and because a goodbye post cannot go without a ‘things I’ll miss post’, here’s my list of all this things I’m going to be miss about life in Laos…and all the things I won’t!!

1. Our lovely friends ~ but they shouldn’t count since in this day and age it’s very likely we’ll see each other again soon, if not through facebook and all the other social networks then the old fashioned way of getting on a plane and visiting them wherever they may be;

2. Our awesome Lao cat Meow ~ he is great company and I really miss him so I hope our friends (you know WHO you are!) are taking very good care of him, I expect health updates!

3. The weather ~ I’m already freezing my a** off in NY and it’s only 15°C, I can already see myself begging to be back in Laos come January when the temperature will be in the negatives and you can’t go outside without at least 6 layers on clothes! Ok, maybe the part about when you sweat constantly as soon as you step out of the house I might not miss but that warm sun and great blue skies will be sadly missed!

4. The sunsets ~ they really were something else, especially when you’re sitting outside by the Mekong enjoying a great cocktail and the company of good friends ;)

5. The people ~ Lao people have to be the most wonderful and warm people on earth, at least for me from all the people I have encountered along the way. Although of course it can be a bit exasperating the fact that they don’t know how to say that they don’t know, ie: when you ask for directions!! But they are honest, warm, friendly and love to have fun, what’s not to like??

6. The food!!!!!!! Green papaya salad, green curry, steamed lemongrass fish, laap, pad thai, fresh spring rolls, red curry, STICKY RICE, Luang Prabang sausage and sooooo much more!! And the worst is that there are no Lao restaurants in New York (we’ve looked)! So if anyone finds out that a Lao restaurant has opened in the Big Apple, please please let me know!

7. How cheap everything is, like Lao food and Beerlao, and well, everything when you compare it to New York!

8. Did I mention the weather? Seriously, I did miss the 4 seasons but nothing beats getting to wear summer clothes all year long :D I actually have to go to Brussels to get my winter clothes to NY because I had none with me in Laos!

9. Our house ~ even though I thought it didn’t get enough sunlight inside it was still a great huge house! I really don’t know when next we’ll be so lucky to have something that big…

10. Our maid, our gardener and our security guards ~ they were super nice and always had a smile for us! Our night guard wasn’t always the most reliable but he was the object of great dinner conversations :D but yeah, again, I don’t know when next we’ll be able to afford or enjoy such luxuries… that reminds me, I have to go to the laundromat tomorrow, oh Nuan, how I miss you and our pressed shirts!

11. Our Mitsubishi Pajero ~ it was a gas guzzler and seemed to always be in the garage getting fixed up but man was that car cool, not to mention convenient! From getting stuck in septic tanks to crossing rivers, it was just cool! It also made Phou Khao Khuay and Vang Vieng just that much easier to explore…I doubt we’ll be getting a car in NY any time soon, I guess I just have to rely on my two feet to get me where I’m going (at least, I’ll be doing regular exercise!)

12. You can’t honour your car without honouring your motorcycle, so here it goes…Thank you to my lovely Kolao for all the temperamental spams you had and all the times you didn’t want to start, not to mention the flat tires after our drive way, you made my life a lot easier, I’m gonna miss you!

13. The parties!! Where else can theme parties be as much fun, just the fact that you have to create your own costumes ‘cause you can’t buy any of this stuff of course made it all the more perfect!! The 80s, the 90s, the Disco years, the Heroes and the Villains, the Star Wars, the Crazy Hats, the Crazy Sunglasses, the Dress like a Parisian, the Backpackers… oh how I will miss you all, past, present and future! Keep rocking Laos!

and the things I WON’T miss…

1. Lao driving ~ let’s just say my road rage really did not enjoy spending time in Lao traffic, dodging motorcycles going the wrong way with no lights and sometimes even no brakes, or the fact that Lao people have no idea how a round-about works and that it’s the only place on earth where I have seen traffic cops controlling a round-about during rush hour or how the simple concept of right of priority seems to elude their minds, sorry, I’m rambling, but yeah that’s definitely something I won’t miss! However, I do have to say that I will miss rolling in my temperamental Kolao with no need to wear a jacket ‘cause it’s so hot anyways, with the wind in your face and a beautiful sunset over the Mekong…

2. Creepy crawlers, mosquitoes and snakes! Although geckos will be missed, except the dead ones I would find in my cereal, those were not a nice surprise in the morning!

3. How the borders closed at night so that you had to calculate at what time the last Air Asia or Nokair flight came in! You know, apart from Laos, there are only two other countries that close their borders at night: Cuba and North Korea…Not to mention that unless you had a long term visa you had to use up yet another one of your passport pages just because you decided to go to Bangkok for the weekend. I finished with 8 Lao visas in total which is already too many but I know some people that have a lot, lot more!

4. How every time you went to the store you were never sure the ingredient you were looking for would be there, or how they would replace it with something that you really didn’t need and you wouldn’t see what you wanted again for months! I know that here in NY I actually have too much choice but it’s always nice when you have a specific recipe in your head to actually find all the ingredients you want!

now, what else? I know I’m forgetting something…

Well, in conclusion, the things I’ll miss far outweigh the things I won’t so it’s safe to say I will miss Laos. I hope to find myself there again someday…

And in the meantime, if you’re interested and if this blog has been worthwhile for you to follow or check out once in a while, the adventure keeps on, this time in the concrete jungle, that’s www.intheconcretejungle.tumblr.com to be exact!

Hope to see you there and Laos, I hope to see you soon! It’s been fun ;D

Sok dee

I have procrastinated writing this post for a while, probably because deep down I didn’t want it to end, I didnt’ want my time in Laos to end…yes, life in Laos is calm, it can be quiet and sometimes certain things are missed but honestly, life in Laos is GREAT, it’s easy and, most of all, it’s cheap! 

Maybe we were lucky, maybe we had great friends to share our time with but maybe it was just that it was Laos, beautiful and simple.

It pains my heart to think that maybe in 10 years time that quiet beauty will be destroyed by Chinese bulldozers and corrupt politicians with dollars in their eyes but hopefully, fingers crossed, it won’t! Hopefully, the beauty, the friendliness and the warmth of Laos will endure…heck, Talat Sao was supposed to be finished last year and it still isn’t so maybe that’s a good indicator for the speed of new development! Although some new roads wouldn’t be a bad idea ;)

My time in Laos was short compared to some, and yes, I did travel A LOT while there, but my time in Laos was a wonderful hiccup at this point in my life. I saw a great many beautiful things (yes, I have to find another adjective but really this one describes Laos the best), and I visited a great many places inside and outside of Laos: Luang Prabang, Pakse, Huay Xai, Xiang Khuang, 4 Thousand Islands, Champasak, Phou Kao Khuay…I visited Cambodia and Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, Thailand and China. I saw Angkor Wat and Halong Bay, Bali, Bangkok and Beijing… places and things that many only dream to see, so yes, I know that I’ve been lucky, I’m the first to admit it but yet I had a hard time letting Laos go…

And for that I have our friends to thank, they made our time in Laos what it was…AMAZING, FUN, GREAT, AWESOME, EXCITING, EXHILARATING (need more adjectives??) 

But most of all, I need to thank Laos and its people, truly the most friendly and warm people I’ve encountered so far…I hope to see you again soon

Sok dee

So, last week I was happily reading at home when my guard knocks at my door and, with a scared face, points towards the back of the house…

I go to investigate and see that there is a 2 meter long snake crawling up our wall!!!! I ran to get the camera so I could get a photo but just as I was coming back, the sneaky thing, much to my horror, crawled up into our ceiling! I got on the phone with our landlady who came as soon as she could…by herself…and considering she’s smaller than me I wasn’t really sure what her presence there would accomplish but behold, the next day a Buddhist shrine was delivered to our house!

The landlady had tried to install one when we moved in 2 years ago but J had told her no but I guess that’s what you get when you refuse a shrine…a snake instead! So now, we have a shrine, we haven’t seen the snake again and the landlady and the day guard every so often go leave food offerings on the shrine…I don’t really think there is a correlation between the snake and the shrine but if they believe it, who am I to judge, let them light the candle and leave the rice, why not?

And this is just one of the things I will miss when we leave…

So, if bad things come in three’s I think I’m done!!!

And what are those bad things you might ask…

1. Almost getting hypothermia up on the Great Wall because none of us were smart enough to bring a tent and we were rained on for 4 hours straight (see previous post)

2. Three days after the adventure that was, my dear wallet was stolen in San Li Tun without my awareness — I would still like to know how it happened even if I know I’ll never see any of the contents again!! This adventure ensued two trips to two different police stations, two trips to the Portuguese consulate, various international phone calls to friends and family and banks to cancel cards, and I’m still suffering from it!

3. and finally, what was supposed to be an easy half day trip back home turned into a mother of all nightmares when China Eastern, due its grave and bloody incompetence, decided to ground me and 3 others for 24 hours in Kunming in a shitty hotel in the middle of nowhere with shitty food and shitty service…not to mention that the next day, when we showed up at the airport again to take the same flight that we had been bunked off of they had the gall to tell us we weren’t in the system and might not fly AGAIN…let’s just say, my Chinese and English swear words combined never came more handy!!

I finally made it home, annoyed and exhausted only to have to pack again ‘cause today I’m off yet again to another exotic location: Sri Lanka!!!! 

Till my return, I hope you are all having better luck than me :D

This weekend I got to partake in my programme’s (China Study Abroad) most popular activity: hiking and camping on the Great Wall!

I’ve been twice already and it really is amazing, the sheer length of it, the fact that it’s on a mountain range and that it took so damn long to build, also that it’s one of the few wonders that can be seen from space, pretty impressive indeed…

…yet, let’s just say, this time around I really, really wish we had been smart enough to bring tents! Honestly, it’s August, it’s been raining like crazy and yet we were optimistic enough to think, nah, it will be okay, the rain won’t come to us…after all this is a country that can control the weather on public holidays, surely, the gods will allow us to have a nice camping experience, right??

Well, the trek up on Saturday was pretty cool. We went to a section of the wall that isn’t actually open to the public so you’re not surrounded by millions of tourists and souvenir shops, you get to experience it as it is, just nature, the wall and you! It was a good yet steep trek and don’t get me started on those Heaven Stairs that are taller than you and quite wobbly considering restoration is not actually a priority for the Chinese government, understandable by the sheer length of the thing! We finally get to the watch tower where we’re supposed to make camp, light a fire and sleep, except the Chinese that had been there before us decided to use most of the space for the personal bathroom so that kind of called for a change of plans… Oh, and my iphone was almost trampled to death by one the 13 year old’s in our group that decided to hurl a rock in its direction after finding poo under the rock!!!! I think that was my most traumatizing memory from the whole weekend! haha

We ended up setting up camp next to the tower and proceeded to have the usual camp and bonfire experience, our guide brought up food and we enjoyed our supply of alcohol (a bit too quickly in retrospect) and off we went to sleep…the day had been foggy and the view wasn’t spectacular like my first time visiting the wall but it was cool to be up there and the group was quite fun…

…away I was in the land of dreams when it starts to rain a bit… thinking it will blow over I open my umbrella and try to make myself as small as possible under it…and then… it pours! A lot! And again, no one had tents so we’re all getting drenched while trying to gather our belongings and awake the drunken ones and the young ones to get them into the poo-smelling tower for cover…yeah, it gets better…the tower is so old it leaks and the ground isn’t flat so the water collects on the ground…yep, you can imagine the rest, some actually did find dry bits and managed to sleep, our drunk englishman actually snored, something I sadly envied cause it meant he could sleep!! We build makeshift rock beds and huddled up for warmth with whatever sleeping bags that weren’t drenched and I held my umbrella (cause the roof was leaking) nonstop for 2 hours, I’m still amazed my arm didn’t fall off! By 3am it had stopped raining and I actually managed to sleep for about one hour up on the roof of the tower…yeah, that was fun!  

At about 5am everyone was up, exhausted, damp and miserable but just generally happy that it wasn’t raining anymore and we could finally leave the wall and seek warmth! It was also pretty fun having to re-tell the evening’s proceeding to the englishman that couldn’t remember a thing, I guess I should have drunk some baijiu as well, might have kept me warm and blissfully unaware!

All in all, no regrets though, it was an adventure and always a funny story to tell in the pub around a beer and all warmed up ;)