Hot Season. March 19th 2004

Its been a hectic six weeks or so since I last wrote, and I’ve been almost exclusively working on training new IT systems with DDD. I've been jet-setting it also! Well, as far as Phnom Penh in Cambodia, where the main office of DDD is located, with about 100 employees (as opposed to 20 here is Vientiane). Phnom Penh (PP) is a vibrant happening place, and like a lot of Asian cities these days is turning into a huge clash of modernity and the third world.

Vientiane is a very quiet town in comparison to PP; The liveliest part is probably the Mekong river bed at sunset. Hundreds of people go there to hang out. This being the dry season, its bone dry, and as the river turns a wide angle at Vientiane, it stretches out for what is probably a couple of miles. It reminds me of the playa at burning man, the same flat dusty grey surface. You see people, kids mostly, running around, and it looks as though you could walk across the border to Thailand, but you can just about make out the river sliding by at the Thai border side. There's a load of outdoor restaraunts and bars along the river bank. A great place to chill.

So I'm glad to say that the weather’s taken a turn for the better since I last wrote; the hot season is well and truly here, and you can feel the heat in the early morning. Lots of water and you’re fine. Although, I’ve heard reports of an unseasonal heatwave in California, so I don’t exactly feel qualified to boast about enjoying hot weather.

I had a good St. Patrick’s day here, I finally flushed out some other paddies in town. The security chief of the UNDP (United Nations Development Project) is an Irishman, and he had a party at his place. (Interesting job, he was in Iraq for the war and stayed at the UN hotel that was blown up last summer, he left 2 weeks before that happened). Anyways, there’s a really small contingent, but it was pretty lively, with what had to be the smallest St.Patrick’s day parade in the world (but with a St. Patrick who was Welsh, true to historical form).

Vientiane seems like a really safe place. The biggest nuisance is probably monks wanting to practice their English on you. If you happen to wander into a temple, and stand admiring the scenery for more than a few seconds, the chances are you will be beset by 2 or 3 grinning shave-headed young men in orange robes. Most of the monks are really students, keen to learn, and the vast majority will only spend a relatively short time there. It’s a disciplined regime, up early to wander around barefoot looking for alms, but its not unusual to see them hanging around chatting, having a smoke, just like behind the bicycle shed days for us when we went to school.

All in all, things are fairly relaxed here. For example, with Lao Aviation, you can change your ticket after your flight has departed. I was in this particular dilemma a couple of weeks ago, in Pnom Penh when it was decided the day before that I’d stay to help get things done, when I arrived at the local Lao Aviation office to find that they had decided not to open until that afternoon despite the fact that it clearly said ‘9:00AM on the door. I made a mad dash for the airport, only to find out that they have no office there. Finally, a kindly check-in official told me just to drop into the office in a couple of days and change it there, no worries.

So the work’s going well, though we are coming up against some interesting cultural issues. For example, with the Beta testing of the new software for the Data Entry managagement system, its almost utterly impossible to get negative feedback from the employees, they just tell you what they think you want to hear. But all in all its going well, and should keep me busy for a couple more months. After that, I’m still in the process of figuring out a more long term role. More on that in the next update.