Filed under: Luang Nam Tha
Well my first cold Christmas turned out to be a very festive occasion! I was reminded again of the thoughtfulness of the people surrounding me. I arrived home to find a random uprooted tree had been planted in my front yard and covered with all manner of colourful little items and a thousand balloons! Celebrations turned out to be an all day affair of damper, beer lao, party games, lao lao, party games, late night singing of bad love songs, noodles, more noodles and even more noodles. Apparently they thought I might get homesick and want to go home so the students and teachers got together to put on a surprise Xmas party for me! The photos tell the story …
First bit of my cooking that anyone has liked! All was going well until people started mixing honey and salt for the middle … a taste I just can’t acquire!
Ah yes … bit of thai love music guitar sing-a-long, few bottles of beer, some cold noodles … what better way to spend a xmas evening …
Went trekking a couple of weeks back with some friends from VT … some photos below for you. This is the village where the bride decided to wail all night long … apologies for the disarray of viewing … editing is not wanting to work right now!
This is the “nai ban” – Village chief where we slept. Just carving us up a few little bamboo flutes to take with us … course my muffled horrible sound was nothing compared to the tunes they were playing.
Filed under: Photos
Chillin in the kitchen after 4 hours of peeling very small sour fruit things …. Some of my fave girls. The girl who got married (read blog below) is the one in the purple sinh.
Just another typical afternoon cheering on at the football … You can see my house in the backdrop there.
So I went to my first Laos wedding a couple of weeks back. It was more what they call a “small wedding” … I guess kind of like an engagement party to us … but they still call it a wedding … and it means they can live together. The big deal, when they invite basically everyone they have ever spoken one word to, is next year. I went over with some of the other girls at the crack of dawn to start preparing food. I think they were a bit scared of letting me near anything too complex, so I basically peeled these tiny little eggplant type things for 4 hours. Moments like this I want to be a man because most of them sat around drinking beer and playing a laos version of bocce all morning! Anyway I am now very good at peeling vegetables … and believe me there is a correct and incorrect technique.
On the weekend I went on a two day trek with a couple of friends from Vientiane and some other travelers. Some friends in town run a local trekking company, so they went as our guides. Good work for the old leg muscles going up the hills and into the valleys through rice fields and back up again! For all our meals we basically collected various nuts, fruits and leafy stuff from the forest and then cooked it up … with a load of rice to accompany of course. We stayed in a village of a minority group called the “Cedar people”. There are only two groups of this kind in Laos and they have their own special language! On the night we arrived there was a wedding taking place so everyone was very festive including the numerous pigs snorting around the mud and discarded food. The sky that night was absolutely the clearest I have ever experienced and it was a beautifully peaceful and meditational experience … UNTIL … we started hearing this incredibly mournful wailing sound. It was the bride and by tradition she was required to spend the whole night wailing as a goodbye to her family since she was going to live with her husband. Oh yes … about 6 hours of it I would say … so then and there the meditational moment was lost and I took comfort in the snorting of the pigs around the house which suddenly became a rather soothing sound!
Lao Independence Day (02 Dec 1975) anniversary was last weekend, so the Monday was a bit of a holiday. The teachers still all came in and it was basically 8 hours straight of sport, eating and drinking. I reckon I played about 3 hours of soccer, 2 hours of volleyball and another couple of hours of badminton and bitung (like bocce)! Good times all round. Needless to say my muscles weren’t so happy the next day so I treated myself to an extra long massage which was most delightful.
Last week I had another birthday celebration by virtue of a sequence of language mistakes! I have become friends with the girls who run the massage place in town and often go there to practise my Lao and they are also teaching me some massage technique. Quite a few weeks ago I told them I was going to invite them to my birthday party … however, this didn’t end up happening because I ended up being in Australia for my mate’s wedding. Anyway I hadn’t been for a couple of weeks but went again last week. I ended up working out that they had been a little bit sad because I never ended up inviting them to my b’day party because I hadn’t communicated properly that I didn’t actually have one in the end because I was in Aus. So I arranged last week to meet them for a drink to try and keep everyone happy … however they thought I was actually having another birthday party. So when I turned up there were presents for me etc … and then they went ahead ordering two cases of beer and lots of food (tradition says that the person who the party is for pays for all the food/drinks etc!) to be shared. So I got on the phone and invited a whole stack more people to help consume all the delights before us! They even closed the massage place that night so they could be there for “Katie’s birthday party”! Fun and games …
Later this week I am heading out to Bokeo province to spend a couple of days with a German girl who has started a local theatre company. She has been there for 3 years and has setup a drama education program whereby the local villagers create, rehearse and perform their own dramas on educational themes eg HIV prevention, anti drug messages etc … I am going to head out and spend a couple of days to see how it all runs and can hopefully implement a similar type thing back here … but more focused at teacher education type stuff. Will be a great tool, as once you go only a few kilometres outside the limits of Luang Nam Tha, there are many minority villages, where often the locals speak their own dialect and can be quite unfamiliar with parsa Lao. Communication via spoken language is therefore kinda tricky … so the dramatic thing will be a great tool I hope.
The first inaugural Luang Nam Tha marathon is being held on 08 March 2007! Please follow the links to www.luangnamthamarathon.wordpress.com and find out more! We need your help … AND of course if you feel like a little get fit goal … book a flight and come and join us! All funds going towards resources and training workshops for teachers in the local area and remote villages. PLEASE HELP!!
Students from the TTS who will benefit through your support.
This is my little office … down the bottom right!
