Travels

Statues of Buddha at Wat Phonxai.

It’s Sunday morning. I had planned to sleep in but, by seven o’clock, I was wide-awake. For some reason, I didn’t have a very restful sleep. Maybe it was the neighbour’s dog that kept barking insistently in the middle of the night. I got up a couple of times and looked out the window, but nothing was moving, and all seemed quiet except for the dog’s unheeded warning. Maybe he was just restless to.

When I came out of the air-conditioned bedroom just after 7:00, the house felt cool in the early morning air, but a check of the thermometer showed it was already 27°. Everyone had thought that the rains had started a couple of weeks ago, but now they seem to have stalled, and the last ten days have been hot and dry.

It was 37+ degrees yesterday afternoon when we walked the two and a half kilometres to see the “Van Wuysthoff and the Lan Xang Kingdom—A Meeting Between Two Cultures” exhibition at the National Museum. The exhibition describes the 1641 journey of the Dutch merchant Gerrit van Wuysthoff to “Lauwenlant” and Winckjan (Vientiane).

According to the exhibition brochure, “Van Wuysthoff’s report…describes the journey itself, court life in Vientiane, Lao religion and customs. It therefore is an invaluable source of information about the Lan Xang Kingdom in the seventeenth century.” (Lan Xang means “million elephants”. Sadly, at best there are only a few hundred elephants still surviving in Lao.)

Although the exhibition did look pretty interesting, I just couldn’t concentrate on it in the stifling heat of the non-air conditioned museum. Instead I spent 15 or 20 minutes looking at the “revolutionary” section of the museum complete with its depictions of the “cruel French, and then American imperialists”, and their “running-dogs” and “puppets”. There were also, as you might expect, many “heroic comrades”. It was the same display that we had seen in 1995 during our first visit. Even then it seemed like a flashback to another era but now, a dozen years later, it seems even more incongruous. The Lao communist party may control the government, but the country is being taken over by the same globalizing forces that are taking over the rest of the world. What the Thai, French, American, and Japanese “imperialists” couldn’t do by force; they’re now doing through commerce.

After my few minutes with the yellowing and increasingly irrelevant revolutionary display, I took my leave and headed for the air conditioned comfort of the Joma café—Lao’s version of Starbuck’s—to re-hydrate and to read a three-day-old copy of the Bangkok Post. A coke, two iced coffees, and four glasses of water later, I felt much better. Cathy stayed at the museum for another 45 minutes or so, and reports that the van Wuysthoff exhibition was pretty interesting. I’ll have to go back on a cooler day.

From Joma we walked to one of the local bookstores. We were looking for a Lao-English dictionary to give a local schoolteacher that Cathy has been meeting in the Vientiane College library on Friday afternoons. Someone is sponsoring him at the College, and he is making the most of his opportunity to learn English. On Fridays, Cathy has been helping him with his English and, in return, he has been helping Cathy with her Lao.

The fellow is a “sports” teacher, but also farms, because he can’t survive on just a teacher’s pay. Right now, he’s on a school break and, after his farm work is done, he spends his days in the library studying diligently. Cathy says he gets by with “half a torn-up Thai-English dictionary”. It will be nice to give someone who works so hard a modest tool to help him succeed. Cathy will give him the dictionary the next time she sees him.

As I’ve mentioned before, for our purposes we live in a very good location. Our house is a short walk away from Vientiane College, and is close to shopping, restaurants, etc. We’re also fairly close to the city centre, even if the two and a half kilometres sometimes seems longer in the heat.

No matter which way you walk, there is something interesting within five-minutes of our house. The Vietnamese, Australian, Thai, Indian, Indonesian, and Singaporean Embassies are all close by, as are the offices of the UNFAO (UN Food and Agricultural Organization), the UNDP (UN Development Program), the World Bank, MSF, and the WHO.

If you go one way down our street, make a quick right, and then take a short left, you get to the Patuxay monument or “Victory Arch”, and its associated park and fountains. The arch was built in the 1960’s, apparently from US-supplied cement that was supposed to be used to build a new runway. Hence it is sometimes called the “vertical runway”. There is a great view of the city from the top. The surrounding park is probably the nicest in Vientiane. Strangely, they turn the lights off at 9 p.m., and the police go through the park blowing their whistles and shooing everyone away. They must have a contract with the owners of the bars and discos—enough of this free entertainment; it’s time to spend some money!

Patuxay.

From Patuxay, you can look down That Luang Road and see the central spire of That Luang glowing golden in the distance.

Looking up That Luang Road.

At the other end of our street, and half a block down, is Wat Phonesay, complete with its elaborate structures, statues of Buddha, orange-clad monks, and Hindu deities. From the fire-blackened circles on the grounds, it appears that they may also cremate the dead there.

Wat Phonxai.

Detail from Wat Phonxai.

Wat Phonxai Guards.

We buy beer from a tiny shop right at the end of the street. Except for the contents of one small cooler, they have almost nothing to sell, but they always seem to be open. Around the corner are an open-air hairdressing shop and a tiny clothing store that never seem to have any customers. In the other direction is what appears to be a fairly upscale silk shop, but I’ve never seen anyone in it. How do all these people make a living?

Thanks to everyone that has written to us about Boun Lod, and to all of you who have volunteered to help in one way or another. With the assistance of a friend and colleague in Canada, Cathy has contacted the Shriners’ hospitals, and they’re sending information back and forth. It shouldn’t be too long before Cathy finds out if this is a case the Shriners can help with and, if it is, what might be involved.

Interestingly, the social worker from the Montreal Shriners’ hospital has a sister living in Pincher Creek that Cathy knows quite well. And, last night we had dinner at a restaurant that we found out is run by two guys from Quebec City, one of whom is married to the financial officer at Vientiane College. It really is a small world.