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Late morning on the 26
th of April sat on the balcony with much needed coffees and angry hangovers we witnessed six youths hauling a laden sheet, field stretcher-like, through the waist-deep river. What the partially floating load comprised was unclear. On reaching the monastery it was carried up the waterside steps before an assembled crowd. Was this part of some festival, maybe a covid-lockdown-delayed New Year offering? Had they – as threatened – finally harvested those chunky carp entrapped in our falls/shallows isolated stretch of the river?
Tragically it was not. The bundle had actually contained the body of a young man. The night before he had been collecting snails, seemingly from above or on one of the waterfall’s many tiers. He must have slipped, hit his head and drowned. We had been up, sat outside, until the early hours and can, during daylight, clearly see where he must have fallen. There is absolutely no way we could have reached him in time if we had seen or heard anything, but…
Our landlady’s mother later informed us, in French (she was around in colonial times), that his was the third death this year at the hands of the falls.
Proportionately for Tad Lo that equates to twelve times Spain’s mortalities from coronavirus.
Coincidentally (?) the same day we received a visit from the local English-speaking resident who had previously acted as translator in our dealings with the village’s chief and councilors. We had already been warned about him, that he was always on the make and often looking for handouts. Nevertheless he had reappeared and in chatting mentioned the death of the young man. Indeed, personally, he had also lost his wife to the river, during last year’s swollen spate. An epileptic she had suffered a seizure in a most inopportune (my words, not his) location and had drowned. There being no tourists he was currently jobless and his three young children would soon be going hungry. Could we help him? I asked him to return later that afternoon and immediately contacted ex-pat resident Martin. Yes, it was all true, but he knew of almost no one of means in the village who hadn’t at some point been tapped by the individual; essentially he is a rather lazy person who is never shy to ask for financial aid, much of which typically ends up being drunk. OK, he
wasn’t getting money. On his return we presented him with a 25 kg sack of rice. It does have to be said that he was very grateful, although whether it was later sold on for beer money we will never know.
Anyway, backtracking somewhat to where our last blog left-off…
The 10
th had seen world-wide deaths surpass 100,000; Boris had been in and out of ICU (he was very keen to thank two particular immigrant NHS workers who had been involved with his care – and it is true that our wonderful health system would indeed grind to a halt without such foreign staff); whilst Russia, somewhat tardily, had also joined the grim party.
And, on that note, no more – well, very few – stats in this missive, large depressing numbers at least. Although, selfishly, as I type on the 11th of May, Laos does have a bunch of rather cheery examples: still only 19 recorded cases, zero deaths and no new infections observed for 29 days - admittedly they have only tested 3547 individuals, although a tested infection rate of ca. 0.5 percent would suggest a prevalence some twenty times less than most western European
countries. It really does appear to be thin on the ground here.
Seemingly April heralds the arrival of snail season and they were to appear regularly on our nighttime menus, to a muted reception: people risk their lives for these?
Meanwhile Ali was well into her learn Spanish (better) campaign.
In mid-April Austria, Spain and Italy announced some upcoming easing of restrictions although here constraints were heading in the opposite direction: the police had started to enforce limitations on movement between provinces and our little bridge giving access to Tad Lo now bore a barrier tape, with good reason being necessary before passage was granted. Social-distancing measures for shops and restaurants (of the latter
Honey Bee was really the only one open anyway, whilst we and Martin were pretty much its only clientele) were also in place… Well, maybe for a day or so before the restrictive ribbons then draped along the floor, ignored; that was until the government made an appearance and there was a miraculous resurgence in compliance. With Songkran (New Year) only days away the authorities had visited to erect notices banning the usual festivities: in a normal year this period sees some 10,000
revelers come to party at the revered falls, that’s twenty times the population of the village visiting over the course of a week. I immediately thought Benchley’s Amity/high season/great white shark… We were trusting that the road blocks and general common sense would prevent such an invasion and that the locals would abide by the rules themselves. Nevertheless, the odd stall selling water play inflatables, sun hats and water pistols had sprung up alongside temporary snack and soft drink vendors. It is the village’s most lucrative week of the year, but we desperately hoped, for all our sakes, that it would be a nonstarter.
Up in Vientiane sales of alcohol had been suspended for the period (13
th-19
th). Thank the heavens such draconian measures were not deemed necessary in Tad Lo. In fact on the morning of the 13
th – the morning… we’d barely finished breakfast – our landlady handed Ali a large hunk of jackfruit and a pile of beers: “Happy New Year my friends”. Thus began a rather tipsy day. Our host’s extended family were universally drunk by lunchtime and the flushed lady folk were having a merry old time gambling at cards.
We had, finally, discovered
that our lady’s name is Pon. An easy name to both remember and pronounce, you’d think. Think again. Our initial attempts caused dismay all round, our lady visibly blanched. What the hell were we calling her?
Joe Wicks’ work-outs had done for Ali’s aged back and we switched to the river for some early morning exercise. Personally I’d not swum seriously for decades, although Ali – of course – swam almost daily back in the States. She had us doing lengths, lengths thankfully - restricted by depth - of little more than 50 metres. Still, I’d far preferred the Wicks: he gives you a breather.
On the 14
th our Buddha statue at the monastery got his annual bathe (more of a cross-legged bed bath really). The witnessing turn-out was mercifully modest.
Having spotted a huge vat of snails in the kitchen we excused ourselves and headed to
Honey Bee for dinner.
The 15
th saw Wharton school’s most brilliant (-ly coloured) alumnus suspend WHO funding: “they really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong”. Were the WHO totally without blame? No, but… Initially, in January, they had failed to recognize the potential for human-to-human transmission;
that said there was no concurrent available data to the contrary (had China themselves been duplicitous in their early revelations?). They failed to take a harder stance on the more bizarre Chinese wet markets (well, yeah). And they failed to, expeditiously, call for the closing of international borders even though they had announced a “global emergency” (in hindsight true, but it was a judgement call, tempered by a concern for not initiating global panic). Regardless, this body does not have a self-serving agenda; it is run by humans and we are not infallible to less than perfect real-time decisions; it is all we have and for the – greater than – most part it serves the world bloody well. To cease funding (drastically cut - yes, America does contribute a lot), obviously a unilateral blame-deflecting strategy, at such a time is, truly, narcissistic madness. Business as usual then.
The same day also saw Thailand extend its flight ban until the end of the month, whilst in Singapore – a country, thus far, with admirable response outcomes – there was the scary development of a 20% rise in cases over just two days. Suddenly their benign growth curve was beginning
to resemble that seen when the shit-hit-the-fan elsewhere. The authorities did immediately implement additional measures: it was now compulsory to wear a face mask when venturing outdoors, failure to do so would result in a hefty 300 Singaporean dollar ($212 US) fine. Sadly the numbers continued to rise markedly and there was a glaring neglect in their strategy that merely reflects an unpleasant social failing. On Tuesday 28
th of April 518 of 528 new cases were immigrant workers (typically in construction, shipping, landscaping and cleaning), all but seven of them living in horribly over crowded mass dormitories (several reports state that these often provide just a single toilet per 80 workers, workers who share beds with others on alternate day/night shifts). If nothing else, hopefully their impact on the outbreak will highlight their exploited circumstances: the country’s economy certainly relies on them. Oh, and there are parallels here, admittedly without the malign demeaning greed or the timeshare beds: cruise ships and care homes spring to mind. That said - it’s not rocket science – restrictive overcrowding with/even without deprivation (let alone a pandemic) inevitably has poor health outcomes: think prisons, slum communities and… fish farms (for the fish).
Our
comrade Naresh is becoming ever more fluent in Laos, but – as trying to pronounce our Landlady’s name blatantly demonstrated – it is super-tonal and very difficult to perfect. Bizarrely Laos has certain similarities to Hindi; there again Naresh speaks half a dozen languages so he’s just a linguistic arse and us Brits can’t countenance such flippant abnormal abilities.
What Naresh can’t do though is swim and the river’s shallow depth made it a perfect place to learn. Within several days his synchronized drowning was actually resulting in a certain amount of forward propulsion (only marginally less rapid than Ali on a moped). Bless him, his stroke of choice appears to be a combination of three: breaststroke arms, crawl legs with an undulating butterfly torso that sees his head predominantly submerged and his bum proud. Style aside, his confidence in the water has increased greatly.
Six year old Little Miss Trouble, Nam Phun, (not actually
Sipasert family – she’s from an impoverished single parent family and merely resides here mostly) has no such fear of the water and she was to regularly come knocking on our door at ungodly hours for the purpose of dragging Ali in for
a dip, not that her clambering antics aided Als’ back (or our efforts at social distancing).
Our lady owner of
Honey Bee (Bpa, fortunately how we mispronounce her name doesn’t appear to be highly offensive) revealed that she would soon be returning to her family home (in an even more remote rural location); it has nothing to do with the virus, purely the imminent rains. She worries about us and would we like to join her? They’d be no rent, fees or food costs and we’d simply be her guests. Really? Of course we’d never dream of accepting, but what a beautifully kind offer.
Pon went to Pakse city for the day. We’ve no idea how she was able to leave and re-enter the province, but she did return with a longed for treat: a pizza. Somewhat unconventionally her chosen topping was spicy prawn that was bad news for Naresh, but good for us: allergic to shellfish he was unable to partake.
We bumped into Martin who – wouldn’t you know it/akin to British buses – announced that he had sourced some cheese and would be hosting a homemade pizza night: none in six months and then
twice in three days... Still, we were totally up for more.
We’d presumed it would be just the four of us and were a little taken aback when we discovered our carb consuming number to be eight. All of the others (Austrian or French) are expats (mostly associated with the French-occupied island) and have been in Tad Lo for months at least, but we definitely felt guilty at being part of quite a sizeable gathering. This was not demonstrating good practice. Several cases of beer and countless excellent pizzas later we were all very social and not so distant. Shame on us. One of our number, French Matilde, has been here for several years and is actually honored at the monastery: having raised more than $7000 dollars in aid for the village on the back of last year’s atypically destructive rains she has her name engraved into its boundary wall. Anyway, she asked if we would be interested in volunteering to teach English when the school reopened in mid-May. Absolutely.
Seemingly here in southern Laos the temperature just keeps ramping until the rains do finally arrive. There had been brief early evening thunderstorms for a week or so,
but these abruptly ceased and the daily highs were now nudging 40C with no cooling precipitation forecast for the foreseeable. The water buffalo were not happy and took to joining us in the river.
And then a new arrival rode into town, a middle-aged English guy named Gordon astride a scooter. He’d just arrived from Pakse where he’d been holed-up for a month. “How on earth did you get past the roadblocks?” we enquired. Apparently he hadn’t always, although he had, evidently, managed to find alternative back road detours. Pon – he’d stayed at Sipasert several months before – refused him a room, although one of the “closed” guesthouses wasn’t so fussy. We were equally standoffish (6ft-offish) until he mentioned a possibly dodgy mole on his back. Kids and medical concerns are Ali’s Achilles heel and we were soon giving the melanised malformation the once over. It did look somewhat less than Kosha so we took pictures to forward to the medical posse around the globe. Responses were a uniform “yes, get it checked out”.
Thus an issue was brought to the fore, an issue that had been rumbling in the banished, disquieted, self-preservation nether regions
of the grey matter. If you get very sick with the virus they’ll somehow whisk you away (maybe, hopefully) to Vientiane; but what about less socially implicating health problems: a cracked tooth, an infected wound, or… a worrisome wart? Pakse (still officially off-limits) doesn’t have much in the way of medical expertise, but Vientiane’s facilities, some 400km away, might as well be on the moon.
We discovered a stall in the village’s tiny market that was boiling corn cobs: carp love corn, as do most non-carnivorous freshwater fish species (that said I have previously, unintentionally, caught both bass and pike on corn during retrieval). Ali is also rather partial. With a more promising bait to hand we returned to the lake. Sure enough we began to catch fish: not carp, but a mix of roach-like silver-scaled handlings and small tilapia (I thought they were predatory?). Given their diminutive size these we returned. Pon was aghast: “you put them back?”; “you bring, I fry”. Subsequent visits would see my prowess improve and suddenly each captured tilapia was pushing a kilo, far larger than those for sale in the market. I gained a new respect within the household as hunter-gatherer-in-chief and
we all ate a lot more fish (both less life threatening and tastier than river snails): fried and grilled scrumminess aside, aromatic tilapia lab salad is equally delicious; whilst the little silver fish provided wonderfully giant, crunchy whitebait.
Further afield… Our friends in the Caribbean were now estranged: Mark had returned home, pre-craziness, to the UK for an elective surgery and was now trapped there, leaving his wife Anke and the kids in St. Kitts. Actually this turned out to be a fortuitous turn of events as he was in situ to oversee his elderly parents’ care when the lockdown was initiated in England. Mark has thus far avoided illness in virus rampant UK, whilst Anke, Lou and Lols believe they have all experienced mild cases. OK, a small stat for tiny St Kitts (and Nevis), the larger island being of a size that a fit individual might cycle around in a day: it has 15 officially recorded cases… a mere 4 less than Laos (admittedly it has performed fifteen times the number of tests).
I couldn’t take the credit for this one: we had a magnificent venison lab salad for dinner.
Without a decent headline making
gaff for almost ten days, on the 24
th the tangerine fool let rip with a gem. I hesitate to elaborate because I did watch the whole press conference and as naïve and ignorant as his comments were they didn’t quite invite America to shoot-up with Clorex, nor stick light bulbs up where the sun doesn’t shine. Nevertheless, it was a hoot.
Not content with putting the world to rights via the typed word we initiated live streaming “pub sessions” on a Saturday with the bar opening at 8pm our time, 11pm in Queensland and a more extreme 2pm in England. Meanwhile JP’s gang were busy winning remote family quizzes. JP himself was gutted on May 10th, as “Slippin’ and Slidin’” Little Richard sang his last “Freedom Blues”. Personally I will always be grateful to “Keep-a-Knockin’” as it provided the inspiration (OK, it was knocked off) for Zeppelin’s sublime intro to “Rock and Roll”. Quite why the founding father of rock music had such an aversion to the letter “g” remains open for discussion.
Pon finally managed to contact the Laos postal service who were able to confirm that Iain Sorrel’s amazingly kind fishing parcel, sent from the US,
was indeed heading their (our) way, although it was currently held up somewhere (most likely in Bangkok) pre-arrival in Laos. Here’s to our stasis out living that of cargo planes.
I’d mentioned this already, but by the beginning of May Laos had failed to record (sic) any new Covid cases for almost three weeks, whilst our province was yet to register any cases. The extended Sipasert family’s school-deprived five kids (aged 10-16), constantly on their mobiles, were driving Pon nuts. We said we’d start English lessons. She was ecstatic, the children less so.
There are other children residing with us, a good few of them. One is a babe, another a toddler (belonging to a very young single mum, Hoi, who lives/works here), little madam Nam Phun, and several older children/young adults who are employees. The first three get our cooing, nursery rhymes and individual play, respectively; but sadly the others were not allowed to partake in English lessons. In all honesty five children with a six year age gap are taxing enough for us. Thank heavens for Ali’s Japan-based teaching experience. Still… devising lesson plans, preparing flash cards, game boards, work sheets and other aids
seriously eats into the day.
Hard graft it is, but the students are amazingly focused and are a pleasure to teach. Every day we plan on an hour’s lesson, but it invariably ends up being two with the last game – usually a running retrieval activity – always hard to terminate. Phuang, the oldest, recently asked if we could start giving them homework and even ten year old Pancake (yes that is her name – and one we can finally pronounce) was keen for the extra work. Incredible.
Freshwater crabs, typically placed live on hot coals to cook, make a sudden welcome addition to dinner menus.
As if we didn’t have enough on Ali registered for and started the British Sign Language course. Oh, and – shinjirarenai - she now has us refreshing our limited Japanese language skills.
It has been a strange month, well… two now since we arrived in Tad Lo. We have tried to be responsible and to lead by example, but being part of such a large (far from static) extended family group and indeed embedded within a less than totally informed community that has experienced no direct viral impact (and behaves
in a corresponding manner) does blur boundaries and propagate complacency.
The village as a whole simply exudes a gentle serenity. The industrious tend their orderly productive plots of land; aged neighbours sit gossiping under the shade of heavy mango trees; and clutches of unattended children run through dusty open yards or splash and dive in the river. Young pups harass placid stoic mothers; whilst cattle, buffalo and goats roam freely manicuring the grassy banks as the insects natter and hum unseen amidst the drifting aroma of magnolia.
There are several cars (all modern 4x4s owned by the few wealthy) and more numerous scooters, although a mounted engine bearing tractor-like front wheels equipped with outrageously elongated handlebars (think monstrous easy rider lawnmower) towing a cart is the most common people mover. Man-made noise is minimal and, wonderfully, you are never far from the soothing cadence of the falls.
For the majority life is not easy, but (and here I’m reminded of rural Fiji) the community is caring, warm and tight. People have, without exception, welcomed us; treating us both kindly and fairly. Not surprisingly then we have developed a real fondness for and bond with Tad Lo and
its people. As Lutz back home in Berlin recently stated it’s the stuff ex-pats are born from. Back in 2011
"Sabai dee" Laos on our first ever visit to Laos we contemplated buying land in Luang Prabang. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that some extended relationship may well develop between Tad Lo and ourselves.
Today, the 13
th of May, we were up at dawn to go fishing and we did indeed, once again, catch dinner for everyone. However, getting to the lake always takes time. Why? The bloody dogs. We have four including a young pup and they all insist on joining us. On getting to the rickety temporary bridge I hide and Ali runs back fifty yards beckoning them homewards. Usually around the fourth attempt something grabs their immediate attention and we are able to scurry across. They are not used to indulgent petting and simply adore us; the grizzled scarred old dog is rarely far from my side. That said we also have the most demonstrative (and equally battle strafed) tom cat who typically forces me to sit in the shitty plastic chair as he luxuriates in mine. Tom and Grizzly do not get on, hence
most of their acquired markings. Anyway… the return walk back around the lake was surreal when winding through the vegetation we were suddenly confronted by two elephants, one in the lake munching on something evidently appealing whilst the other merely loitered at the side of the path. These are working animals, not wild, but when they are unaccompanied it is a strange unnerving feeling to pass so close to such colossi.
OK, this month’s missive has - mercifully - proved to be both Covid- and Trump-light(er). Nevertheless….
For those who do survive a symptomatic Covid-19 infection recovery time may take anything from little more than a week to several months. Thus some of the statistics that catch my eye the most are “active cases”. China’s graph is essentially back to zero; Germany, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand’s graphs similarly so. Little about China can be trusted so we won’t dwell there. However, there can be no doubt that the measures employed, particularly in populous Germany, were both prudent and highly effective in both stifling infection numbers and saving lives. Those countries with less clinical responses: America and the UK are particular embarrassments, not so – hell, the UK
allowed 18 million people to enter its territory in the last three months without any protective/screening/isolation measures in place. New Zealand responded to arrivals in the polar opposite manner, even with its own returning nationals: they were escorted (taken) to a rigorously enforced 14 day quarantine. No lockdown at all… Well, in Sweden the new infections graph continues to flat-line rather than decline, their daily deaths (amidst much fluctuation) similarly and their active cases continue to rise.
My view on the easing of restrictions (the measured “internal reopening” of countries)…? Absolutely in Switzerland, Australia and the other “in control” countries; with extreme care in Italy, Spain, Turkey and Iran; risky in France; somewhat foolish in the UK and USA; no in India, Mexico or Russia; and not unless you’ve lost your bloody mind in Brasil, Pakistan, Bangladesh or South Africa.
Meanwhile (the 15
th) in SE Asia… Both Cambodia and Laos have now recorded no new cases in over a month, numbers remain very low with no deaths in Vietnam, whilst new Thai infections hover in the low single digits. Here in Laos inter-provincial movement is again permitted and it is mooted that public transport will restart on the
18th. I suspect we might see some neighbouring international borders open in the not so distant future.
Another intriguing statistic is that of “closed cases” (either you recovered, or you died). Globally, almost for the entirety of the pandemic, this had stood at 80% recovery and 20% death – the scarily high proportion of deaths due to the fact that if you are going to die that occurs much more rapidly than those potentially long drawn-out recoveries. Reassuringly the margin between the two numbers is suddenly expanding rapidly. In little more than two weeks it has stretched to 85:15. Ultimately, when there are very few/no active cases we would expect that to stabilize somewhere close to our predicted death rate of 5% (of course this is still mightily elevated as it doesn’t include non-tested yet recovered/asymptomatic individuals). Admirable Germany’s stands at 5%, but this will drop further as its remaining actives predominantly recover; Italy’s is on 22%, but a full one third of all their cases are still active. So… Some anomalies: China’s death rate is/was – apparently – less than 1%; Russia states 4.4%, but it lags a month behind most of Europe with 80% of its current
cases still active so you might expect that to be in excess of 20% (at this point in their respective outbreaks three times as many people were dying in Germany as they are, supposedly, in Russia and those numbers take no account of relative population sizes); and, finally, anti-lockdown Sweden rocks in with a 41% death rate - 70% are still active and that will decrease, but…
Nicola Sturgeon (Jimmy Krankie’s stunt double), Scotland’s First Minister, is not the most likable of individuals but she has shown sense. Jane Godley’s impersonation of her is apparently enjoyed as much by Nicola herself as by us.
And… a last musing… The "Blue Meanies" featured in the Beatle film “Yellow Submarine” were fierce yet buffoonish music-hating beings. I am surprised that no one has coined the phrase “Orange Meanie” for a fierce yet buffoonish nonself-hating being.
To all of you out there not in Laos please do as Nicola advises and not as we are increasingly doing.
Please keep your distance and stay safe everyone.
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
I really enjoyed your update...
and the pictures of water buffalo brought back memories of my childhood living in a similar village and riding them.