Back to the blogosphere

1. Disabled ramp Laos style
2. Vientians version of Arkwrights
3. Your friendly local compressor dealer
4. Full right up innext months superbike magazine
5. What a way to make a living
6. Yes that's human poo
7. & 8. tragic way to live
9. Bangkok anybody for public liability insurance
10. Dinner at Chris's house, Vene, Gai, Chris, Seb and Sebs offspring
11. All my own work
Return to the blogoshpere

Hi all
Yes my first blog is well overdue, the literary world has been suffering withdrawal symptoms since my last instalments (I wish) and I have been in Asia for over two weeks and approximately half way through my current tenure. Truth is I have been very busy with one thing and another and not had time to collect my thoughts.
First of all I should say soothing about the devastating fires in Victoria, It is times like this that global distances really hit you, although I can’t think how me returning would do any good at all, I did get a feeling I should be back at home. I forgot that the Triumph rally was last weekend up in Nug Nug near Mytleford, I had a text from Handle that everybody got back OK.
Anyhoo’s back to all things Laos, after spending a few days in Bangkok Catching up with Kwan’s friends and family with my mother I took the 1 ½ flight from Bangkok to Vientiane with Lao Airlines which was an experience. My first flight on a turbo prop aircraft a 60 seater Chinese built Xian MA 60. And it was comforting to know that one had crash landed in Manila only 10 days before ( although this was put down to pilot error). It was a real treat being bused out onto the tarmac seeing the Lao airlines MA 60 absolutely dwarfed by the 777’s and the 747’s next to it.
I must admit though it was pleasant flight, very smooth if not a little noisier than a larger plane and I love the simplicity of it, the safety display is “this is how your seat belt works” and that’s it. It doesn’t fly over water so there is no life vest and it only flies at 16,000 feet so there is no oxygen. The best part about it was the arrival at Vientiane airport, from the moment the wheels stop on the plane to getting in your taxi is around 15 minutes, I already had a visa so did not have to go through that process which saved sometime, but can you imagine how much longer a similar process takes at Heathrow.
My plan is to stay in Laos for about three weeks, in which time I had a number of different things I wanted to do a bit of work and a bit of pleasure, speaking of which it was good to catch up with my Laos lady friend, Vene, again, we hadn’t seen each other for 4 months, which was way too long. The first day I managed to sort myself out some wheels, a Taiwanese made YSM Magic110RR which is just about a powerful enough to pull the skin of a rice pudding, as long as you haven’t over baked the rice pudding. Anyhow it is only costing me $US5 a day.
I have picked up my previous contacts here and now have a more in depth idea of how much work is here, what I will be doing and most importantly how much I will get paid. Laos is on a steep upward curve at the moment so there is a lot of opportunity and a lot of chaos, which is kind of fun. I caught up with Souly from SEDA-Laos and we arranged for a trip out to the new municipal dump which is located at kilometre 32 on Road 13 south towards Paxan. As I mentioned in my blog last year they are building a new stadium as Laos will be hosting the SEA (South East Asia) games later this year, which is quite a formidable task for a developing country. Anyhoo the old municipal waste dump has been moved from next to the stadium and now has been turned into a golf course with money ‘donated’ by the Korean government. I would state for the record that everything I have heard about this development is that due process has been observed and there is not even the slightest hint of underhanded operations, malpractice or corruption.
I wasn’t too sure what my role in all this would be and as it is for SEDA-Laos I would be doing it of my own bat so it wouldn’t do any harm giving it the once over. The site is located 2 Km from the road on an unbelievable 750 Ha site (about 2000 acres) although only 100 ha is being used. I must admit the smell was no where near as bad as I thought it would be although the septic ‘pond’ was a bit ‘fresh’, I gather at warmer and wetter parts of the year the smell is unbearable, hence being 2 Km from the road . The most astonishing was that there were over 200 people living and working on the site, complete families with young children & babies. These are the ‘scavengers’ and there only source of income was to pull apart the bags of rubbish as they dumped and see what they can scavenge out of it, there is little of any value and it is mostly plastic (millions and millions of plastic bags), they then take their findings to the weigh station and are paid a some of money for the material they have found depending on what it is. These people are living in the most appalling conditions and are the very bottom of the food chain. I took a few photographs and must admit to feeling a little voyeuristic, and it does ram home to you that it doesn’t matter how tough your life gets, there are people in this world who are far worse off than you. The main reason for my visit was to assess what bio energy could be salvaged from the septic pit. Well there is not much there at the moment apart from a pit which is about 160m x 160m x approx 10m deep and is 75% full of human waste, a lot of poo. A vast amount of methane is leeching into the atmosphere and could be used for either or both biogas and bio generation and even the production of bio diesel by harvesting blue green algae. Anyhoo I will do a report for SEDA-Laos, my EWB colleague Sunny will be arriving in early March and he is very keen to do some development work there.
I have caught up with Doug Handisides a couple of times and been through the brief of how the whole Consultancy, payment, work visa thing goes, it really does depend on how much work there is around at the time. Laos has not been hit hard by the global economic meltdown aside from a lot of the larger overseas corporations and governments are pulling out or putting projects on ice whilst we are in this period of economic uncertainty. I have been doing a bit of research for him on a project which I can’t give any details on (a bit hush hush) on this blog, but it could be a project I can slot into on my return in mid 2009.
On Saturday we are riding out to the RTC hospital and meeting up again with Master Kampu, I managed to buy a new Air inlet for his Chinese Kubota diesel ( at $20 rather than the $160 I was quoted by the Kubota dealer in Oz) and assembled a separate inlet to take the biogas; I was quite pleased with it considering the tools I had to do it with. We will see how it goes on Saturday. Myself and Chris will be riding the 50 Km or so on two step-throughs so should be pretty exhausted by the time we get back.
Stay tuned for updates.