Journey Through Laos and Cambodia

This is a diary of my current experience working in two developing countries in south-east Asia. Its not a 'travelogue' in the usual sense of the word, more a factual account of my experiences and impressions of working with the people to develop and run a technology-based business.

Monday, April 19, 2004

A Soaking New Year. April 19th 2004

Still here – and extremely hungover. The Lao New Year’s (Pi Mai) has come to an end, it is a three day (really a week long) festival of crazy water throwing – if you aren’t walking around completely drenched to the skin, you are really weird. I’ve indulged myself more in the last week than all year, and its been good, though it makes for a very tired Colm right now. The local Hash Harrier’s club had a party on both Saturday and Monday, there was a work party on all day Sunday and last night I was on the razz with the fellow paddies here in town. In between I escaped to Lao Bako, a nature resort about 50 KM but a world from Vientiane. It’s the sort of place where you go to bed at 9pm because there’s nothing to do, but the sounds from the jungle are amazing.

A couple of weeks ago I had what is without doubt the worst haircut I’ve ever had, all for the price of $1. And even then I felt ripped off. Maybe it’s my wiry Afro-Celtic barnet, but the barber was fairly baffled and left my head with some unsightly lumps sticking out here and there. I asked the barber to try to even it out, but came up against the Asian concept of ‘losing face’; this is an example of losing face, if you ask the barber to make a change, he ‘loses face’ because you are indirectly saying he’s done a bad job. In this case, he laughed nervously and pretended not to understand what I was saying.

On the work front things are going well, but teaching the local work crew is probably the biggest challenge. We may be taking on a volunteer this week, with an Administration and Networking background, and that would be a big help especially for training. The group here are working on preparing a Lao-English dictionary for the web, using the new data entry system. Hmm, with the last week being a holiday work seems to be something of a dim and distant memory at the moment. But then in my current state everything is dim and distant! In case you’re wondering, John, a fellow Irishman from Wicklow invited a bunch of people to his place last night and he lives next door to a few Aussies and what can I say el vino did flow! Getting a lie-in here is hard because of the heat, so you tend to wake up early whether you want to or not.

I mentioned the Hash Harrier’s club earlier, that’s a running club that meets here twice a week, and have an organized run which involves trying to figure out where the trail is from signs in the ground. There’s food and drink afterwards, and also a ‘circle’, where different members of the group get the piss taken out of them, and everyone sings drinking songs. Everyone has a 'hash name', usually related to some hilarious anecdote or characteriestic about them. Its very cheesy but also a good laugh. There’s a good mix of ex-pats and locals there, as well as the occasional traveler. Apparently there's Hash Harrier's runs all over the world, they were started by a bunch of ex-pats in Indonesia years back, and there's even one in San Francisco.

I’ve met a couple of interesting travelers, but like I said in an earlier email I tend to avoid them. It can be somewhat unsettling to be around that transient energy, and I feel more grounded hanging out with local ex-pats or locals. Also I’ve been feeling fairly cynical about the wide-eyed fascination a lot of travelers have with Laos and the Lao people. It’s easy to say how great a place is when you don’t have to live with the day to day hazards of life, like roads disappearing or sewers overflowing with heavy rain. I think John Lydon said it best, ‘cheap holidays in other people’s miseries’. I was once like that so I shouldn’t complain too much.

Well that’s about it for now – I feel a good massage beckoning. That’s one indulgence I’ve made a habit of here, you can get a fantastic massage for $3. My health has been fairly good, (some of you know that I’ve had ups and downs with arthritis over the years), so much so I’ve been running for the first time in years. I’m not going to break any records but it feels good to have an exercise, I was missing the bicycle. As ever, let me know your news when you have a chance. I'm hanging in there but I miss ya!

Sabaidee from Laos!
Colm.

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