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