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Published: March 15th 2009
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Some years go fast, my 30th has passed without pit stops. Yet one year in Asia has been a year of pit stops all over the place. What did we do again? Hong Kong for Phd aftermath relaxation, Hanoi to visit a friend, Buddhist studies in Kathmandu, an amazing trip through South Korea, boredom in Taiwan, brother visit in Hong Kong, funeral in Holland, lack of inspiration back in Hong Kong, work in Bangkok, and now, one year later, a holiday in Laos.
Wow Laos. Life is tropical, slow, friendly and relaxed in Laos. Vientiane, the capital has been officially selected as "Best Capital Ever" by Mimi and myself. Even the Holiday tourists in Laos are almost behaving as if relaxation is around the corner.
Yet the country has shown us some strange things. We started off in Louang Prabang. Unesco World Heritage Site and modern colonized territory. Heritage because it is a small city full of impressive old temples. They are beautiful from the inside is what i have heard. I visited only one because i refuse to pay for entering a temple. It is a new principle ;-)
Within no time we ended up in a
Morning Market
At sunrise the morning market starts. People sell meat, veggies, rice, snakes, wild cats, frogs, Mekong fish, fruits and so on. small family run guesthouse. The building was a fusion between french colonialism and Laos style. The family too. Laos by birth, french by education. The man of the house was into coffee business, quality coffee. Now living in a house like that has pros and cons. For one, the walls are made of wood, isolation is 10%!m(MISSING)aximum. One can hear every fart.
Yet the coffee was good, the language was french, and the guests around were adorable. Especially one who is into the business of altruism. She has a very charitable organization based in Laos and Germany called
"Het boun dai boun" (freely translated as: what goes around comes around). I had the chance of visiting a 400 kids orphanage/school with her to hand out 400 notebooks with pen. We also made Wienerschnitzel with Kartoffel salad once, my first culinary journey in months. Check out her website and show you don't believe in money by donating! ;-)
Anyway, where was I.
Ah yes, the spirits and their houses. In Louang Prabang we met a spirit house builder who pressured us immensely to take one of his houses with us to South Africa next month ;-). Of course, we could
Morning Gymnastics
Just after we handed out the notebooks, all kids were collected on the school's central ground for some daily exercise. Somehow, it kept reminding me of eurithmy... not refuse, this was a man on a mission. Spreading the spirit houses to every continent. Spirit houses are a local SE Asian tradition. A little house in the front of your own where the spirits can reside. A bit of sticky rice, some incense, water, fruits and flowers and the spirits will be comfortably in the shade going about their business. Our friends in SA do not know anything about the whole plan yet but we're sure this house will host some African spirits over there.
Two weeks and a few days later, we decided to do something about our passiveness by moving to Vang Vieng. "Chill out Town" say the local t-shirts. This mostly because of the tubing experiences on the river beside the town. We did not tube, burning in a 33 degrees radiating sun on a river in a rubber tractor-tube is not our favorite cup of tea. Moreover, VV was so depressing, we had no intention to stay either. But faith had it in for us. It started with indecisiveness. We could go back to Louang Prabang and hang out on the sprirt house builder's balcony or we could go on to Vientiane and
pretend we felt like seeing something new. We made up our mind and took a minibus the next morning.
After half an hour, I realized that for the first time during our travels we did what we should never do. We forgot our most precious wallet (with passports, flight tickets and money) in our guesthouse room. Hmmm... 3 minutes of whispering in the little bus before we knew we had to go back. Backpacks off the top, crossing the street, being offered a local rip off to bring us back to Vang Vieng by car and hoppa: into the local tuk tuk.
Once we arrived in the guesthouse our wallet was found and stored in the safe. Hallelujah! On further inspection we discovered that unfortunately, our money had disappeared. Now that was also as expected, but we did not feel entirely comfortable with it. Especially since everybody knew who had found the wallet and taken the money. We sat with the family for a couple of hours, observing how the women tried to pressure the thief in giving us our money back. I even shed some tears, wondering why we human beings are so ugly sometimes. No. It
Chill Out Town
Sure looks Chilled out to me! Limestone mountains, just like in Ninh Bin (Vietnam). was gone and we all had to accept it. It is in these moments that you get a different glimpse of the Laotians. They are (if i'm allowed some generalization) wonderful people. The family took us in for the following night, got us new bus tickets, bought us a pizza, asked the spirits and the Buddha to bless us and topped it all off with a box of real Lays Chips when we were seated in the bus the next morning.
Pictures later, maybe i will write some more one of these days. For the moment this is it. We're in Vientiane, Mimi has a flu, we ponder on our trip so far and slowly move toward the big flight to Africa on the 4th of April. Hopefully you are all well and happy. Just don't let that money-wasting-crisis get to you in any other way than less money in your pockets. We won't either.
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Jur
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Woah
Little Sis and mimi, What a story, what a story. And what a strange setting with that thief and the family. Amazing. It's good to hear from the two of you. I'm pretty sure Afrika will surprise you just as well. Here life goes on. But spring is coming and that means that in a short while the 'rose-seaon' is started once again ;-) I'm looking forward to more sunlight; it brightens everything! Anyway, all the best for the two of you and lots of hugs and kisses from Jess, Jildou, Kyra and myself. x