Flying not-so-high with Lao Airlines

We arrived in Cambodia in style: via an airplane! We had a fantastic time at Sunshine School, but other than that, after a month (and one day) in Lao, we were ready to high-tail it out of there. We wanted to stay until Friday of our second week at the school and so we had to extend our Lao visa for one extra day. This involved a trip to the dreaded Immigration Office at which we were bounced around in typical Lao style to pay one fee at this window, fill out this incomprehensible paperwork at another window, pay another fee in a different currency at another window, redo the paperwork, pay another fee at yet another window and so on until we walked out of the Immigration Office with significantly lighter pockets and an insatiable urge to hop on the next bus out of town. Instead, we skipped our afternoon classes in favour of a trip to the travel agency where we purchased two very expensive plane tickets from Vientiane to Siem Reap with Lao Airlines.

I was pretty nervous about flying, especially with Lao Airlines and especially on the tiny 60 seater plane that was flying the route. I was telling friends at the school how nervous I was about the whole thing and realized how ridiculous I must have sounded to people who have never and probably will never, be on a plane in their lives. 'This plane is too small for me! I want a bigger plane!' Ok, Goldilocks. Either way, the distance was barely a few hundred kilometers, we had a stopover in Southern Lao, and the whole trip was going to take at least three hours. In the end though, I was pleasantly surprised. Other than the fact that my carry-on bag didn't fit in the overhead compartment, nor under the seat and therefore ended up under my feet.. that is allowed here, apparently. The flight was smooth, the service was great, and, they even fed us! Twice! Who are we trying to kid? It was the food that won me over. The first flight was about an hour, we flew low, probably because this teeny weeny propeller plane couldn't push us any higher, but it was nice to be able to watch the landscape unravel below us. They fed us breakfast, which included dessert. Yes! We landed in Pakse, Southern Lao, were run through exit Immigration and directly back onto the plane. There were only about ten of us on the second leg of the trip and my bag was able to have its own seat in the adjacent seats (J: believe me, it needs its own seat!). They didn't even go through this-is-how-you-buckle-your-seatbelt spiel on the second flight. As soon as we were on board, the engine roared to life and we took off down the runway. I guess you don't have to wait for an opening when you are the only plane in the entire airport. Then they fed us a 'snack' which again, included a dessert. After my heart, this Lao Airlines is. We landed a little after 9am and I had eaten two meals already! At least we arrived in Cambodia on a full stomach!

Kids Say (or write) More of the Darnedest Things

Learning can be fun and games are a great way of actualizing this. Teaching English in Asia (and probably everywhere else, too) presents the challenge of encouraging and helping the students pronounce words and sounds accurately. One way we have been helping them to focus on proper pronunciation is by playing the telephone game. The class is split into two teams and into the first person's ear we whisper a sentence. That person and everyone after has to whisper into the next person's ear until, finally, the message reaches the last person, the one at the back of the room, and he or she runs to the front of the class and writes the sentence as it was received on the chalkboard. One small mispronunciation along the line can produce some pretty weird sentences, words and grammar.

My favourite round of telephone happened to be when we relayed the message She is walking a dog. The first team ran up to the board quite quickly. The trouble with their strategy, though, was that they concentrated on speed rather than accuracy. In haste the little boy confidently scribbled down He is walking a door. At least his spelling was correct...

My second favourite round of telephone was the I kissed the cat round. Again, one team swiftly recorded the message on the chalkboard: I castrated the cat. Poor little guy...the cat, that is.

Thank you again to Didi and everyone else who welcomed us so warmly at Sunshine School. We are happy to hear that the Open House went just swimmingly.

Bromance: Jonathan & Phout Sittin' in a Tree

UrbanDictionary.com defines: Bromance

1. Describes the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males.
2. A non-sexual relationship between two men that are unusually close.
3. A close relationship between two bros to such a point where they start to seem like a couple.

Mans-ing (v)

1. The act of wooing a fellow male friend for the purpose of becoming closer.

2. Going to unusual lengths in an attempt to become closer with another male friend.

It all began on International Women's Day. Go figure. Didi, the Director of Sunshine School kindly invited us out to see the school's organic farm, which was about an hour outside Vientiane. International Women's Day is an actual Holiday here, so there was no school that day. Phout, the PhysEd teacher at Sunshine was at Didi's house when we arrived in the morning, as he was going to come out to the farm with us. For Phout and Jonathan, it was love at first sight, or love at first sight of the Lao Phrasebook, perhaps. For the entire car ride, and then for the next two weeks, Jonathan and Phout had a complete and utter bro-mance happening. Phout didn't speak much English and Jonathan spoke even less Lao. We had been given a Lao Phrasebook from an Aussie friend named Greta way back in Luang NamTha. From that moment, it lived in the shirt of Jonathan's breast pocket and he used it several times a day. It was/is a fantastic tool to aid in communication with the locals. Whether its ordering rice and veggies at a menu-less restaurant or asking someone if they have kids (or answering that question, which was more likely) we can't imagine Lao without that phrasebook. So, as he had been doing over the previous two weeks, Jonathan used the phrasebook to start up a simple conversation with Phout. The phrasebook is especially useful because it has the Lao characters beside the English word, so even if the person you were trying to communicate with didn't understand what you were trying to say, you could point to the word in Lao. Jonathan and Phout 'discussed' sports and basic life history the entire car ride to the farm, and all the way back. Every time the phrasebook came out Phout got excited. He was fascinated by it. Jonathan would ask Phout a question and hand him the phrasebook. Phout would gingerly flip through it, getting distracted by the variety of subjects the book covered, reading words, getting Jonathan to pronounce them for him, and so on.

The next day at school, courting, Phout came and found Jonathan in his last class before lunch and personally escorted him to the lunch area. Everyday, Sunshine School fed everyone at the school a hot, scrumptious vegetarian lunch. The students came and brought a pot of rice and a pot of the day's main course to their classrooms to eat, and the teachers served themselves in the kitchen. Phout found Jonathan a bowl, filled it until rice was heaping over the edge, and then made him a second bowl full of the main course and carried them out to the table for him. He brought him extra fresh herbs and spices and sat right next to him, in case Jonathan had a whim for anything further. When Jonathan finally had worked his way through his first helping, without even asking, Phout whisked his bowl away for a refill. After the feast, Jonathan and Phout parted ways with an enthusiastic high five. And so it began. The daily love affair of Phout and Jonathan. They gushed at each other when they passed in the hall and waved excitedly when they saw each other across the courtyard. Everyday Phout would personally serve lunch up for Jonathan while, everyday, I stood in the middle of the kitchen, empty bowl in hand, watching in dismay. Everyday, while heading over to the lunch table, hands full of food, he would turn to me with a sly smile and shrug his shoulders as he left with Phout. If his hands hadn't been pre-occuppied with all the food Phout piled into them, there is no doubt those two would be walking around holding hands! If Jonathan ever happened to go to the bathroom before lunch, or stay in the class to talk to a kid and I went to the kitchen myself, I would be met with an adorably worried Phout. 'Where's Jonathan?' would be his greeting. And then, not only would I be standing there food-less, watching as Phout ran about making special arrangements for Jonathan's meal, I would also have to follow him around, assuring him that dear Jonathan was certainly on his way. 'No, of course he's not mad at you! You look very slim in that Phys Ed shirt! Any man who can't see how wonderful you are just isn't worth your time!' Haha Just kidding. But, Jeez. When does my suffering end?

p.s. Is it just me or does anybody else get the feeling that Kristen is very comfortable using hyperbole as a rhetorical device?

Kid's Say the Darnedest Things

It was our first day at Sunshine and we were simply observing Saba's Grade Three class. She was reviewing with her class how to form a question in Present Continuous Tense. Don't worry if you can't remember what Present Continuous Tense is: there won't be an English test at the end of this post...if you're lucky! Anyway, Saba has a bit of an artistic flare and uses her talent to help teach her students. In this particular class, there were four drawings on the wipe board.

Drawing number one illustrated a woman reading a book. Correspondingly the question was What is she reading? Actually, it was the Asian equivalent of the above question: "What she is reading?" Drawing number two illustrated a man eating. The bright kids quickly came up with What is he eating? Drawing number three rightly invoked the question Why are you crying? Drawing number four, however, was a bit more ambiguous than the first three.

Just as I was thinking to myself What totalitarian dictator are you saluting? one of the kids put up his hand and said, "What are they smoking?" Saba and I looked at one another and smirked. It was funny, but it was even funnier because he was so earnest. Saba slightly modified the arm that was causing the confusion, but you can maybe see from the photo how it could have been misconstrued.

We have immensely enjoyed our time at Sunshine. The kids have melted us and the teachers have been so welcoming. See you next time, class.

Voyageurs in Villages

Lao villages are something to behold. We spent a few days in the towns of Luang NamTha and Muang Sing in the northwest of Laos, getting some exercise and enjoying the scenery and people of the surrounding villages. Biking through some of the villages leaves us with the distinct impression that it is the year 1901 and have just somehow crossed an imaginary time warp line. This, of course, is why we find them so fascinating. People are just going about their daily lives. Lives which include husking grassy branches to make brooms, shaking the kernels from the rice grains, spreading out chilies on a bamboo plate to dry in the sun, bathing under a communal tap or just sitting on their doorstep watching village life flit by. Villages are always full of young kids chasing chickens, putting the death grip on an endless number of puppies, collecting bees in plastic bags, spinning tops and crawling in boxes. We think the best way to venture through the out-of-the-way villages is on a bike, and rent bicycles (in various stages of disrepair) most places we visit. Older kids go to school during the day, so if you are lucky enough to pedal through their village after they have arrived home, you will be met with an endless stream of 'Hello! Good Morning!' (in the evening) or 'Good Afternoon, Teacher!' (in the morning). Judging by the burst of uncontrollable laughter that follows these words, this is the funniest joke in Lao. You can't help but laugh along. They then continue to jump up and down, sometimes chasing after us, laughing, and yelling out any random English words they know.

The roads that snake through the villages, past the tidy wood houses, are dusty. I can imagine that in the rainy season, 'playing in the mud' is an activity topping a child's list of 'things to do today.' Kids climb to the top of trees so that they can call welcoming words from the heavens (and there-by causing anyone on a bike to swerve into head-on traffic in surprise). We rented bikes in Luang NamTha and were headed down one of the main roads around noon and were met with an entire school's worth of kids on their pedal home for lunch. They sped up to pass us and shout, 'Hello!' and then slow down so we could catch up and they could yell 'Hello!' yet again. One of the cheeky boys decided that simply using us for English practice was not enough. He wanted a free ride. So, he grabbed onto Jonathan's shoulder and let Jonathan pull him along, laughing gleefully the whole time. He had it all figured out. I tried the same trick later that day, with considerably less success. The kids departed on a helpful note, pointing us down a side path back to town.

Life goes on in plain view in these villages. No one is concerned with closing the blinds in the evening so passerbys can't glance in and catch them watching TV. One, because there aren't blinds, just big wood shutters that close at night to keep the mosquitos and light at bay, and two, because there aren't TVs. But you get the picture. Biking through a village you feel apart of every-day life. Women wearing sarongs bathe under the communal tap, using buckets to pour the water over their hair. Men sit on little stools, watching in a pink Barbie mirror while their wives cut their hair. The older generation sits on their stoops while their grandchildren frolick among the chickens and swing cats around by their ears. Women weave skirts on huge looms and men gather around the various contraptions and pots, stirring their batches of rice whiskey under experienced eyes. For us, this life is intriguing. It's hard to look away. They have so much less (stuff wise), but looking around, it's sometimes impossible to see how our 'stuff' would fit in. It's so simple and refreshing. What? People survive without perfectly manicured lawns and white picket fences to separate 'mine' from 'yours'? You share a bedroom with who? Most of the time, the best part of the villages are it's friendly residents. You can't be upset when everyone is smiling at you. You almost get the feeling that you pedalled backwards into a different time; when weary travellers were welcomed warmly into family homes and taken care of while they were passing through.

Almost as nice as the villages themselves is the scenery you pedal past between the villages. Emerald green rice fields, dotted with bamboo shelters stretch out in front of us to the backdrop of looming Burmese and Chinese mountains in the distance. It's an absolutely perfect way to spend a morning or late afternoon. It's far too hot, and the sun is too strong to be out mid-afternoon. We take that as unofficial siesta time!

Although most villages are a pleasure to visit, it most certainly is not a blanket statement. The residents of each village belong to their own tribe. Some villages are more fond of visitors than others. Fair enough. We have noticed this more so in Lao. People are either super smiley and friendly, or they don't even acknowledge your existence when you greet them. Maybe they are just naturally reserved, but maybe there is a reason that they distrust outsiders. It's hard to say.

What we do know, is that outside influence, regardless of how well-intended it was to begin with, isn't always a positive thing for these villages. Is our visiting encouraging people to keep their traditional way of life, or is it encouraging every single person in the village to take up making tacky bracelets, because sometimes tourists come through and buy them? Or when you give that cute kid a few dollars and then they return home to their parents who have been working hard all day to earn half that amount. That can't be good for Dad's pride, which is important in these parts. And, if they can forgo the pride issue then why not send little Jimmy (not Jimmy the Rice Hat) out again tomorrow to see who will dole out some cash to him. It's not like going to school is important. Or how about just giving him candy? Because that's super helpful for kids in a country where not everyone has access to modern dentistry or maybe even knowledge of dental hygiene. Oh, and look, there's all those plastic candy bags floating down the river past us. True (and sad) eye-witness story. Anyways. When we were in Luang NamTha, which is a popular town from which to organize treks, we were constantly being followed by older women, dressed in traditional hilltribe clothing begging us incessantly to buy their seashell bracelets. Lao is landlocked. Clearly seashell bracelets are not some kind of traditional village craft. 'No', didn't work. Neither did 'no thank you' (in any language). Nor did, 'Don't need one' (Of course you do!) or 'No room in my bag,' (It's so small) or 'It's not my colour,' (Then it would look great on your travel companion, or a passing dog for all the seller cares) or 'I don't like it' (It doesn't matter what you like) or even the outright lie, 'I already have one' (Two is better than one...or three for that matter). The women would stand over us, our entire meal, having laid out their offerings down the middle of our table, moving any pesky condiments far out of the way, mumbling and pushing the bracelets onto our wrists. When that didn't work, they tried whispering, the secret code for selling opium, we found out. When some (stupid) tourist would give in and buy a bracelet for about twenty five cents, the real trouble would begin. More ladies would appear, apparating from the thin air, arms stocked with bracelets, sashes, belts and sarongs. They would then proceed to cover every inch of the (dumb) buyer's table with every single thing they had. Because, of course, buying one thing was never going to be enough. Literally surrounded by increasingly persistent Akha Ladies (they are always from the Akha tribe) most people would have to resort to changing tables just so that they would have somewhere to put their food when it arrived. At least it took the pressure off us for a few bites... It got to the point where we were so annoyed we would just outwardly ignore them. But then I would feel guilty. What the heck were we doing? We are the ones who came all the way to Lao to 'experience the culture,' and here was a Laotian, literally shoving it in our faces and we wanted absolutely nothing more than for it to just go away. We asked the man at our guest house. It turns out that these ladies are annoying for everyone, including locals (at least we weren't the only ones!) They leave their village and come to the town to sell to tourists, they sleep on the tables set out for the market that night and completely desert their roles in their home villages. It is a real social problem in this part of Lao. All this to say, 'The more you learn, the more complicated everything becomes.' Isn't it supposed to be the opposite way around?