Just a few regular weeks in Vientiane

Sa bai dee moo kong coy :-) The reason I haven't written for awhile (other than random funny observations) is that the last few weeks have been much slower than the last few months, so I've been saving up my stories so there is actually something for you to read! Here goes:

• New Years saw Chris and I in Vientiane, having dinner and drinks with some of our AYAD friends. As it neared midnight, we headed to another bar, but passed a far more attractive option on our way - a party in the middle of the street. We stopped to check it out, saw that there was also free beer at the party, and so we decided to stay. This is where I saw my first moments of 2008 :-)
• Chris and I have been on several picnics in the last few weeks. On New Years Day, our picnic was on Vientiane's 'beach'. Basically the Mekong River has been drying up steadily since the wet season finished just before we got here, and now is only a fraction of the size it was in October. The 'beach', which is the dried up riverbed, extends several hundred metres to the new banks of the Mekong.
  Yesterday Chris and I went to Buddha Park, which is a park full of rather interesting concrete Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, 24 km out of Vientiane (our furthest motorbike journey so far!) After eating our picnic, climbing over the sculptures and talking to an English speaking monk about Christianity, we went home - only to get a flat tyre about half way there (the third time in two weeks!) Thankfully we were only 100m from the nearest mechanic :-)
• Work has been going well for both of us - I am presenting a two day workshop starting tomorrow (a bit worried about that one!), and Chris won his $1.5 million tender that he has been working on with Sunlabob for the last month, which means he is now employed for the next two months at least. Every afternoon after work has now become games time - in addition to petong (boules) which is played every day by the Lao staff, there is now a table tennis table, and another game that resembles a cross between air hockey and snooker.
  I did have one bad experience at work last week though - Nishan asked to look at some of my documents from uni that were sitting on the floor under my desk. I picked them up - and found that my report on the bottom of the pile had a massive hole all the way through it thanks to the worms that had come up through the floorboards and had been feasting on it for the last month. Gross!!!!!!
• Last week we said a temporary goodbye to Sunlabob's German intern, Christina (who should be back later this year to do research for her thesis). Nishan, Christina and I collectively came up with the idea of 'international dinner', since there are staff from so many countries at Sunlabob. I had the task of making pavlova, which consisted of the following steps:
  
  
  1. Buy a whisk (I couldn't find any beaters) and a baking pan from Vientiane's homewares shop;
  2. Find all required ingredients. This involved trips to multiple supermarkets, and I eventually had to give up on finding cornflour and use ordinary flour (although I found strawberries, which I was very pleased about!)
  3. Go to Nishan's house the day before to cook the pav (since he has an oven, a precious commodity!) Take turns with Chris to whisk the pavlova for an hour and a half, eventually giving up when I got blisters on my fingers. Despair when the pav looks very runny.
  4. Hide pav in the bedroom so the mae ban (maid) won't throw it out.
  5. Tell everyone at the party to expect a really crap dessert.
     
     
  The party was really fantastic, it was a German, French, Sri Lankan, Dutch, American and Lao eating extragavanza. But the real surprise was how well the pavlova turned out!! Everyone really loved it, even though we tried to tell them it wasn't normally sticky. I think it was because we had brought their expectations so low :-)
• Chris and I have now joined Vientiane's only gym, thanks to a cheap deal. I've been to a yoga class (which was entirely in Lao, so I spent the whole time watching everyone else!) and a fitball class (which left my tummy muscles in pain for many days afterwards!)
• Chris and I started to learn to read and write Lao in our Lao class this week. I am hoping this will really improve my Lao, since it is far easier to distinguish between words with the same spelling but different tones when you are writing/reading. But don't hold your breath!!

Well, thats all from here. Hopefully I will have more to report soon!

Sok dee,
Susan