Leads

So I've spent the last few days bustling around Vientiane on my bicycle looking for various NGOs. The information I got from the internet is all total shite. Not one correct phone number, except for maybe one, but they didn't speak english at that one. Erm. Ok. Remembering bits of the Lao I used to know, learning more every day. I've got to learn this language if Im going ot get stuff done, but it's unlikely to be able to learn enough to do what I want ot do in my timeframe. But my timeframe remains indefinite. Much more indefinite since I got here. I was feeling so purposeless and adrift before I got here. But I've got a project here. Today was wonderfull productive. At breakfast I met a girl who's half Hmong, half Lao, but raised in Chicago. She's going to forward a list of my questions to her mum and dad and siblings, who grew up here during the troubles. They're in Chi-town, so a proper interview will have to wait. But they might have stories I need. It seems like a good lead.

I've put together a very long to-do list for here, what photos I need, who I need to find to talk to. While hunting around at an expired address for MAG (Mines advisory group) I met a chap who was incredibly helpful. Mr. Manivong Viengsavanh was born here, but educated in the Soviet Union, graduate of the class of 1980. A retired agricultural engineer who speaks perfect French, excellent English and decent Chinese and Russian who says he can't get to sleep at night without reading for a while. Showed me some excellent books, nineteenth-century french travelogues from the explorers of the area. It was so refreshing to meet a scholarly intellectual! It gets so depressing, seeing everyone just watchig TV all the time. The last one was the man in Bagan, Myanmar, who's earned the moniker, "Mr. Universe", because he knows so damn much about so many things. Mr Universe ( aka U Thaung Lwin) schooled me on Theravada Buddhism. Seems there might be as many contradictions in buddhism as in Catholicism. Mmm, well, not quite. But many.

In any case. Mr. Viengsavanh advised me to get attached to some organization so that the government gives me a certain degree of trust, since some of my areas of inquiry remain sensitive topics. In addition, he underlines the importance of making some local friends in order to have introductions to people whose stories I want. People will be less willing to trust me if I'm just coming in from the cold. He approved of my plan to volunteer for MAG, or UXO Lao, or NSA, or CARE international. He thought that would be a smart way to get a toehold towards gathering the material I want.

I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have more of a project to do. Honestly, I was really running out of patience with the backpacker bum life. I was up to here with Thailand.

Mmm. Beerlao. The best beer in Southeast Asia. And at seventy cents a bottle(22.5 fl. oz.) you can't go too far wrong. Siobhan and I had a pretty good laugh the first day or two here. We had a brilliant meal at one of the nice French restaurants by Nam Phou fountain, only spoiled by the bunny-boiler. Then Siobhan and I went out to a Lao nightclub. The kids are much better dancers than the last time I was here. How much this town has come up in two years! So much more money! On the CIA world factbook, it's only a notch or two above Burma, but it's really worlds apart. Three cheers for slightly less dysfnctional government.

Did you all see Fatal Attraction? That's the reference. A bunny-boiler is a woman who's gone off the rails obsessed with someone, to the point of danger. I'm watching my back now, looking over my shoulder. I hear the door open behind me, and I jump.

I've been a cad, but this woman's temper is really out of hand. This is the one I spoke of before in an earlier post, the one who punched me in the face in a jealous rage. A jealous rage inspired by the event of my spending more time with my friends than with her. She just kept on popping up wherever I was. Ko pha ngan, then on the boat leaving KPN, then in bangkok, then here in Vientiane! After yet another vituperative and hyperbolically insulting email, she said she was leaving the country to get away from me. Ok.

The lecture that Sven gave me after my drama with the French girl of whom I was quite fond was, "you're not going to fall in love out here. Everything's too transient. Don't set yourself up for disappointment." I guess the Englishwoman didn't catch that speech. But she really behaved badly on so many occasions. Screaming in public is a real no-no in Asian cultures. As well as throwing a handful of torn-up photographs. Hoo-ee. Live and learn. Watch out for bunnyboilers.

I doubt there will be any drama remotely resembling that again. I'm here to work on my book, not to party. Enough of that.

I must say, I'm so thrilled to be back in Lao. I feel so much more comfortable here, I'm concentrating hard on my book, I've got lots to do, I'm less preoccupied with the anomie and aimlessness that had been plagueing me since halfway through Myanmar, and it's lovely here. The people are so nice and mellow, the negative cultural exchange of Thailand is largely gone, life is good, the food is great, the beer is cheap and good, and what else can I say? I've got loads of work to do.

I'm surrounded by wee Lao lads playing some video game. Uh.... The West is coming fast.