The trip to Pakse and Trivia nite

The beautiful 'paradise falls' very close to
Pakse

















Sight survey at coffee plantation, did I mention the dust













The bizzare Pakse variant of Tuk Tuk's
"I'm sorry I don't do hills"














Tom on the sleeper bus
looking forward to sharing a bunk with someone
with sleep apnea














Site survey of potential site for Coffee factory
never done a site survey before being lead by
a man witha machete before.














The victoriuos trivia team
team' Richard Dawkings Bible Class'

























Inside the night bus
Sadly no appearance by Marilyn Monroe


















Honoured guests at Baci





















Tom with his plate of offerings















The Baci, no less than 9 Monks

The view of the Mekong from our hotel room

The Champasake Grands hotel

The high street of Pakse, enough said

"Operation Expresso" now complete

The Blue Flame

The Morning view from my balcony

Quite a while since my last blog, I have been experiencing technical difficulties uploading pictures to the blog site, I might even change my blog service, so the next blog may have a different look; same old drivel but in a new package, hey; I should be in marketing. Needless to say been a back log of all sorts of stuff going on and loads of pictures, which of course you can’t see.
OK; I can cover some of the photos that I have managed to upload. The first up is ‘operation expresso’ is now complete and I now have the unadulterated pleasure of sipping ‘the best coffee in Laos’ whilst watching the sunrise over the paddy field in front of my house. As with Erawan, facing East, I do not have a good sunset to look at, but the sunrises are spectacular. I do like the house I have but it main feature is this beautiful view I have in the morning. Its worth getting up early for.
Next big news in the last month is a purchase of a motorcycle. A Korean made Kolao ‘New Rio- I’. which are better than the Chinese things but not as good as the Honda’s or Suzuki’s. It became available at a good price, friends of Edwards heading back to the states, and are wanting to shed all the ‘baggage’ that you accumulate during your stay, one of which is ‘The Blue Flame’ as she is now christened. (See my first rantings; as any ride will tell you, a bike has to have a name otherwise it will never get into bike heaven)
This last month also included my first ‘work away’ trip to Pakse, deep in the south of Laos in Champasake province. Travel arrangements got a little complicated as initially the customer was going to come to pick us up but because of the Chinese new year none of the drivers were available. So it was all agreed (not by me I might add) that the Night Bus which is a ‘Sleeper Bus’ was the best option. I was for the Day Bus but I was told that the day bus is a ‘local’ bus which stops at every stop (add images of goats and chickens) and took in the region of 12 hours, this put me off. I was assured that the sleeper bus is VIP and you get a big comfortable bunk and is easy to get a good night sleep. I reluctantly agreed. The comfortable bunk turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, small bunk which was hard a rock and small pillow and sheet and YOU HAVE TO SHARE and NO DUNNY, this is a 10 hour journey remember. There was a stop at 1:00 am in Takhe hek which was dump of stop and were charged to use their revolting toilets ( OK at this point I had reached my ‘Bo bpen yang’ limit and was having a sense of humour failure.) The sleeper bus was ‘an experience’ which is probably the kindest thing I can say about it.
Anyway we arrived at Pakse at 6:30 AM and were greeted by Pong who was going to be our driver for the nest three days. He took us directly to our hotel which was the best in town the ‘Champasake Grand hotel’ which and our room had a commending view of the Mekong which is unbelievably wide at this point. Can’t say I thought much of Pakse, bit of a bump really, but the surrounding countryside is quite spectacular. Possibly the most memorable thing was yet another variation on the ‘tuk tuk’, possibly the most bizarre variant yet. Consisting of a 100 cc motorbike, oddly two stroke sports style, mainly Kawasaki’s with drop handle bars, with a odd looking rickshaw style side car, with a seat capable of taking 1 ½ people. When you put three people on it and add the rider/driver it did tend to take the ‘sparkle’ from the performance. The driver said he would take us back to the hotel but wasn’t prepared to attempt the slight incline heading to the hotel entrance.
The ‘team’ are working for a Coffee plantation. The customer is looking at building a sizable coffee processing plant up on the Champasake Plato, the centre of Laos coffee industry, apparently ideal conditions for growing coffee. They want to use solar power to dry the coffee beans which as far as we know is not done in Asia at all at the moment. It was an interesting trip and good to get out of the office, although 3 days to do a ‘solar survey’ seemed excessive. I will qualify this by saying that it is absolutely essential to visit the site (or in this case a choice of three sites), especially in a country where all information is not volunteered. But the fact that it is on a ‘Plato’ indicated that there shouldn’t be too much in the way of obstructions to the sun. The proposed sites were as you expect at this stage, just sites, although in this case it is Jungle, so finding our way through to the extremities of the site required the use of a machete. There were a number of tall trees which were in the neighbouring properties which I raised questions about but was assured that they were “not a problem”. The main memory I have of the place is just the astonishing amount of dust that was stirred up into mini red whirlwinds just by looking at it.
The trip included an impromptu attendance of a Baci (a Buddhist blessing) at the hotel as guests of our customers who had some family members involved with hotel. We were honoured guests and were treated to a superb breakfast which included ‘Laos Laos’, a rather nasty Laos whiskey, if you didn’t have any further plans for the day. We were introduced to a good deal of the attendees, including I have to say some ‘interesting local business personalities’ As we hadn’t brought our own offerings Myself and Tom were given a plate to offer to the monks, consisting of sticky rice and locally made candy bars.

Earlier this month was abundantwaters.org trivia nite which was organised by Sunny and his house mates plus others. A hugely entertaining evening which was MC’d by Sunny himself and true to form descended into utter chaos (which is a good thing). Dispute over answers were thrown open to the floor until the resolution was achieved by who made the loudest noise, mob rule, brilliant!!!. In all the chaos, confusion, ample amounts of Beer Laos and some real good food, our team ‘ Richard Dawkins Bible Class’ actually won, by half a point actually. So a big shout out for the Lire/Sunlabob Delia ( Australian), Nora ( German ) Katia ( Japanese), we were joined by a Frenchman, Laurent, who is the sales manager of Ansara hotel and his Laotian wife/girlfriend ( didn’t get her name). Any how’s prize of 6 bottles of pretty good wine didn’t last long.
We are in the middle of wedding season here; the Laotians go big on auspices and look to the stars alignment for a good time to marry. Which does appear to be the same as the slow time for the hotels every year. I have been warned about Laotian weddings I haven’t been to one yet ( see next blog) but it seems essential to have a 10 KW Pa system which is turned up to ‘distortion’ and requires karaoke with a microphone which appears to be set between ‘reverb and feedback’. I was pondering if any couple planning their nuptials actually approached there parents and said.” what we really want is a quiet wedding with no loud music”. Responses in the realm of “No daughter of mine is going to break with tradition”.
It is also Chinese New Year (Back to the bloody rabbit thing); officially February 3rd was New Year where numerous Chinese dragons roamed the town in a bid to give people with hang overs a very bad day. I was stopped at traffic lights in town and was not quick enough to take snapshot of a very large Chinese dragon in a very small restaurant. The Laotians are big on holidays and most people think that this years Chinese new year has still got some legs and many have not come back to work yet ( it is now the 14th ) I understand Yom Kippur gets a good run as well.
Next blog; my first Laos wedding, a bike ride to Vanviene.

Early Morning KFC

Incredibly gay sweets





















Big Issues chief rival




















weird Garfield inspired hotel room















Muay Laos
























An average Lunch with MK








Early morning at KFC

Finally got round to writing this blog, I have just arrived in Udon Thani, in Northern Thailand for a procedure known as a ‘Visa run’. My 30 day visitor visa is about to expire and I have to leave the country and return with a letter from the ministry of labour so I can get a business visa. Normally people just go to Noan Khai which is just on the other side of the bridge, do a shop at Tesco Lotus and then come back. But my task is a little more complex as I want to buy a decent expresso machine and the big department store in Udon Thani is my best bet ( Operation ’expresso’ is reaching its final stages). Fortunately Edward has one of his scheduled medical trips to Khon Khean this weekend and had graciously agreed to pick me up at my house and drop me at the central plaza in Udon en route to Knon Khaen. Cars get processed quicker than people at ‘the bridge’ so it is fairley plane sailing paperchase and Edward dropped me here at just after 10:00 Am. To early to get a hotel, so it was a KFC breakfast. Remember there are no fast food outlets in Laos, so if the opportunity arrises you tend to go for it. I am now sitting here with a ‘zinger burger’ with tears of nostalgia in my eyes, or have just overdone the chilli.
Other news since my last blog, I am now on my third illness since getting here, a dose of the ‘Mekong rapids’ during the first week then a bout of heartburn which didn’t go away and now I have picked up a cold which appears to be hanging round longer than its welcome. Although I think I am on the lea side of it now with a few pockets of isolated resistance. I am a little more sorted with my internet connection at home with a pretty good, if not slightly expensive internet package by ‘Planet internet’ in town which everybody agrees is the best. I have a 3GB @ 512 per month package which is costing me in the region of $130 per month, which is expensive but IT WORKS. Don’t get me started on wifi connections in Melbourne.
I now get my fix of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report but sadly cannot get either ABC iview or BBC iplayer. Will sort out the streaming for MotoGP and SBK in the next couple of weeks.

The other major purchase this week is a motorbike. A 150 cc step through made by Korean company Kolao. Not as good as the Honda’s, but it was snip at $650, only 8000 km on the clock bought directly from the Kolao factory in VTE in April. One of Edwards friends selling up and heading back to the states. Bizarrely the first person to ride the bike is Tom, he is of on a camping expedition (1 night anyway) east of VTE and needed transport, as I was doing the visa run I didn’t need it so the planets aligned for everybody.
Haven’t been much on the socialising thing at the moment, a mixture of work, getting the house/bike/wifi sorted and a trifecta of bugs has kept me off the streets. Have found an excellent Pakistani restaurant in town, OK the décor needs a bit of work, a chicken wire cage is probably not get you any Michelin stars but the food is spectacularly good and incredibly cheap. It is very difficult to spend more than $5 there. We also tried a North Korean restaurant, the ‘Pyong Yang’ which was surprisingly good. Apparently they do do dog but was not on the menu that night. The service was very slow especially as we were the only customers. We were thinking that we were getting a typical North Korean meal i.e. nothing. But ended up as pretty good BBQ Beef and Chicken and seafood pancakes. Very similar to South Korean food without the bitter taste of orphans tears and failed agricultural policies.
Every 2nd Saturday there is a Muay Laos tournament at the National gymnastics stadium, Muay Laos is a variation on Muay Thai ( Kick boxing ) essentially the same but with differing rules think Rugby league ane Rugby union sort of thing. For the grand sum of 10,000 LAK ( about $1.25) you get a program of about 5 bouts officially from 6:00 to midnight but in reality is from 4:00 to 7:00, you also get a small bottle of M150 ( a drink similar to Red Bull ). Never been to a boxing match before, very entertaining. The forth bout was the most entertaining a real tall skinny guy who seemed to have the ‘attitude’ and was worth a fluter of 10,000 LAK with Tom. Once again proving why I have never added gambling to my list of vices, after 5 rounds he was getting ‘canvass rash’ having visited the deck at least 20 times.
Back in Udon Thani

Found myself a pretty cheap hotel right next to the bus station called the Silver reef, only $20 an night and is pretty central. The whole place has a strange ‘cartoon theme’ combined with a 60’s look. Can’t figure out if it is trendy, retro or just plain weird. I ended up with the ‘Garfield room’. Can’t complain the only themed room you would get in Australia for $20 a night is cockroach.

Back into the fray

The new house



















View from the balcony

















Heisenberg the cat


















Wapi's leaving party















Working in Laos 'any questions ?'
This is a bag of coffee made by Laos biggest
coffee exporter.


Back into the fray
Long time between blogs, my blog entries will be at less regular intervals than have been in the past. This is mainly due to the amount of work I am doing. Once again I am ill prepared for a plan going exactly to plan. I was looking forward to my return to Laos to commit full time to the myriad of interesting projects I was due to get involved in. I reckoned it would be the best thing for me to do get stuck into some serious work and get the trials and tribulations of the last few years behind me. Well since my arrival it has surpassed my expectations. LIRE is going through a tremendous dynamic change and the bioenergy team is now snowed under with a myriad of diverse ventures, so much so we are really struggling finding enough people to do the work both fulang and Laotian. So I tend to be working long hours and bits of the weekend as well. I need to be selective in the amount of information I divulge in this blog as some of the projects are at ‘delicate’ stages in negotiations and I don’t want to commit a ‘wikileaks’ and others are still ‘blue sky’ and at the ‘gestation’ phase. Of the projects I am at liberty to divulge is the biodiesel manufacture which is now ramping up to the more practical end and a solar coffee drying project down in Paxon, myself Tom and Vonvouilay a Laotian engineer will be going on a one week field trip in early February.
The news this week is I have found a house. It is a real nice two story Laos style house but has a fully functioning European kitchen. The living quarters are upstairs which is normal as it is cooler during the hot months, both bedrooms are air conditioned. There is also a balcony which has a beautiful view of paddy fields (or mosquito farm as it has been christened). I have only taken a couple of pix on the day I did the pre check and signed the contract. I am sure there will be more in the blog in the future. The standard practice here if you are a fulong is to have a six month contract, which you pay in full, and then renew and pay on a month to month basis. This wasn’t the problem cash flow wise however getting my hands on the cash proved to be more problematical than it should be having issues with my Master debit card at all the Laos banks. It works fine in the ATM’s but the tellers will not accept it. I called my bank and every thing was fine their end. So the only thing I could do was to get it all out from an ATM, take it to a bank and convert to US dollars and then pay the landlord, a process which took three days in all. Over $2000 with 8000 kip to the dollar and the highest value note being 50,000 kip. Nearly 400 notes in all I actually emptied one ATM.
Anyway moved in on Tuesday, thanks to Edward picking my stuff up from the hotel and then shipping me out to the house complete with the box I sent from Australia. The Landlord was waiting for me (or rather the balance of the rent) also my house keeper or Mare Ban (literally Mother House) and my cat. I said I didn’t need a Mare Ban but I don’t think I had a choice , her husband is my gardener which I do need to cut the grass. The cat seemed to come with the house and was already sitting on couch with that ‘what’s for dinner?’ expression on its face.
Never had a cat before and it has foolishly accepted to eat the cheapest dried cat food on the market ‘ Mee-ow’ believe it or not. The up side is it will handle all the mice and rats (I live very close to Paddy fields remember). The next thing to do was to find a name for cat. After dallying with ‘Schrödinger’ (a bit obviously really). And ‘Mrs Slocombe’ (Tribute to John Vegas’s cat in ‘Ideal’). I have settled with ‘Heisenberg’ not after German physicist, father of Quantum Mechanics, as you may think, but after the alias of Walter White in the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ which I am working my way through again. Admittedly he got his a.k.a. from the German physicist and father of Quantum mechanics, but it seemed only fitting that I stick with the German theoretical physicist and cat naming convention.
I had a ride out with Tom and Somjan to the RTC to see master Kampu and his wife, this was an informal field trip and it would be good to catch up again. Last year you may or may not remember I blogged about the developments that had occurred since my last trip including a new road and power. We wanted to get some data on the cost of the power installation and also some idea of how much fuel the diesel generator used to consume when it was used for power. It was a fairly slow day at the hospital so we sat and chatted with MK and his son in what I presumed was his new ‘entertainment’ area complete with brown sofa (ref: “he died with a falafel in is hand”). MK and his son got stuck into the rice whiskey which MK insisted made you stronger and is good for Erectile Dysfunction. He was also proud to show us his latest incarnation of the cure for AIDS which was presented in an old sports drink bottle. The down side to this medicine, if you don’t have AIDS it will kill you. With MK sometimes it is hard to determine the wheat from the chaff but the whiskey that is consumed the ration of wheat to chaff grows every wider. About an hour in a people carrier turned up containing an entire family (3 or 4 generations) seeking medical advice. MK asked if he could be excused and ‘duty called’ he lit a cigarette and ushered the entire clan into consulting room. What an inspirational figure he cut as a medical professional, an old man in shorts, half cut on nasty whiskey, smoking a cigarette; ‘House’ eat your heart out.

catch you on the flip side

Sawadasee bii mai

Snake for Lunch
















Somjan's new baby girl with mother in law

If you think you have issues parking you car

Blog # 1 – 2011 (or 2544 in the Buddhist calendar)
After my delayed departure it is good to be back in Laos, the weather here is fantastic, the food once again a magical mystery tour for your gastric system.
Just a quick up date on personal stuff; I sold Erawan last year and moved out in October to a rather nice 2 bedroom unit with garage ( Unit is an Australian thing, like a block of apartments except side by side rather than on top of each other ). I battened down the hatches and headed to Bangkok just after Christmas. I managed to squeeze the Rav4 into the garage which is about the ¼ the size of the garage I enjoyed at Erawan. If you think you have issues parking your car – see pictures.
I caught up with friends and family in Bangkok and had the chance to celebrate NYE in yet a different country. (Not Drinking makes NYE in Australia a bit of an ordeal). The Hotel I stay at is only three stops by Skytrain from Siam Square where I understand was the main gathering point for the ’Countdown’. My endless inquiries into when Richard Whitley would be making an appearance seemed to bring nothing but bemused expressions. As I have pointed out numerous times in this blog just how easy it is to fall into culture traps. The morning of the 31st I came down for breakfast to see the entire reception staff wearing ‘bunny ears’. I was at the point of explaining that they had got the whole Christmas thing wrong and the ‘bunny ears’ were for Easter. However later that evening when I arrived at Siam Square; a seething mass of humanity; at 10:00 PM, there was a strong ‘Bunny’ theme. Catching up with Kwan’s family asked about this and I discovered it was the year of the Rabbit I asked if this was the Chinese calendar but they were insistent that it is Thai, I did check and indeed 2011 is the year of the rabbit, however going through all the animals. This involved some quite bizarre animal impressions in a crowded sukiyaki restaurants and the Thai calendar appears to have a large snake and a small snake ( I think the large snake is a dragon which would seem to then fit with the Chinese calendar). OK astrology is not my strong suit, but I am thinking is the ‘Chinese calendar’ only called the ‘Chinese calendar’ in the west, Does it actually originate in China ?. The Thai Language is based on Sanskrit which originated in India. We refer to our decimal numbering system as ‘Arabic’ but in fact again originated in India, it was only because it had to travel through Arabia to get to Europe was it christen ‘Arabic numbers’, answers on a postcard please. Kwan’s family were unable to answer the question of ‘What will the hotel staff be wearing on their heads in the year of the snake?’
Whilst I was in BKK I too the opportunity to get another couple of pairs of specs and a suit made up. It is likely that I will be meeting with government officials in Laos so dressing accordingly is the wise thing to do. As both my suits in Australia are made for temperate climates, a suit suitable for the heat and humidity of Thailand and Laos would be more appropriate. The suit delayed my departure bay a day, the seamstress wanted to get back to her family in Udon for New Year (slacker!!!) so it took three days instead of the usual 48 hours.
The suit had now taken my baggage weight up to 19.9 kg with a weight limit of 20 kg, so further shopping was out of the idea.
This is my 4th trip to Laos and now have the logistics buttoned down pat, good cheap hotel ($13 per night with a swimming pool), phone, motorbike all sorted out within a few hours. However discovering that every bodies phone number had changed since I was last here threw me a little.
Typical Laos telephone conversation:
• Hello
• Hi good to speak to you again
• Ah welcome back
• Your telephone number has changed, every bodies number has changed
• No it hasn’t; you just put a five in front of it
• Isn’t that the definition of change
• No its just adding a five
• I can’t get hold of Sunny
• Have you put a five in front of it
• Yes but it doesn’t work
• Hang on I’ll get his number
• ………….
• You have to put a seven in front of it
• You said you have to put a five in front of it
• That’s apart from the ones that begin with seven
• Are all the others the same
• Yes
• What about the one that begin with three
• No they have changed.


Friday was my first day back at LIRE, ready to do a one day week. (That’s more like it) The biofuels team (or referred to as bioenergy now) is now the largest in LIRE and Edward the Bioenergy project leader (he has yet to be given a proper title, I suggested Bioenergy Tsar but this was dismissed) quickly went through developments since I was last here and the work load has expanded exponentially. A lot of it is ‘blue sky’ thinking at the moment so actual installations are still a ways off, but it is exiting times. The balance of the group were either in transit back to Laos or just starting on Monday, so the formalised briefing was postponed until Monday. I spent the rest of the day picking up the threads of where I was two months ago.

I went to my friend Somjan's house for lunch today, his wife had a baby girl three months ago, also it is where I left my camera last time I was here, so the ‘snake lunch’ pictures were from my visit back in August.

Sadly, Somjan informed me that he had just returned from Luang Prabang, his elder brother was killed on a building site just over a week ago. He was working on the second storey of a new building which happened to be in the path of some HV powerlines. So that no one would come into contact with the cable it was just simply lifted and propped up out of the way. He was moving the cable and somehow earthed him self and he caught the full voltage and was killed instantly. I never met him but he leaves a widow and four children in a country which has no safety net for people who fall on hard times.
No matter how much we wine and gripe in the west of all the inconveniences of live. Also being critical of over zealous safety protocols and procedures, I am guilty of this as much as anyone else ( especially having worked in the O&G business), there is a reason why we have these safety systems and would never allow a situation to arise and have such incredibly dangerous working practices as that which killed Somjan’s brother.

I hope to cover some of the fascinating projects we are working on in the next blog

Catch you on the flip side