Door-Stepping The UN.

We've spent a few days looking around Lunug Prabang. getting a feel for the place and Laos culture and way of life generally. It's an easy going life, and quite easy to slip into. However, today we got it together and set ourselves the goal of finding the UN.

Previously we had been down to UNESCO, but most of their project work is based on construction, and infrastructure. They had pointed us towrds the UN, but we still were not quite sure where the office was. So we quite literally got on our bikes and went out to find them.

After cycling right round the whole of the town, asking around at different places. We seemed not to be getting anywhere. Never daunted we kept going. We'd narrowed it down to somewhere near the Provincial Adminstation Buildings. As we came up to them we spotted an office about Foreign Relations, which seemed in about the right place to where we were looking. The gates were locked! So we cycled around the back, and happened across a UN van parked up.

Squeezing ourselves through some half open gates with our bikes, we parked them next to the van and edgily walked into one of the offices. Explaining ourselves to the women we came across, they got what we were trying to say. There in the same office at the time doing some photocopying was a UN Volunteer. He greeted us with a smile, taking us off to meet with his boss, the Project Coordinator for the region.

Once again welcomed, although they seemed a little suprised that we just turned up on the door-step, he explained what work they were engaged in. Giving us named contact for the Programme Manager in Laos. Thanking them, we headed off with a bit more of a spring in our step. Now to get down to emailing and getting our heads around all the different opportunities that seem available to us.

This time we left through the front gates, passed the security guard. He hardly batted an eye-lid at us cycling out of the gates we had not even come through in the first place. We had asked this same man directions the day before, so he had a look of recognition on his face for these two cheeky falang who'd just door-stepped some high-up officials in Laos. Well the thing is, you don't get if you don't ask, do you?