Angry Birds #2 - one for the kiddiwinks

How much avian anger can one town take?

Lots, it seems.

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!

Angry Birds. Twitching in Vientiane

I'd love to be knowledgeable about birds. I reckon I could have been a good twitcher. If only I actually knew one bird from another. Developing an interest in bird watching (one of those things that I once scoffed at and now embrace in all my middle-agedness) I was hoping to find a deeper appreciation for my Lao surrounds through knowing a little bit about what I was looking at. It's not easy. I've seen very few and I can't identify much of what I have seen.

 

Disappointingly, the only interesting birds I've spotted in Vientiane have been domesticated - mostly caged. Apart from sparrows and those annoying common mynas (annoying in Melbourne, anyway), there's not much around in town.

So I went to the pet shops with my camera.

 

Bulbuls

 

A pretty Red Whiskered Bulbul

 

There are a lot of these cute little Bulbuls around. All caged, sadly.  I had no idea what this was but my nephew Finn (aged 9) is a brilliant bird identifier so has been helping me out.

More  Bulbuls but much more crowded and much less pretty.

Stork
This large, startling stork lives at a temple - Wat Si Muang. Again, Finn identified it for me.

The Lesser Adjutant Stork

 

Swallows?

I don't know what these little birds are. They flit around the Patu Xai monument, live in mud pies attached to the inside ceiling and dart all over the place chasing insects and dropping poo onto tourists heads. I think they may be some type of fan-tailed swallow or martin?

 

Fast and furious

Gotta be quick to take a pic

Nesting on the ceiling

In the serpents' mouths. An appropriate place for a swallow

Sparrows
All over the world these boring old birds look the same. Maybe they aren't the same but they look it to me. Here they look thin.

Boring and brown

 

Turtledoves

I know these. I used to have one nesting near my front door at home. Not very exotic or interesting in Melbourne - you'd never see them caged for sale. Here things are different...

 

Poor little thing

 

 

 

Hill Mynas
These things talk a lot. They can mimic human voices so, despite being rather average to look at, they are common in cages across Asia. They squawk a lot too.

Hill Mynas- your classic angry bird. 

Ugly, but they talk.

 

Finches
Don't know what sort of finch this is. It's kind of like a Zebra Finch but a bit different. There were about a zillion in one cage.

Finches

 

Love Bird

I think it might be a Peach-Faced Love Bird but the peach has faded - and he was all alone so not a lot of lovin' goin' on.

Solo - but smiling!

 

 

 

Dunno What This Is

Big brown head, short tail, bigger than a finch, kind of cute. What is it?

Big, unfamiliar bird

 

Quail or guinea fowl or something?

 

Dunno what ground bird this is - it's probably more often seen on skewers... like these...

 

 

Budgerigars

Good old familiar and colourful budgies are a pretty and joyful sight - except when there are too many crammed into a small cage.

 

Cages
Some of the wooden cages look gorgeous - ornate and pretty and they have a sort of Victoriana look about them. They are still cages though.

Cage hooks - I'm thinking I'll bring some home but not sure what I'll do with them

 

Pet shops

Kind of like a car crash - I wanted to look but I knew I wouldn't like what I saw.

 Curious to look at but leave you with a sadness

And lastly... a chook

Probably not on the average twitcher's list

Constructing Vientiane

I've been watching the empty block next to my office become a construction site. I'm taking pictures as they build. They do things a bit differently here...

 

After they had chipped away a couple of bumps to level the ground, (sort of), the formwork is laid out using strings as guides, plastic is unrolled to cover the lumps and bumps and grass

 

Rolling out plastic

 

Rolling out the reo

They ran out of plastic - some areas of the slab won't have plastic underneath. Will it matter? Yup, probably. But not for at least five years. So keep going guys, we've got a 5-storey apartment block to build!

 

Laying out the reo - note thongs and rubber boots - not quite regulation PPE

 

Stomping down the reo

 

In comes the concrete

 

Spreading the concrete - straight over the grassy bits that don't have plastic. Seems a bit wrong to me in a land that is soggy for 6 months of the year - but what would I know?

 

It's a big production and a big slab

 

Barefeet and rubber boots. But I do love the headwear.

 

stay tuned... more to come.

Lunchtime touring of the outer 'burbs

This post is basically to show a few photos of the outer 'burbs of Vientiane. First, let me explain...

I have wheels. I'm still enjoying the novelty. The bike is a bit, er, retro (as one person suggested). But it goes and goes and I enjoy the wind on my face and the opportunity to get out and about and see what's going on off the main roads.

the red rattler

Lunchtimes at work are often long and lazy. Several comrades have a regular system of taking naps at their desks. I've done that once or twice but lately have found something better to do with my time. I go motorbikin'!

If there's nothing else going on (shared lunches, lunch at the bosses restaurant, funeral or shopping to be done) I eat at my desk and then adjust my skirts and climb aboard the red rattler. Off to explore the outer 'burbs and the urban-rural interface of northern Vientiane.

So here's some photos of things that took my eye on one of these rides.

I watched a guy cut this tree down

This is the guy cutting down the aforementioned tree

 

Bummer of a place to be if you can't eat bread

Le Eiffel Tower - a la Laos Telecom

Of course. Penguins. Why not?

 A reminder

 

outer burbs slowly growing and paving

panorama - best viewed when clicked and enlarged

 

Vientiane under construction

 

Guard outside Department of Defence compound

 

 

I think New Zealanders own this company

Independence was won through war - and don't you forget it

A lake

the Lake House (without Keanu)

Rain threatening to ruin my lunch break (it didn't, though)