iPhone 4 + no lens info — 1/30 s, f/2.8, ISO 80

Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL + EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM — 1/160 s, f/4.0, ISO 100

Apart from several unappealing museums and memorials to the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, I found few landmarks of note, which suited my preference for simply walking around a new city and seeing what I can see. My first walk took me north along the bank of the Tonle Sap, past the Imperial Palace and the Silver Pagoda, to Wat Phnom, beginning in intense heat in the middle of the day and ending in tropical rain in the late afternoon. It seems that Phnom Penh was founded around the hill this way stands upon, with phnom meaning “hill” and Penh being the name of the woman believed to have found the Bhuddist relics that caused the wat to be founded. I wondered at the men standing around the temple with cages filled with small birds, but a bit of research suggests that they offer visitors the opportunity to pay to release them and by doing so earn good karma. Apparently the released birds are typically re-captured later, thus making karma a renewable resource.

iPhone 4 + no lens info — 1/530 s, f/2.8, ISO 80

At the peak was a marker proclaiming the mountain’s 2565 metres above sea level, as well as a small shrine in a refreshingly cool copse that reminded me how much comfort we lose when we remove all the trees from our environment. On the other hand, it was teeming with insects that constantly threatened to bite.

Doi Inthanon has several memorable waterfalls: we stopped at Wachirathan on the way up and Mae Klang on the way down. Wachirathan was extremely windy on the day we visited, so you can contrast the wild spray and general messiness in my photos with this beautifully sunny and serene scene.

Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL + 18.0-250.0 mm — 1/160 s, f/6.3, ISO 400

I was particularly happy with another image from this batch: the bright red flower is nicely lit but it’s the background that makes the scene for me, really capturing the essence of “jungle”:

Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL + 18.0-250.0 mm — 1/125 s, f/5.6, ISO 400

And here is the set:

Ratchadamnoen Road is sometimes referred to as Walking Street, in reference to the market, or it could be that Walking Street refers to the market itself. Either way, the Sunday market seems to be prospering and increasing in popularity with both locals and tourists. The complete closure of the street to traffic helps create a pleasant relaxed environment, as does the easy availability of authentic local food and the presence of artisans carving, painting and blowing glass figurines for the onlooking crowds. The stallholders weren’t very interested in bargaining, but neither did I feel that I was being overcharged for being a farang (not a guava!).

Night is, for obvious reasons, the worst time to take photographs, and I have a tendency to be overly optimistic about how steady my hands are, which results in a lot of satisfaction at the time of shooting but a corresponding degree of frustration later as I sit down to process the night’s takings. Despite this, I managed to salvage a handful of shots that I think capture some of the atmosphere of the street, and I hope they convey it to you.

iPhone 4 + no lens info — 1/40 s, f/2.8, ISO 80

iPhone 4 + no lens info — 1/1000 s, f/2.8, ISO 80

Turning raw video clips into something worth watching is even harder than processing photographs, but here’s my first video, showing the beaches of Ao Nam Mao and Ao Nang and a few of the local residents of the underwater variety.

Krabi July 2011 from Kendall Lister on Vimeo.

The beautiful scenery of Ao Nam Mao, Ao Nang and Chicken Island, above and below the water.

After last visit’s frustration at not being able to photograph any of the beautiful tropical fish we saw while snorkeling, this time I brought a new camera: a waterproof DMC-FT3 from Panasonic. You can see from the photos below that the image quality cannot compare to even the low-end Canon 400D that I normally use, but that camera would not handle being submerged in the ocean anywhere near as well – being able to duck under the surface and snap away opens up a whole new world for photography that is incredibly exciting!

We arrived yesterday and immediately booked a repeat of the “four islands” tour we took on our last trip. Alas, it’s now the monsoon season and water conditions are not as perfect as they were in April, and sure enough the water was cloudy and visibility was down to a few metres. This was compounded by the tour operators shifting the snorkeling location to the less-pretty landward side of Koh Gai to avoid the rougher seas the current season brings.

Nevertheless, I saw most of the cast from last trip’s show, but the only fish that came out clearly were these little fellows who spend most of their time in the light near the surface. It turns out that our first visit to Krabi was pretty much perfectly timed, right in the middle of the clear weather season as well as having low tides in the middle of the day. I hadn’t realised how much difference there is in the size of tides from week to week, and on this trip we had high tides at exactly the time you would want to be on the beach, which combined with the stronger on-shore winds to make observing the local fish much less satisfying that it was a few months ago. I guess we’ll just have to go back again next year!

Before arriving in Krabi, I had planned to take advantage of the trip to sit in the hotel and catch up on some reading. Much to my surprise, however, I found myself on our last day convincing Pei Pei to take a long tail boat back to Rai Leh and spend the day on Phra Nang Beach. I just wanted to take every opportunity to float in the crystal clear warm water. So we slathered sun cream all over ourselves and walked down to the pier to wait for the next taxi-load of tourists to arrive so we could hitch a ride on their boat.

When we had stopped at Phra Nang Beach on our four island tour the previous day, the beach was quite empty. Today, though, we were there after lunch and there was a crowd of people enjoying the sun and water. Interestingly, there were half a dozen long-tail boats selling pad thai and fried rice freshly cooked on portable stoves, as well as ice-cream, drinks and fresh fruit. Given the remoteness of the beach, this was very welcome and the presence of vendors didn’t spoil the beach as I would have thought.

Regardless, we decided to find a less crowded area, so we followed the beach around a point and found a long stretch with much fewer people. We pitched our bags in the shade of a cave and I headed for the water, which, although refreshing, in some places felt as hot as the air. The towering limestone cliffs actually hang over the water in places, so you can swim under them, which is awe-inspiring.

While standing knee-deep in the shallows, I was surrounded by yellow and black striped fish and it was all I could to resist dunking my camera lens under the surface to capture them more clearly. There’s something very special about sharing the water with these little fish, as they are neither threatened nor threatening – we just hung out together for a while, and that was cool with them.

When we’d had about as much sun as we could handle, we wandered back to the other side of Rai Leh to wait for enough people to want a long tail boat to make it worth the driver’s while to leave. As we puttered out of the bay the clouds were darkening quickly, and before long rain was pouring just as it had each evening we had been in Krabi, but unlike the first day we weren’t in a tiny kayak, the only people on the water, paddling like mad to reach shore before the dark clouds drenched us. We didn’t, and they did.

After an introduction from the lead tour guide, about twenty of us plus half a dozen guides boarded a motorboat. We were an eclectic group, made up of Japanese, Indian, ourselves, and a surprising number of Thais on holiday from Bangkok. We chatted with one such couple and learned that their trip was part holiday and part annual return to the husband’s parents’ town for the Thai New Year, which was a few days away.

Our first stop was Phra Nang Beach, or Princess Beach. The beach includes a cave famous for being home to a mythical sea princess, and some locals make fertility offerings to a shrine in the cave.

After marvelling at the crystal clear water and stunning limestone cliffs and islands, we headed to our next stop: Koh Tup. Here we were able to walk, Moses-like, through the ocean between two islands, and Pei Pei has reminded me that this can only be done for a few days before and after the full moon each month, so we were fortunate in our timing.

As our boat left Poda Island we could see that the second island we had walked (waded) to was Koh Gai, or Chicken Island – see if you can guess why! We were then taken to a quiet, rocky spot for snorkelling, and the amazing experience of floating among the brilliantly-coloured tropical fish, coral, anemones and what looked like giant clams.

The final stop was Poda Island, for lunch and to enjoy the pristine white beach and water. Just by wading a few metres into the water you could be surrounded by fish, which seem particularly attracted to hands!

Even though this was one of the most basic tours offered, and we were shuttled from location to location on a schedule, I have never enjoyed a beach trip so much – and when an Australian says that, you know it must be special!

We picked a small hotel in a small town away from Krabi itself, called Ao Nam Mao. The real tourist spot is Ao Nang, but we wanted somewhere with fewer tattoo parlours and night clubs and Ao Nam Mao definitely doesn’t have any of those. In fact, with a 7-11, a one-person police box, a couple of motels and a couple-of-days-a-week market, Ao Nam Mao is one of the smallest towns I’ve seen (it reminded me of Omarama in New Zealand where I was briefly stranded by flooding two years ago). According to one web site, Ao Nam Mao’s distinguishing feature is that it is a populated place, but I don’t think that quite does it justice.

Far from feeling isolated, though, it’s just a ten minute songthaew ride to Ao Nang via the inland roads, or for much more fun take a long-tail boat around the coast via the stunning Rai Leh peninsula, which I’ll show you in my next post. Our hotel faced onto the beach, and this time I think I’ll let the pictures do the talking to show you how our first morning looked.

My goal for the short trip was to bring back a few nice photos, so what I was look forward to the most was climbing up to the ruins of St John’s Church that sit atop the hill that was the centre of the Portugese fortress known as A Famosa. I was hoping that the dusk light would create an excellent environment for photography, but my hopes were dashed by a pile of green leaves that someone was inexplicably burning right in front of the hill, creating huge plumes of smoke that smothered whole site in a ruinous fog; so much for clear photographs! You can see the effect in the first two photographs. Fortunately an old government building on the other side of the hill was nicely shielded from the smoke, although I never found out why the old car has been preserved.

As the sun set I wandered back down to the roundabout that probably sees more tourists than locals and discovered that the famous trishaws, known for their gaudy decorations, have a even brighter nocturnal side; the three that I found were particularly luminous. Apparently there are plans to add solar-powered motors to these currently pedal-powered vehicles, but I don’t think even a whole day of the intense Malaysian sun could provide enough energy to light these beauties!

After dinner we walked out around the old town, including famous Jalan Hang Jebat, or Jonker’s Walk. Hang Jebat was a Malay warrior in the 15th century, the accounts of whose exploits range from legendary to incredible. As it was nearly midnight, we didn’t encounter any of the usual crowds – in fact, the streets were eerily quiet. Some of the houses and shops were still hanging red lanterns from Chinese New Year, and we came across a temple with some alarmingly fierce guardian figurines. When the enthusiastic street cleaners began hosing everything in sight, we opted to call it a night before they decided to treat us to a cooling shower right there on the footpath.

The first few pictures show the making of acar, a mix of cut vegetables soaked in vinegar. The vegetables have to be squeezed to remove excess vinegar, a very manual process. The next images show pouring jelly into moulds containing longan fruits, as well as various raw ingredients. Not all dishes are for human consumption – some of the ingredients shown here, such as the whole duck, are destined for the house shrine.

A popular soup includes large mushrooms and sea cucumbers, both of which are purchased dried and must be soaked before they return to an edible state. The sea cucumbers are also used in a pork stew, which lead to an unfortunate faux pas on my part: I was avoiding the pork fat and skin, leaving them on the side of my plate, when the conversation turned to how expensive the sea cucumbers are – over RM 200 ($75 AUD) worth were used for the meal we were eating. Suddenly someone realized that the “pork skin” I thought I was healthily discarding was in fact a large piece of expensive sea cucumber coloured by the stew’s stock, and a storm of scolding commenced!

After a few more dishes, including my favourite loh bak (not the spicy pork rolls that everyone else calls by that name), we have some colourful jelly dessert – I don’t like to think about how long it must have taken to create all those different layers.

The Umpherstone Sinkhole was actually turned into a leisure spot last century, with the bottom filled with water so that people could float under the very impressive “curtain” created by the hanging vines, but now it’s a very attractive garden. Adam Dimech has written a good summary of the history of the sinkhole.

Leaving Mt Gambier, we continued east, homeward bound, but stopped to explore another large hole in the ground at Wannon Falls. The brown of the land was beautiful and struck me as quintessentially Australian. At the time of our visit, the flow over the falls was quite tame, but it seems that it can be quite impressive at times.

Finally we came to our final overnight resting place: Hamilton. I’m sure that the fact that we visited it on New Year’s Day contributed, but I found it to be a wonderfully quiet place – if you’ve visited it at other times and found it differently, let me know! By the way, the lake at Hamilton is picturesque but I’m afraid it just doesn’t compare to Lake Hamilton in the Canadian Rockies.

An interesting feature of the landscape as we approached the coast was a wind farm. At first the turbines look alien, as foreign and incongruous with nature as the metal invaders from War of the Worlds, but they soon became just another part of the environment. I wonder just how many we’ll need to provide a noticeable reduction in the pollution our coal-fired power stations are currently causing.

A few hours driving north from the Perry Sandhills took us to Broken Hill, one of Australia’s most famous mining towns. Although it was by far the more successful mine and town, for beauty it’s Broken Hill’s next-door neighbour, Silverton, that steals the limelight. Silverton was founded when, coincidentally, silver was discovered in the area, and so confident were the prospectors that many substantial and sturdy buildings were constructed for homes and businesses, churches and pubs. Unfortunately the minerals quickly ran out and attention turned to the suddenly much more promising Broken Hill area twenty-odd kilometres to the east. The investment in Silverton was so great that many of the buildings are still standing today, although some only as shells. We arrived as the sun was setting, providing beautiful light that played gloriously with the brick and stone skeletons that remain.

I mentioned in my post about the Pink Lakes near Ouyen that the whole south-east corner of Australia was in the middle of a heat wave. Well, today was no exception – it felt like the temperature was 50 degrees, and after ten minutes I would have been sweating profusely if not for the oven-like dryness of the air. The Walls of China is the name given to the huge sand dune that has collected on the east side of the lake; over ten millenia the dry surface of the lake has been scooped up and deposited along its edge, where it has built up into a fascinating set of sculptures and a truly surreal landscape. On the lee side of the dune, the ground is pure sand, and in the intense heat, every step was exhausting; the demoralising effect of the conditions made me very quickly understand the common trope of people lost in the desert losing their sanity and just giving up. I found myself thinking carefully about the path I walked, as each step down, as enticing as it seemed, just meant another step later. As I write this description, it seems melodramatic and impossible, but the experience was simply overwhelming, while at the same time exhilarating – the Lake Mungo environment is completely unlike any I had previously encountered.

I was conflicted when developing these photographs – turning up the saturation produced some beautifully rich red soil and blue skies, but that isn’t how the landscape looked today, and I really want to show you the scenes as we saw them: intensely bright and scarily dry, but starkly beautiful. Perhaps later I’ll post some “glamour” treatments for comparison.

We didn’t stay at the Walls of China for the sunset, as we didn’t want to drive back to Mildura in the dark, but the sun was so strong that as it dropped near the horizon it was blinding and we had to pull over and wait for it to set. Even that forced pause yielded a beautifully warm scene of what we think was freshly cut wheat, so we were happy to wait.

First up, the traditional tomato crabs and lo bak, which is strips of pork cooked in a very thick black sauce that I believe is flavoured with star anis (aniseed) and cinnamon, and looks nothing like this pork braised in soy sauce that claims to be called the same name.

At the same dinner, a vegetable dish that I don’t like due to its sour flavouring – I know it only as ah chat, but I welcome any corrections.

At another dinner, I found a delicious dish I don’t remember encountering before: sweet and sour meatballs, as well as a very soft and delicious boiled chicken.

On one of the days we ventured to Kuala Lumpur for shopping, we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant. The topics of conversation included whether the doors in the walls were fake and the unexpectedly enormous size of the meals we had ordered.

On a pleasantly cool night after two hours of badminton, the hottest and most exotic meal of the trip: frog, pipis in chilli, rice porridge, gai lan and a glass of lime juice with a salted sour dried plum, or “suen moi” (I really can’t pronounce this name, so if you know what I’m talking about, please help me out with a better spelling!).

Finally, a Malaysian classic that I find more and more Australians are aware of: nasi lemak, consisting of rice cooked in coconut milk, served with chicken curry, sambal, cucumber, anchovies and my favourite part, kacang, or roasted peanuts. It’s a great breakfast that comes wrapped in a banana leaf.

I would say that I hope you enjoyed looking at these dishes as much as I enjoyed eating them, but I’m afraid that’s not possible – sorry! My only regret is that I didn’t get any photos of the famous Seremban “pig knuckle” – maybe next time!

On Boxing Day, Pei Pei and I set off north from Melbourne, ultimately heading for Broken Hill. Little did we know that we would turn out to have chosen the hottest week of the summer to visit one of the hottest parts of Australia, but more of that later. Our first day consisted of a relaxing drive to Ouyen. Rather than taking the direct route via Bendigo, we opted for the more scenic path along the Sunraysia Highway – how could you say no to such a charmingly named road? We stopped for a short break at Learmonth, a tiny town on the edge of Lake Learmonth, which is yet another of Victoria’s dry lakes. It’s strange and quite depressing to see a vast area of land that clearly held water recently but is now empty. The return of about six inches of water in one part of the lake a few months ago warranted a newspaper article but the lake won’t be filled again any time soon.

Not much danger of people swimming or boating here.

The real object of the day’s driving was another dry lake – actually a group of lakes – located about 70 kms west of Ouyen, in Victoria’s north-west. The Pink Lakes are dry salt pans in summer and turn pink toward the end of summer due to the resident algae. We didn’t see their eponymous colour, but I certainly do feel better after finally getting to use the word “eponymous” in a real sentence. You can read about the lakes in tourism guides, but they don’t mention the smell, which is surprisingly powerful and not terribly pleasant. Also, the salt might look solid, but that doesn’t mean that you can sit down without getting covered in salty, muddy filth that will leave you fighting to be allowed back into the car for the drive back to town – just trust me on this. Despite not being the most comfortable place I’ve visited – I haven’t mentioned the size of the ants or the multitude of flies yet – the combination of the 40 degree heat, the intense dry of the salt and a harsh sunset made the Pink Lakes a fearsome yet compelling environment that provided some beautiful scenes.

I should say that I didn’t take these photographs (obviously, since I am in many of them!) – they were taken by my partner and superior photographer, Pei Pei.

This all happened here – being able to show you an interactive map of the location I’m talking about is truly amazing, so I urge you to zoom out a little and scroll around to get a feel for the country of Laos.

Despite the influx of tourist dollars, most of the population remains very poor, but seemingly eager to learn skills that wll help them prosper. If you would like to help this happen, it is very simple – they and the people who are willing to teach them need money. All the resources that are required for teaching are available from within Laos itself, so it would be innefficient and counter-productive to try to send materials such as books from outside the country. Instead, I recommend that you look for programs in the country that, if given financial support, can then in turn support local markets by purchasing supplies internally. One such program is Big Brother Mouse, a group who create English language text books that are tailored for Lao children learning the language – more information can be found at bigbrothermouse.com. Also, as I mentioned earlier, one of the owners of the Rivertime Resort conducts classes for local children and even produces his own text books – I’m sure he would be happy to put any donations to good use furthering the program he has started (the resort’s web site is at rivertimelaos.com). Another way to contribute is to visit and teach in a village – this seems to be quite easy to organise. And of course, your presence as a tourist will contribute to the local economy, which will then support development and education, so you can even help just by exploring the country and having a good time.

I won’t be writing anything more, as this was just an experiment based around my week in Laos, but I will post some of the real photos once I’ve made it home and processed them. In case you were wondering, everything you see at this site so far has been written on and photographed with my iPhone. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing for you.

Once I was ready to head back to town, the assistant manager jumped on a scooter and soon returned with a tuk tuk in tow. It seems likely that the local villages might not get the same door-to-door service provided to the well-paying falang, so it didn’t take any particular linguistic skill to recognise the disappointment on the driver’s face as the assistant manager informed him that I would be paying a fare more in line with that asked of the locals. Even more impressively, she was able to talk him into taking me to my hotel in Vientiane rather than leaving me at the main bus station at Thalat Sao (“thalat” meaning “market”). Regardless, he agreed, and we set off after he enthusiastically threw my bags up onto the tuk tuk’s roof and dismissed with a wave my enquiry as to his thoughts regarding the, to my mind, fairly well-established convention of tying down such a load.

Not long after we set off, we took on several local passengers, and shortly after that we encountered an extremely strong smell of cattle and their dung. Not wanting to appear unaccustomed to such natural things, I grinned and bore it, fighting back the tears that were slowly but surely welling. Much to my satisfaction, however, the locals quickly covered their own noses, and we all breathed a sigh of relief as we passed the offending livestock. As someone who doesn’t handle the various aromas of farm-life well, it was nice to know that I’m not so different from the average Lao villager, at least in this regard.

As we turned on to the main road south to Vientiane, I suddenly noticed the assistant manager from the resort drawing alongside on her scooter and waving for the driver to stop. “The gi!”, she shouted, “The gi!”. Puzzling as this was, I thought of how friendly she and the other staff had been over the last two days, and quickly put two and two together and realized that she must have forgotten to give me a gift as a thank you for visiting their resort. The Lao people have a strong tradition of hospitality.

As it turned out, she wanted the room key that I still had in my pocket. How she managed to catch us I do not know, as my GPS suggested we were travelling at around 60 km/h and I don’t recall ever seeing a scooter overtake a car before.

The rest of the trip back to Vientiane was uneventful, if dusty. A lot of construction is being rushed to be ready in time the South-East Asian Games, and that includes paving a long section of the main north road; in the mean time, it is a wide bumpy ribbon of red dirt. I arrived at my hotel quite proud of the tan I’d managed to collect over the last few days, until it all washed off in the shower.

I spent the rest of the morning talking with the Lao owner, swapping facts about our countries. To my surprise, he expressed concern about the bushfires we suffered in Victoria last summer – I hadn’t expected such news would be heard here. He took great satisfaction in asking me to guess his age, which I failed badly (my guess: 46, his claim: 57!), so you might want to take my estimate of the students’ ages with a grain of salt.

Around mid-day I walked out along the road that brought me to the resort and turned into a side-road that leads to a small village. Interestingly, most of the housing was constructed from rendered bricks, which was more substantial than I expected.

Soon after entering the village, I attracted the attention of a group of children. One young girl in particular was fascinated with my camera and it’s ability to show her friends on its small display at the mere press of a button. We collaborated on a number of shots and I think we were both pleased with the outcome.

After counting to ten in each other’s language (their English being far superior to my Lao), and them making me learn the Lao words for (I think) coconut and corn cob, the boys insisted that I visit the local wat, where I was promptly nearly ended by a falling coconut. Now, I can’t say for sure how the boys triggered this, but their feigned surprise fooled no-one. Suffice it to say, I gave the other trees a wide berth.

After saying good-bye to all the children four times as they followed me out of the village, and walking slowly back to the resort, I was able to count all of the places I had forgotten to put sun-screen – I felt like a slightly painful red and white chess board.

Although that list of structures might have you imagining a fairly substantial installation, everything is built into the forest and river’s edge and feels very natural. There is a small staff, but they are very informal – uniforms would feel very out of place here. The overall feel is much closer to that of a camping ground than a hotel, albeit one from which the forest has not actually been cleared. There are only a couple of other guests, who come and go each day. The constant heat and humidity forces every action to be slower than usual, but now and then a cool breeze floats down the river and makes the atmosphere quite comfortable.

Lunch was eaten late, floating on the river – the girls working here seem willing to try to cook anything, but I stuck to dishes that at least sound local: a thin red curry, fried morning glory (a thin green plant a little like the stalk of Vietnamese mint) and sticky rice. Sticky rice seems to be the staple here, but it is harder and drier than such that I’ve had in other places.

Shortly after six o’clock I walked back down to the river looking for a beautiful sunset, but again the solid cloud cover meant that the sun only appeared briefly before ducking below the horizon. The clouds, though, became more interesting as they were now lit from beneath and an array of shapes previously hidden became visible. I can’t show any photos from my camera here, and it seemed unlikely that my phone would capture anything worth sharing.

After dinner, there was nothing to do but fix the mosquito nets and wonder how I was going to sleep with the regular thudding of ripe fruit crashing down onto the wooden roof of the lodge. The ground around the lodge is littered with rotting fruit – the smell is not unpleasant, very much like ripe or dried apricot.

Around midday light rain began to fall, which kept the temperature from rising too far, and made wandering quite pleasant. The wet cleans the air and brings out colours that are usually hidden by the bright glare and complete cloud cover that renders everything dull and difficult to photograph. The rain has the added benefit of activating the thin film of sludge and algae that covers the inappropriately smooth bricks that have used to pave many of the footpaths around the centre of town; grey bricks = occasionally at risk from errant motorcycles, red bricks = treacherously slippery – Vientiane is a city of choices.

After various random turns I came to Patuxai, Vientiane’s own Arc de Triomphe, which posseses a modesty that is decidedly un-French. Although respectably ornate and imposing from a distance, its name plaque describes itself as “even less impressive” close-up, “like a monster of concrete”. Personally, I think it is a little too harsh on itself. The name, Patuxai, is apparently made up of two words, patuu, meaning “gate” or “door” (perhaps sharing a root with “portal”) and xaa which my guide book says is derived from the Sanskrit word “jaya”, meaning “victory”.

In the afternoon I wandered to That Dam (can’t think of any puns for this one, sorry) and then past the national stadium (which I was later told is being replaced by a brand new stadium for the South-East Asian Games which Vientiane is hosting in October. Walking along a main road at peak hour is not recommended, as the dust and smoke combine at high speed to give the effect of sand-blasting your face. I turned back to the river as soon as possible and sat on its bank watching the sun set, gin and tonic in hand.

At least that’s what I hoped would happen; as it turned out, heavy clouds meant that the only indication that the sun was no longer in the sky was the presence of myriad biting insects and the calming flickering of incandescent bulbs as one or another of the hundred extension cords that criss-cross the river bank dip into a puddle and short out.

Like Cambodia, the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos allows most foreigners to apply for and purchase an entry visa on arrival at Wattay Airport. Unlike Cambodia, the customs officers in their Red Army-styled uniforms are friendly and helpful – in fact, at all times one member of the shift is required to forego actually working and instead amuse and distract the others with a constant stream of apparently quite humourous jokes and comments. This goes a long way toward alleviating the nervousness that can accompany waiting in line to attempt to buy entry to a country, if not toward speeding the process.

The cab driver who carried me to my hotel spoke more English than I speak of any other language, so I subjected him to rigourous questioning about the state of the Laos education system, a topic he seemed happy to be paid to talk about. His two sons are working in the Ministry of Finance, which I later found is housed next to the Ministries of Information, Culture and Education, and the Presidential Palace. It’s clearly a street of power, as indicated by the hundred or so Toyota Hilux trucks parked outside. The Lao people definitely make up for their relatively small stature by never driving anything smaller than an oversized pick-up truck.

So far, the climate, food and even language are to me almost indistinguishable from that of Thailand. Vientiane feels very much like Chiang Mai. Something I hadn’t noticed in Thailand, though, is how similar to Chinese the numbers sound – I have almost been able to understand spoken prices by imagining them to be Cantonese.

I’m sitting in the courtyard of my hotel now at breakfast on my second day here, with a steady flow of rain that has cooled the air significantly. The rain started last night while sitting for dinner on the bank of the Mekong, looking over into neighbouring Thailand. The rain got slowly heavier, until everyone was forced to relocate to canopies a little further from the river’s edge. It was comforting as a foreigner to see locals eating and drinking at the same stall I chose – it would be very easy here to eat and drink only in cafes and bars that cater directly to foreigners. Well, that’s done it – I’m hungry again, and the rain has eased, so I guess it’s time to head out again.