Finding shelter in the storm - my house in Pakse

So, we arrived at the end of rainy season and it rains about 2-3 times a week. It is great when it rains because the weather gets so much cooler afterward. Which leads me to a great entry about my house in Pakse. I showed a couple pictures of it from the front, but lets take a quick tour of the inside...

The place is cozy and it has a great location near to the TTC (Teacher's Training College) ... where I teach. The A/C is just awesome during the hotter seasons (when it doesn't cool down at night... hot season is relative to cold season, the only major difference being that instead of steamy, humid, hot, miserable weather, cold season is dry hot in the afternoon and cooler - read mid 60s - in the evenings).

Its also nice to have a place to escape at times with a book, oreos, and some instant coffee!

Spirit Worship Houses

So, Laos is a Buddhist country, but there is usually a pragmatic element adopted within the belief system. Here in Laos there is in every house or building a small house built to burn incense and offer gifts to the local spirits. This is a picture of a house built on the property that my teammates looked at buying. Apparently, the landlords send someone to offer incense, food, drinks, money, cigarettes, flowers or anything they think the spirit will like. You can see the burned sticks of incense to the left in the picture with flowers on the right.
These houses are sometimes attached to trees or sitting at the entrance to a restaurant (often off to the side in a nook or cranny). Sometimes, there will be a miniature Buddha statue within the small house. The houses are made as decorative and ornate as possible.

Eating sticky-rice, coconut, and sugar in a bamboo stick

So, a quick entry about food at the Water Racing Festival...

They sell this on the street... its a bamboo shoot that is cut at one end and filled with a mixture of sticky-rice along with shredded coconut and sugar mixed in with the sticky-rice. Apparently, you peel the bamboo back ... which is a little tricky since the bamboo is hard to peel. Once you get the bamboo back... its preeeeettyyyyy good!

There is another recipe we have made here in Pakse that is delicious...capital D. Sticky-rice, with sweetened coconut milk, and either bananas or mangoes. It is "sehp elee" (Lao for 'really good').

Top Ten Things Learned in Laos (recently):

• 10: Hot water is NOT necessary to wash the dishes.

• 9: Any temperature control for that matter is a luxury (such as A/C, hot/cold water, refrigeration)

• 8: Dirt is THE way of life... you will meet dirt in this world.... in Laos it comes in enormous clouds.

• 7: Following that, clean is relative to dirty. The less dirty something is, by default, makes it cleaner!

• 6: Some food is universal... some food is NOT! (unless you are starving, then almost all food is universal)

• 5: Road rules and rights are reborn when an oncoming bus is passing a slow tractor on a less than 2 lane road... and you are the one facing the oncoming bus with a motorbike!
  
  
• 4: Everything is cheaper in Laos... except the foreign stuff that is cheap in America... such as Peanut Butter, Jelly, cheese, and butter. (Exception: the cheap Asian food like ramen noodles, they are cheap here too!)
  

• 3: I cannot get out of things by talking my way out... especially since I don't know the language! Instead, I get out by "memory lapsing"... if they ask me, I don't know any Lao and I can't speak it! Smiling also works better than talking most times!
  

• 2: People in the States tend to be waaaaaay to worried and high strung. I haven't met any worried Lao person who has a single anxiety problem and most of them are struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis. Loosen up America! They also let things go waaaaay faster.

• 1: Life is still very similar. They laugh, cry, eat, sleep, and live life with all the same emotions and needs. Its not so different here on the other side of the world.... when you add everything up.

"Boon Nam" - A Water Festival pt. 2 ... and colorful boat racing

The day of the festival is a fun day of boat racing and celebration. This means: a lot of people, boats from all over the provinces to race, a lot of loud music and muffled speaking (albeit obnoxious to those who don't care for the cowbell-driven, Lao music and the never-ending talking/awkward laughing from the microphones), along with many thousands of gallons of Beer Lao being consumed (it is the only drink I know that is in EVERY remote village... even when there is no clean water, there is Beer Lao available).

As we went down to the riverfront, I noticed a couple Lao children playing alongside the street. Other than flour... what else is really needed for fun?

Also... someone is going to have some heavy duty cleaning-up to do after this is all over:

There were many small stands dotting the streets with excellent wares. I bought some coconut ice-cream ('saeph elee'- Lao words for really delicious) for about 1,000 kip or roughly 12 cents. We headed toward the pavilion where the main audience was sitting and watching the boat racing. Loud speakers were giving a Lao music ambiance and someone was obviously commenting on the happenings on the river (however, I don't know how anyone understood him because his voice was so muffled I couldn't tell for the longest that it was a someone talking... i thought it was someone who was humming along very poorly to the songs). We were arriving mid-afternoon and it the races were probably over at that point. What we saw was the parading of the various teams along the river audience. Check out some of the pictures and videos:

The movements they are doing with their arms is the Lao style of dancing. Also, The colors represent their village.

Some random shots of the festivities in the downtown area.

My kinda kid... toting the toy gun with pride:
And, another appearance of the balloon salesman.

Buying the caramel flavored, kettle-popped popcorn, yes we are addicted. I love the Asian camera sign which even my students will do in the classroom when I try to take their picture:

...and my favorite picture of this set. I asked them (through gestures) if I could take their picture and they gave me some great smiles!


Here is a link to the entire album...

The Pakse Water Festival

Also, here are two links to more info about the festivals in Laos:
Laos Festival Events
Boat Racing Festival

"Boon Nam" - A Water Festival ... fireworks and devil boats

Around the beginning of October of every year, the Lao people celebrate the Water Festival. This is a time for thanksgiving to the spirit of the river and the sending away of evil through little boats. The water is thought of as a sanctifying force carrying the evil spirits away (symbolized by the little boats). Some great boat racing on the Mekong River follows the next day. There is quite a party in the downtown area. Normally, this area is fairly quiet with few people... BUT during the festival, it is jammed packed with everyone from the surrounding areas.

The evening before, we went down to the river area to see the Lao release these small boats made from banana leaves and incense plus optional candles, money, sparklers, beads, or flowers. They hire small kids who are waiting in the water to push the boat out into the river (great time for the munchkins who are willing to get wet and dirty in the river). There is a lot of fanfare going on around the river. Loud fireworks ignite screams from unsuspecting Lao (mostly girls). This is also the time when the monks come out of their long period of fasting (its a Buddhist season of lent during a 'rain retreat').

Its all really a spectacular thing to see. All the people carrying these little boats lit with candles. Here are some attempts at pictures... note: its not easy to take pictures at night let alone when there are a ton of little candles and other lights.


Here are the massive 'little boats' market with many plain and exquisite versions of the exorcising vessels.

This is one made from mostly flowers and incense.

This is a picture of the river where some of the boats are caught near a tree. Does that mean those people will be extra bad this coming year?

And another shot of the tree hugging boats!

And here are some people bringing their boats to the river's edge.

Here are some monks teaching near the river's edge. Didn't know enough Lao yet to understand what they were saying.
One thing that is funny is that Lao people love to get some big speakers and talk nonstop through them to the crowds (complete with awkward laughing at moments when they need a break from talking... I really can't describe how eerie it is to hear that laugh).



Many people visit the temple (Lao: 'wat') near the river and pray to the Buddhas sitting there. They pray for prosperity, health, love, or anything they feel need.


There is also a parade that takes place in the downtown area. There are a number of floats made by the monks to celebrate the festival. Here is one that Amy C. is checking out for a photo op...
They also have a really neat lighting to them, as shown by the following photo:
There were also some really cool vendors during the festival. One such was the balloon people. They had some of the funniest balloons. There were also some great food vendors who sold caramel-flavored, kettle popcorn... yum!

Tune in to the next post for the boat racing part...

The RETURN TO PAKSE... part 2: Typhoons, New Houses, and New Homies

I woke slowly to gray skies and the melodic sound of rain pitter-pattering outside the bus. The bus was rolling slowly through the outskirts of Pakse stopping periodically to let people off at their houses. It was cool. But I thought this was just the A/C in the bus...

We stopped at the downtown bus station located just off the Mekong River. When we got off, I realized that is was actually cool outside too (by cool I mean about 75F) and raining steady. We scurried around getting our luggage off the bus and calling our teammates who were already in Pakse. One of our teammates came to meet us at the bus station where we arrived and the other went to the kilometer 2 bus station to try to meet our stove and bicycles. We got a large tuktuk and filled the back with our luggage. Russell and Bethany sat in the back and I sat in the front next to the driver (who was driving from the middle of the front with a seat on either side of him). We had an approximate 4 kilometer ride from the downtown to our teammates house. I got wet from the waist down the entire way there.

We arrived! WHEW! Here are a few pictures of our teammates house where we unloaded our stuff and collapsed. NOTE: The weather in these pictures was NOT what we faced that day!

This is my house!

When we finished unloading, Russell went to meet the stove and bikes at the bus station and the rest of us went inside to escape the rain (yay for Russell!). It took a little while to track down our stuff (and for a while we feared it might have come and someone else nabbed it before we got there), but everything arrived! All three bikes and the stove came safe. We placed the bikes on the porch and shut the gate. We put the stove in the house and after a short visit, we all crashed for a couple hours.

When we awoke, it was still raining ... heavy! Turns out, a typhoon was over Laos and we were getting the brunt of it that day! Water had accumulated around the gate till it was about 3 feet deep. ALSO, when we awoke and went outside, the Cooper's bikes were gone! Someone had opened the gate and come up to our porch and taken the bikes while we were napping! They didn't take mine... maybe because it wasn't new like the Coopers... or maybe because it was a southern china model that are known for breaking down. Well, sad day for the Coopers!

I began moving some of my stuff to the house next door. The landlady said I could stay there for a week or so until I found somewhere else to live... or I could stay there for the year. It would cost $150 per month not including the electricity. It is a nice house, newly built; under 3 years old. It is also conveniently located near the TTC (Teacher's Training College) where I will be teaching. The landlords are also very helpful people who have helped Amy and Sarah when they needed something. The only shortcoming of the house is the lack of A/C... and A/C really, really helps to sleep at night when the ambient temperature falls to only 80F or 85F. I AM from the North where we are used to sleeping in the cold; its a little hard for me to bear the hotter temps when I am trying to sleep.

Also, it looks like I might have some different roommates living in my house. This guy is slightly larger than the size of a square sticky-note pad. Fortunately, he was DOA (dead on arrival) but... it just makes me wonder...


SOOO... we are HERE! Finally.... WHEW! A big thanks to Amy and Sarah who helped us get settled in the midst of a typhoon.

The RETURN TO PAKSE... part 1: Sleeping buses and goodbyes

Several blog posts ago, we went down to visit Pakse for two days. It was great weather and we got an idea of the area where we would be living and teaching. The Pakse Hotel had great accommodations, but we didn't really know anyone there (except for one landlord for the house that the Coopers were hoping to get...but that story has a strange twist to be told later).

NOW, we are returning to Pakse...to live! We gathered all our possessions from the Guest House in Vientiane on Monday, September 28th. Things were a little hectic as we were getting the last shots for Japanese Encephalydis but forgot to get needles from the nearby French clinic. The trip to the clinic and back left us just enough time to catch the proper buses for our larger stuff.

There are sleeper buses that leave every night from Vientiane at 8:30pm (sharp, surprisingly) and arrive in Pakse at 6:00am the next day. These buses will also carry a lot of stuff with them (including our 8 suitcases and a few other odds and ends). BUT, they would not carry our bikes or a gas stove that the Coopers bought (we were told that gas stoves were not sold in Pakse... but we found some later, at a much higher price!). In order to transport our stuff, we found another bus that left slightly earlier, but carries larger items. The problem is that there is no way to guarantee that our stuff will not get stolen along the way (since this bus stops every 20-30 minutes along the road to Pakse, the sleeper bus stops only once).

We arrived at the bus station and paid transportation costs of 100,000 kip (about $11.85) per bicycle and the Coopers paid 200,000 kip (about $23.70) for the oven. This bus left at 7pm, but arrived in Pakse around 6:30am... the only problem is that there are four bus stations in Pakse, and we were not sure which one our stuff would arrive at. The best thing we could do was become really good friends with the Lao guy who put our belongings on the bus... and pay him a little money to help him remember to keep them on the bus.

Now we waited for our sleeper bus... Heather got us all food from a nearby night market: grilled fish, grilled chicken, sticky rice, fried spring rolls, and some dipping sauce - great sendoff meal! yum. (THANK YOU HEATHER!!!) We also treated ourselves to some Wall's ice cream (very similar to the ice cream bars or dipped cones we have in the US, but much much smaller). Ice cream never tastes better than in hot weather (and when you can rhyme all the time!).

The bus loaded around 8pm and our 8 suitcases disappeared in the bowels of the enormous land roving machine. I instructed Heather to buy 2 tickets for me because the last time I had to ride in a sleeper bus, I ended up sharing it with a very questionable person with a major identity crisis. A ticket costs 150,000 kip (roughly $17.70) and provides 1/2 of a single bed, a small meal of fried rice with cucumbers, a bottle of water, some random little mints (for your breath?), and a wet towelette in the morning to wipe your face. Two tickets gets me a whole single bed (woohoo... SOOOooooo much space! Almost enough for me to breath!) and no sleeping buddy!

So, we said our goodbyes to Vientiane (and Heather, since she was the only one there to see us off... she lived close to the bus station and was immensely helpful in speaking Lao for us). And the bus took off! They gave us our meal and bottled water. An older Asian gentleman was in the bed across the aisle from me. He too was alone in his bunk (great, wise minds think alike). The bus was now in full swing with its rocking and bumping and turning... sleeeeeeppppy time...

....11 weeks later, and we are finally getting down to the last leg of our journey into Asia!

The That Luang (Tat Lou-ang)

Laos has a national monument called the Pha That Luang (pronouncing 'Pha' like "pa" as in "park your car here" only stop before the 'r'; and 'That' more like "taut"; then 'Luang' as "loo-ang") which is printed on all the money and probably one of the most visited places in Laos (next to maybe Luang Phrabang). These monuments appear throughout Laos and are called stupas (pronounced "stoop-a" like poop-a).

Click on the picture to see a larger version.

This monument is not just a national symbol, but intertwined with the very religious nature of the country itself. The country is characterized by Theravada Buddhism with some local Lao twists (little animistic tendencies we call a 2nd tier folk religion... alongside the 1st tier of Buddhism, making up the layers of belief in people). The That Luang was built to contain the essence of the Buddhist spirit for the Lao people. According to tradition and some historical records, Buddhist missionaries brought a breastbone of Buddha to the place and built a stupa to contain the essence and spirit of Buddha. The original stupa was very small, less than 10 feet high. A king in the 18th century built it higher close to the size it is now using gold to overlay it. Over following years, the monument was ravaged by the Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese for any gold that the Lao had used to decorate it. After the Lao People's Democratic Republic was established, the people completed an earlier attempt by the French at restoring the monument.

All the dimensions and facets of the That Luang are symbolic in some respect. The height of 45 meters is representative of the lifespan of Buddha after he reached nirvana and was reborn. There are tiny Buddha images placed in small insets all around the second level signifying the presence of Buddha. The dragon is a symbol of the highest achievement within the hierarchy of this world - power, prestige, and achievement.

The monument is constructed with two levels, the second level is inaccessible because they are afraid that someone will try to steal whatever is inside. We walked around on the second level, about 10 feet off the ground.



The That Luang is located within near several Buddhist Monk monasteries. These were used as school to teach people from the local village as well as train the monks. They are not in use now, but look spectacular.

We went with a tour guide who spoke English fairly well, and I hope to post later some more of what we saw... but it was a stark reminder to me of the worldview that underlies the Lao life and culture. There are bridges between Truth and the culture, but it will be a lot of learning before I understand how to cross those bridges with Hope.

This is the entire set of pictures from the That Luang collection. Hope you enjoy them:

That Luang

Team Laos ... is in the HOUSE!

We spent a week in training with all 16 people from what we call "Team Laos" (which is everyone teaching in Laos from ELI both in Vientiane and Pakse). We were joined by Team Cambodia (which was 3 people on it - hence why they joined us to enlarge their numbers during training). Here is the entire group (with Vandenn running on a 2 sec timer to get into the picture on the left - you can see that his feet have actually not touched the ground!).

We also took the Team Laos photo:

...and the goofy version:

...What is with Maurice and I sticking our tongues out?!?...no idea! Crazy minds think alike, I guess.

And Team Pakse:

(which is... FRONT from L to R: Sarah, Amy, Bethany BACK from L to R: ME and Russell)

...and someone thinks their funny putting my bike in front with the "Uranns Pegasus" on it for the goofy picture!


....and Yes, I did not introduce the people from Vientiane... unless I get a lot of flack for this, then I will! After all, they are so far away from the rest of us down in Pakse. And its like they are their own hub of fun and excitement...

But here's a random picture that proves we have coke and iced tea in Laos, complete with Thai writing for the trademark "Coke" and "Lipton"... YES! I can continue my coke addiction!!!:



... ok, ok... I feel bad...out of the good graces of my heart:

FRONT(L to R):

Deedee the dog, Kat the human, Miranda and distracted baby, Pam, Amy, and Linda with the bright yellow!

BACK:

Doug, Kenton the tall, Mark, Maurice,

Corinne, and Heather the smiling one

...and I didn't even crop Deedee!