green yonder. So we did...

Four Australians on three Japanese scooters.  We looked tough; we looked like a bikie gang. We WERE a bikie gang.

Tough - but fair

(yeah, I'm not convinced either)

 

We headed off in the general direction of Buddha Park. I have vague recollections of having been there before. It remember it was tacky and a bit decrepit.

 

We followed the guy with the GPS. He suggested the scenic route. I naively agreed.

 

Country roads - that's Martin in the distance

 

As we reached the outskirts of Vientiane (which didn't take long) the roads started to get thinner and wobblier.  Then they got dirtier. In fact, for a lot of the scenic route, the roads were dirt. And holes.

 

Dirt roads with many wet potholes

 

This picture shows one of the rutted red roads we negotiated. It's by no means one of the bad ones. There was no way I was going to try to ride one handed, manoeuvre around those holes and piles of dirt and the odd goat or two and take a photo at the same time. I would have been eating dirt in no time!

 

On the way we saw a lot of temples. Maybe about 20 or more. Every village had one or two. We stopped at one. A monk came out to chat and take photos.

 

Martin and a monk

 

Amidst the blue sky, fluffy white clouds, bright green rice fields and red-brown roads, the temples were strikingly gold and glittery. There's a lot of attention paid to the glittery bits. They shine and twinkle and make you forget that you are standing near a dead cat and a pile of old plastic bags.

 

Village temple

 

We rode alongside the Mekong River with Thailand on the other side.

 

Riverside Riding

 

This is an Isaan/Lao style temple on the Thai side of the river.

 

One of the things I was keen to see was Laos countryside. I knew it was out there. I'd seen it once a long time ago and more recently I'd seen pictures. It's not far away. Within a couple of kilometres I was seeing rural scenes that are postcard-worthy. Or at least blog-worthy.

 

Stay there, kids, I'm comin' through.

 

At one point a herd of stampeding goats came running at us with wild eyes and tails high and barking dogs at their heels. One of us was slightly startled and had to dodge a few galloping goats. (Not me). It was hilarious. I wished I had my camera in my hand!

Here's a family out for a day trip on the tractor

 

 I remembered the green of young rice fields as almost luminescent. It still is. Not sure if you can see this colour in the same way as I did but it hurts your eyes it is so fresh and crisp and gorgeously green.

That green is astoundingly, um, green.

 

Eventually - and I think it took about two and half hours of rumbling and shaking and dodging potholes and concentrating on the flattest part of the rutted road, we arrived at Buddha Park! Phew.

 

 

Buddha Park

 

Buddha Park was built by a rich eccentric guy in the 50s. It's bigger than I remembered.  And better. It's basically full of concrete statues of Buddhist and Hindu deities and characters. There are Shivas and Buddhas and Ganeshes. they were astounding.  And weird. And some were just tacky.  It was great! Here's some pictures:

This one is eating the moon.

Lots and lots of statues

Love these creepy guys!

 

Rows and rows of stones

 

Lots more statues (sick of them yet?)

 

Elcira climbing out at the top of the pumpkin

 

Here's some risk takers on top of the pumpkin. We endured some of the thinnest, steepest, unsafest staircases to get to the top. But it was worth it!

 

And here's a picture of the pumpkin thing. It's actually a structure representing various levels of hell.

 

Great pumpkin of hell. Or something like that.

 

And here's the view from on top of the pumpkin thing. The great big lying down Buddha was about, oh, lots of metres long and pretty tall. The topiary was interesting, too.

Buddha park from the top of the thing

 

On the way home we saw more pretty rural scenes of (probably poor and definitely nonunionised) farm labourers and green rice fields and we copped a whole lot more sunshine without the protection of conical bamboo hats.

 

Planting of the green stuff

 

Digging the red-brown stuff

 

Arriving home slightly sunburnt and tired I was satisfied I had seen a little bit of rural Laos - or at least the edges-of-the-city rural bits.

 

Vols on wheels. Heading back into the city.

 

Oh, and I am DEFINITELY going to buy a scooter now. I loved the freedom, the independence, the wind in my hair (despite the helmet that would have Eric Estrada green with envy) and what a great way to get away from squealing tuk tuks and the smell of death (or is that just rotting mangoes?)