A long way on a step-through

How to hide a large market
















The Entrance to Vientianes Wattay Airport at rush hour
















Generic market shot #1
















Generic market shot #2 'who's for curry ?'
















Generic market shot #3 dried fish















Amongst the laburnums at the RTC



















Insert humorous double entendre




















Just plain nasty



















Generic market shot # 4

















Generic market shot # 5 'who ordered the fish with flies?'

A long way on a step through

Now I’ve found my bearings a little better in Vientiane I am starting to shop smarter, there is a small supermarket, café, bike hire place which is right in the centre of Vientiane which is distinctly French, the coffee and the baguettes are excellent, I used to do most of my shopping there as it is clean, air conditioned, well organised and a most of the products are recognisable, they even have Belgium beer, Jameson’s Whiskey and Tim Tams amongst other goodies, but they do charge fulang prices ( prices are comparable with what you would pay in Europe) which is OK for a short stay but if I’m going to live here it is an outrageous thing to do, the Laos don’t shop there. Vene told me that there is a huge under cover market called “Talad Thong Khan Kham” which is not far from the hotel and is hidden from the main road by soothing that looks like a run down market, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. It’s really worth finding these places they are a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and smells. I also took on the opportunity to try and get to grips with this completely mad money system they have here.

More on money and numbers;

This not the first time I’ve bleated on about the Laotian kip but I have been in Laos for a total of about 2 months now and it is still giving me grief. Just a quick re cap, there are 5000 kip to the Australian dollar at the moment, this makes conversion a lot easier than when I was last here when it was 8000 kip to the Dollar. 50,000 kip is $10, 1,000,000 kip is $200, diving things by 8 in your head whilst working out all the zeros is a headache. Being such small denominations it is not long before you are buying even small items that you are getting into the hundreds of thousands. Unlike English, Laos and Thai have different names for one thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand and a million, tends to repeat after that i.e. the word for a billion will be a thousand million. So not only do you have to know the basic integers, but also the multiples of 10 all the way to a million (not a lot costs over $200 in Laos). Otherwise you fall into the most basic of ‘trying to speak another language’ which being able to ask the question, no problem, ‘How much’ is ‘todd dy’, and then not understanding the answer. In the tourist area’s there is usually a large calculator on hand to punch the digits in, not here.

Then there are these damn notes. All the same size and the 1000 kip, 2000 kip & 10,000 kip are all blue. In addition one side of the note has the Laotian numbering system ( it is a decimal system so at least that helps ) but the zero was a later edition so zero’s are universal but the first number is Laos, the 1 looks like 9 and the 2 looks like a 6. Being Laos it is very important to have the picture of revolutionary leader ( still haven’t got his name yet) on everything so you have three notes which are the same size the same colour with the same picture , a lot of zero’s and confusing numbering system. To add to confusion the 5,000 kip, 20,000 kip and 50,000 kip are all brown, same size and same picture.

Back to the market; its times like this I really miss having a house, there such a huge variety of fish, fruit, vegetables and spices that I would really like to jump in at the deep and start creating bizarre dishes. Neil Perry would be wetting himself, ‘all the flavours, and fusions, and local produce - I could charge somebody a hundred bucks for that’. What your mssrs. Perry, Ramsey et al. would not show was the amount of flies that are swarming round the meat and fish stalls, more than a Aussie BBQ. I took some snaps, I’m sorry their a bit blurred but I didn’t want to use my flash as some people get a bit funny about that sort of thing, not in the belief that it captures your soul but more in the belief ‘he’s taking pictures, there must be a buck in it for me’.

On Sunday, Myself Chris & Somjan road up to the RTC, the hospital run by Master Kampu up close to Kilometre 48. Somjan used to work for SED-LAOS but has since left but has remained a good friend and was happy to come along as translator if we covered his expenses. My aim was to fit the new air inlet and to get tier diesel generator running on biogas. Our mode of transport this time would be three step-through motorcycles that we own/hired between us. It is not long trek just over out to Kilometre 48, which is 48 Kilometres from Vientiane city centre (clue is in the name) and then a hanger left onto a very rough dirt track for about 10 Kms. Through the city on Sunday morning then out on Road 13 North at about the same speed we reckoned on about 1 ½ hours each way which is not a big stretch but the seat on a step-through is not really meant for those sorts of distances so by the time you get off you feel like you’ve been interviewed by Molly Meldrum. The last time we were here was the wet season and the rough road was mainly deep puddles although the deep ochre soil seems to have very low percolation and didn’t seem to get any worse. This time it is the dry season and the road is mainly sand, deep in places. Sand and motorbikes are not a good mixture but the step-throughs are only a tad over 50 Kgs so they weren’t difficult to save if you felt it going over. Anything larger that was not built for the task would have been a hand full, (Charlie, Claudio has fallen off again).

On arriving at the RTC we were met by Master Kampu and his wife, MK was in surgery, which is conducted Laos style, whole families come by truck load, boat load or motorbike load and they all sit in front of MK as they are examined one by one and MK preaches the health gospel to all assembled. Although my Laos is still at the basic level the word ‘Boom Boom’ was mentioned a number of times which is the Asian colloquialism for coitious. So this would account for the Laos distinct lack of embarrassment and uninhibited talk. Whilst the surgery continued we went down to the diesel shed which was having a refit (new thatch) and after a bit of dicking around with the hose and the inlet and getting water out of the biogas pipe, I tried to fire the thing up. Unfortunately it did not work at all; the engine just did not like the gas. I tried different combinations of mixtures and throttle positions and then put the gas directly into the air intake, still nothing. Hugely disappointing and a huge headache to figure out what to do next. There should be no problem but I think it is a combination of the poor state of repair of the diesel (probably only about 14:1 compression) and the poor quality of the gas, further investigation needed. We stopped for lunch and MK broke out the herbal local whiskey which he dug into with vigour. It was a terrific spread as it always is, some incredibly hot beef salads and clear soup and a mushroom dish which was just very difficult to describe. Kampu tends to starting talking after a couple of drinks and through Somjan he was making some remarkable claims about the herbal medicines that he was creating. I won’t mention anymore here as we discussed a number of different ways that his claims could or should be verified and having it in the public domain could be counterproductive. We met some of his patients who seemed quite happy to be paraded in front of us these included a women who had the illness of ‘talking too much’ I could not possibly comment. Also a young man who had a terrible cancerous growth on his neck (see picture) which MK was treating with his herbal medicine. It is impossible to find the words to cover the different emotions you have when you see such a sad case as this, the positive is that he is receiving treatment but I could not possibly comment on weather his treatment he is receiving at the hands of MK is worse better or indifferent than the treatment he would receive in the west (or even the large Hospital in Udon Thani, Thailand, which appears to be the first destination for serious illnesses in Vientiane). However I would be very interested in the outcome. As the afternoon wore on, I went and secured the new air inlet on their aging diesel whilst discussions were held on the possibility of building a better road to the hospital, somewhere in the region of $US12K to $US20K and the possibility of bringing power as well. The long ride back, needed a bum break by the time we got back into VT, we stopped at a small café, restaurant on the banks of the Mekong not far from Chris’s house and watched another beautiful sunset. I didn’t take many photos on my trip, the majority of the camera memory was taken up by a 1:30 min video of me attempting to get the diesel running on biogas for reference. I plan to return to the RTC when Sunny arrives which will be early March, hopefully I can find out why it won’t work and if possible fix it, or at least have the answers.

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.

Far too much excitement

Well blog followers, in my last blog I was lamenting the fact that I really want to get home and don’t want any more excitement, in the last three months I have had so many experiences my poor head can’t take anymore (Jep Hua as they say here). I said goodbye to my lady in Udon Thani and put her on the bus back to Vientiane, it was a bit sad because it could be a while before I see her again. In a previous blog I reported about passing through immigration at the ‘Friendship bridge’ I can report that was smooth as silk compared to my further 3 trips through the same point. On Tuesday, I had further hassles at the bizarrely named ‘friendship bridge’, but nothing of the magnitude of what I experienced in the last week. Vene decided to come with me as then we can have a last day together and also to help me with any further problems I may have at the customs post, she has been a treasure and I wouldn’t have managed without her.
So I was on the bike again and heading to Bangkok, unfortunately most of Northern Thailand is flooded and only 30 Km out of Udon the heavens opened, south of Koen Kaen the roads were flooded, no seriously at first but each flooded patch seemed to be worse than the last. Then I hit a very bad patch were the water was sweeping across the road, the water was well over the top of my boots. For the first time I realised I was in real trouble, the force of the water was making it very difficult to keep the bike upright. At this point I had a savoir, A driver of a fuel truck pulled alongside me and indicated that I should stay in the lei of the double axles keeping the major part of the water away from me, and we crawled along together for what seemed like an eternity, I don’t know how far we crawled like that it might only have a been a kilometre but it seemed much much further. Any way never got to thank the man but the driver of fuel tanker truck S-19, with the truck number 70-5257 I will forever be in your debt. I got to the town of Phon completely exhausted and decided that I would get a hotel although I hadn’t even covered a half of the K’s I wanted to. I pulled in at a hotel which to be honest I didn’t like the look of, so I thought I’d try a bit further down the road. I don’t know why but at the major intersection I was inspired by the thought that the road was OK from now, the rain was ebbing so I thought I’d continue. It turned out to be the right call. I would like to say that it was worth the drama for the hilarity I caused when I removed my boots and water proofs at the next servo, I have never ever been that wet on a bike and there was an easy ½ litre of water in each boot. So the best medicine for the blues just loads and loads of laughter.
I managed to find a really good hotel in Nakhon Racthasima, it is a brand new hotel, I can still smell the paint so nearly everything works. There is a basketball convention on here at the moment so it’s a bit like land of the giants.
I’ll be in Bangkok in the afternoon and I plan to store the bike with Terry from Asiabikes.com who will take care of the sale etc etc. I am very grateful for his help.

Heading Home

1. Master Kompaun with patient with acute
personalty disorder
2. The remote hospital with no name
3. The lake looks beautiful but leeches make it
impossible to swim in
4. 3 Angels
5. Lake fishing method 1
6. Diesel shed ( caterpillar eat your heart out)
7. Smart hire car
8. Hotel pool complete with safety fence
9.The bumpy road to the remote hospital
(taken from the back of Kompua 'Purple nasty')
10. Would you try this service ?
11. Night market at Udan Thani
12. Noi with Somkid generic hotel baby
13. Vene with Eddie
14. Why would you want to live anywhere else
15. Fishing method 2

Just a quick note to tell you I've started heading home, I am posting this blog from a hotel in Udon Thani and I hope to be back in Bangkok by Wednesday afternoon.
To be honest I have journied out and just want to get back home to my own bed, my own TV, guitar, bike, music, my own currency Furong sanitation and of course my friends who I have missed very much. I just want to go to my fridge and make a bacon Sandwich. It really has been one hell of a journey and I plan to return to Vientiane next year.

I haven't posted a blog for about a week this was due to several reasons some good some not so good. I have had a lot of problems getting the bike back into Laos after a short trip to Udon Thani in Thailand, this escalated into further problems when I was given 3 hours to get the bike out of Laos otherwise it was going to confiscated, I am not totally convinced that was going to happen, but do you chance it. This has been the downside, on the upside, not only has the EWB stuff been very succesful and enjoyable, but as most of you have gathered there is a new lady in my life by the name of Vene. We are still at 'early stages' but she is an absolute treasure. I am very sad to leave her but I have run out of steam on my journey and just want to get home. So Vene is another reason why I will return to VT.

My next blog should have more detials on the bike tribulations, the good news is I was re united with Eddie this afternoon and I am now in a nice clean hotel and about to go and get some ice cream.

Keep the rubber side down

G

Laos - throw away the rule book

1. Sunny & Master K show some skin
2. Ssshhhh genious at work
3. The bizzare discotech at kilometer 48
4. Hotel delivery Laos style
5. I have to get it installed before the grand final
6. Stop for lunch in Hong Phon with Ven
7. Doug's Roller, probabaly the only one in Laos
8. Doug's compound in Dogphone
9. The irrepressable Doug
10.Villa Sisavad
11. Beta testing the atmospheric control unit
12. Get a diesel engine to run on 100% propane, no problem

I know it has been a long time between blogs (I’m sure there should be an appropriate cyber expression, how about ‘blogout’ or ‘blogage’ could work). The truth is I have just realised I have been in VT (Vientiane) for almost 2 weeks now. I should explain that my trip was more about the adventure of doing something new and interesting and not about covering thousands of K’s on a motorbike, if I find something interesting to do I will stay. I did have a funny feeling this would happen in Laos as I had contacts for the projects here with EWB (Engineers without borders). I have found the work I have been doing here professionally the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I have many trials and tribulations in my years as a professional engineer, I have worked with and for some good people but to be honest I have struggled with most professional relationships as I have serious problems with the corporate bullshit thing. I don’t mind mentioning by name the people I worked with at Festo were just plain unpleasant. It was interesting that myself and Sunny were talking about some of the absurdities of corporate mentality and I mentioned that Festo had copyrighted the font for the logo and Sunny say “Why would you ever want to work for a company that copyrights fonts?” Which just encapsulates perfectly my sentiments. Anyhoo back to the story, in terms of covering ground and visiting different countries, the journey has stalled in Vientiane, however in terms of my personal journey I have covered more uncharted territory in the last few weeks than I have in most of my life. The appeal of Laos is very hard to define; it is certainly not the traffic which is scary. We have given nicknames to local traffic junctions when we give directions to each other and amongst them the ‘no rule roundabout’ and the ‘no looky, no stopy junction’ seriously if you stop and look you will cause an accident. The people are just terrific and always friendly and smiling, but there is something else here which is impossible to define, perhaps a simpler way of life or maybe the contradictions they have in their culture which is a constant source of education and amusement.

The biogas project at the RTC is ‘progressing’ but as always with everything here it is never straight forward, there are a few teething problems and trying to educate the locals in the art of controlling input variables, is difficult if they spoke English, as they don’t it all has to be done in gestures and hand signals, as the principle power source is cow poo it’s just too ‘carryonesque’. I made a very good contact a guy by the name of Doug Handisides, I had his contact through EWB and Sunny knows him quite well. He is quite an extraordinary technical/ entrepreneurial tinkerer with a huge compound on the outskirts of VT which is an Allidins cave of engineering stuff. We said we are trying to get an old diesel generator to run on biogas/ diesel duel fuel. He said he had an old Kubota diesel that he has been running on a mixture of all sorts of bio crops, if we came back the next day we will get it running on propane (ends in ‘..ane’ near enough). Sure enough after a lot of huffing and puffing it started and we had it running on 100% propane, admittedly it made a lot of noise without the diesel fuel but it did run and it did start.

We asked Master Khampuen if there is one item which would really help the hospital what it would be, he said that a cooling fan for some of the patients would be a good idea. So we have been trying to set up a system where we charge batteries using the diesel generator and storing the power in batteries. We then pass the 12V DC through and invertor to power a number of small fans. We found a very useful and helpful electrical shop in VT who, quite correctly, insisted in testing everything before it left the shop, we even had a roadside beta test, see photo.

We left the RTC very late one night and decided we all needed a cold drink and looked out for somewhere in the darkness that might still be open. We arrived at a place known only as Kilometre 48, so small it does not even have a proper name; we saw some flashing lights which normally indicate that beer is being sold. Turns out to be a discotech and it was heaving also had what was actually a pretty decent live band, this place is in the middle of nowhere (Bob’s country Bunker stuff). The band started playing some Laos folk songs so the girls were up and doing a traditional Laos dance on the suddenly crowded dance floor. I am so glad that I don’t do drugs or drink, this was difficult to handle on fresh air, welcome to Laos.

I am now in early September and I do need to be back in Oz to open up Erawan by the end of this month, so I have to start thinking of finding somewhere to leave the bike. My original plan was Chiang Mai although Doug compound in VT sounds like a better bet, there could be complications with the bike passport as it could be considered an import. If I go back to Chiang Mai I will have to think about heading there in the next week. So there is no Vietnam, Cambodia of Phuket on this trip. Yes it is a cop out on my trip but I just don’t care. If any of you have read Ted Simons ‘Jupiter’s travels’ he had the same problems and eventually took him 5 years to circumnavigate the globe on a Triumph Tiger.

Laos would not be to everybody’s taste, the people are great but you will not get the luxuries that you can get even in the remotest parts of Thailand. But if you want to go somewhere to give your mind body and spirit a bit of R&R, I would highly recommend it.