Today was a mixture of a number of things. To begin with the senses: bright light, fanciful colors, foreign noises, sweat—running, dripping sweat—dog shit, cilantro, and body odor. All of which I don’t expect to change. I hope that the short sounds making up words and sentences become less foreign, more familiar, and I plan to make an effort at understanding. I walked across a pile of fish bones, regurgitated by the dog while I had slept, and made my way upstairs.
Breakfast lasted about 2 and a half hours and was earlier than I, on average, eat breakfast-by about 3 hours. Jacqui made oatmeal, the wholesome texture and taste interrupted pleasantly by pops and gushes of golden and purple raisins. She told stories the night before of oats coming into the country years ago, when there was somewhat of a food shortage and people inane with their utility. Not that I was stereotyping but I couldn’t resist the urge to put the two together. Jacqui is a Quaker, so I laughed inside as I enjoyed the breakfast she’d made for us all. Tu Hkawng, a Kachin, from Myanmar, has been living with us here as well. We’ve learned much about the history of Myanmar, or Burma as it seems to be called. I will not go into the history lesson, but Burma is the English name given to the country based on the majority of the population being ethnic Burmese, who inhabit most of the urban centers of the country, Yangon and Rangoon included. Other regions are made up of four other major ethnicities, each of which have a number of dialects pertaining to subcultures within. Myanmar is the appropriate name for the country because it refers to the actual landmass, and does not alienate the majority of the country, made up by ethnic groups other than Burmese. Tu Kwang is from up north, in Kachin state.
More importantly there is incredible tension in the region. They are about to have their first election in 20 years. The country has been run by a military dictatorship since then. There is great corruption, fueling poverty, drug abuse, and a declining economy. In the 1980s, the country was a hotspot in the region, with the best education, best universities, high-tech industries, and all the makings of a country the likes of Singapore. In 1990, during the last election, a woman by the name of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese woman won in a landslide victory as a member of the National League for Democracy. However, she was never allowed to take office and the Senior General Than Shwe and the military took over. The country has been in a bad way ever since. I urge you to read more about it. Also looke up the Saffron Revolition, which took place in 2007, where consumer energy prices were skyrocketed by country officials, causes Monks to protest. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the monks in the streets and soon the military had to take action to avoid losing their position of power. Things escalated quickly and the military started killing monks, not only to the point where it caused massive revolt amongst the people, but until they were quelled. A vicious period in the history of SEA. And an interesting way to wake up.
As the day progressed, I read more of The Land of Smiles which I’m almost through now. I don’t have much to reflect on it, just that it’s an interesting read and the author, T.C. Huo successfully makes you feel uncomfortable and unsure. I’ll give it to Sophia tomorrow and we’ll see what she has to say about it. I did some research on cause of death, disease prevalence and learned about the population here. I wonder if, with a translator, I can teach CPR at the free youth health clinic. Ischemic heart disease accounted for 8.2% of deaths in 2002, according the WHO. It’s prevalence bows in comparison to the astronomical problems we have in the U.S. Much of this difference is a result of weaker health services. Jacqui told us at dinner of her experience with the hospital, and that when she moved here 40 years ago there were some 59 doctors in country. She explained that most of these professionals were hardly that at all, instead they were more akin to specially trained college graduates. Anyway, life expectancy at birth here is 64 years, a good 14 years younger than our fat asses in the U.S. If you’re not dying of heart disease, cancer, or Alzheimer’s, it’s something else. Nonetheless, I hope I might have a conversation with some people there to see if that would be useful. I wear my EMT tank as I write this.
Sophia and I made our way from the middle of town deeper into the middle of town. Jacqui brought us to just near the riverfront to where she was going to the bank. It was time to be farangs. I wore it proudly: baseball hat, camera bag, my D90 hanging from my left shoulder, gripped in my right hand and Wally’s old FE strap wrapped and dangling from my wrist. I had the 18-105mm on the D90 and the FE’s stock 50mm f/1.8, with 23 exposures left in the roll and 16 gb on my card, which comes out to about 1,100 raw exposures. We first made our way through town with one word on the tongue, sím, meaning SIM card. This was our first and only errand. We walked into the hotel across the street from the bank and asked there, they whipped out a few Lao Tel SIM cards that seemed overpriced, we asked where we could find tigo, and walked back under the sun and stick. On the way, we walked back past a tuk tuk driver who seemed anxious to take us on a ride, and thought maybe we’d change our minds, or he might change them for us. We didn’t. I exchanged some US dollars for some Lao kip at 8,106 to 1. We kept walking along what appeared to be a new riverfront park until there was a tigo Lao poster outside an Indian/Malaysian restaurant. We enquired about sím and the hostess responded, “SEEEEEEM?” a crescendo of unilingual technical terminology, made blunt and obvious. I nodded, “sím” and she whipped out a bag of blue cards, all adorned with “tigo Lao.” I opened the back of my BlackBerry, removed the battery, my AT&T sím and implanted the new one. I re-encased It and waited for it to start up, which was about two minutes. A friendly guy, about 5’7,” dark skin, t-shirt and khaki pants had joined us, the in-house waiter slash sím guru. He looked like Sean Brachvogel a friend from Santa Clara, just a little skinnier and a lot darker, and clearly more adept with the food/phone combo. We typed in the SIM pin and then it asked me for the MEP code. No such thing was listed, so I typed in the PUK, the only remaining number I had been given, save the telephone number. The textbox disappeared and then reappeared with the same command “Please enter the MEP code” this time adding (7 left). I won’t speak too kindly of my interpretation skills, but I was no idiot, the PUK wasn’t right. I tried other things before my new friend Sean decided we would try the card in his phone. He pulled out his pink goliath and it worked without a hitch. Then we returned to mine. Still no luck. The most frustrating part of the whole experience was having to wait the two minutes every time we reset my phone, which was at least five. We had no worries about not being able to call Jacqui to coordinate a ride or generally having any semblance of telecommunications technology with us. Despite my attempts to avoid cliché, it was liberating. Just me and Soph in our own little world in a much bigger one.
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| tuk tuks on break |
We walked by the Nanphou Fontane to the Swedish (as we had been told) Bakery, which was actually a Scandinavian bakery so that Sophia could get some vegetarian food. There were whities crawling all over this place and I wanted to get out, but it was nice to sit and people watch. I pressed a few shutters while we were there, had a bite of Sophia’s “Swedish cake,” which was a gluten-free mix of chocolate torte, brownie, and German chocolate cake. My compliments. Not weighed down, we left after talking to a nice couple from the UK, the first time in Laos we used the word cousin, that’s English for “non-romantically, but nonetheless related.”
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| Cousin Sophia |
We made our way up and down a few more blocks, clicked a few more shutters, saw a regulation NBA basketball hoop that was possibly smuggled into the county through China, some baby’s riding motorbikes, and some other fantastic things. I was chased by a rabid dog, and pranced down the busy street to avoid hospitalization, sacrificing my farang dignity. The owners laughed and watched. Fuck calling this thing off. Another dog watched as he sat on his ass, maybe his olfactory neurons weren’t properly tuned. A few sickly old women and a baby sat outside a pagoda and were selling bags full of quail eggs. These quails didn’t have puffs like Snookie or the American quail I see hopping across hot streets in Eastern Washington during the summer months.
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| Quail Eggs |
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| Quail |
We were out of town now, but traffic unappeased and the buildings seemed to shrink while really they had just drawn away from then street, the perfectly situated trees with their bases treated above gone now, less shade, less foreboding civilization. We passed the elephant carwash, and I immediately missed home. That passed, sure to resurface. Random, indigenous trees mixed in with homes and UNICEF made shade for us as we walked on grass and concrete. After two miles we recognized our surroundings, the turnoff to home. We turned right, toward the river, making our way past an innocent and panting Australian Sheppard in the grass. As though we hadn’t known, the sun was setting over the river, and gorgeous. Orange-yellow reflected on the water out from under the clouds and quickly gave way to red and magenta. A foreground swarm of large, red dragonflies glimmered above bushes on the embankment, which made its way down to the fish-hatching cages at the bank and a few hundreds of meters across, Thailand was being burning under the falling sun. Soon it was dark, six o’clock.
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| Catch that Baby! |
I finally showered, my first time since being in Laos, it felt good. I love cold showers. I even didn’t mind the drip of low water-pressure, just to get all of my grime off of me. I sweat for an hour after, it was still hot. If there’s one thing I have chosen to ignore, its Jacqui’s hopeful and matter-of-factly ‘it will get cooler soon’s. Soon couldn’t come any quicker. Seriously though, it’s very nice here, just really hot for a white-ass farang such as myself. At least Sophia has the advantage of being a guidette. She hates it when she is called that. But c’mon! Put two and two together—Italian + lives in Jersey = Guidette. Sorry Soph, time to face the facts. Don’t be jealous that you got swaggajacked by Snickers.
This has gone on long enough. Dinner was good and I’m about to pass out after pressing the export to flickr button on my laptop, it’s 10:30. The sun will wake me at 6, so I will technically be underslept. Life is hard.
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