Catch Up Time.

Not put down a blog for a while, too much has been going on. We have just finished a 3 day seminar on microfinance and womens empowerment. It was pretty good. Although we did fall asleep during some of the speeches. There were people from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and India, as well as 2 Brits and a bunch of Lao people.

Yesterday was the best day though. We went with about 200 other delegates to a village about an hour out of Vientiane. We were welcomed into the village by a line of waving school children. There was more speeches, and lots of singing, which seems to happen after every speech. Then they did the Lao thing of tying the spirits to you. They all sit round and bless pieces of white string, which is then tied around peoples wrists. This is a blessing and wishes for good luck in the future.

We had them lined up to waiting to tie the string around Sam and my wrists. Most of the other delegates had maybe on average half a dozen to a dozen at most around their wrists. We had twenty-six each tied around ours by the time they had finished. We then got to have lunch as hounored guests in the main community building, while everyone else ate outside.

As if all that were not enough, after lunch they started dancing. Lao dancing! Which is this thing when the women dance around the outside and the men on the inside of a circle, which goes round slowly. You have to do this subtle hand movement thing at the same time. Firstly the 'noodle' lady got me up to dance. (She is the lady who on our first day with the CDEA dragged us to her house for noodles.) We were the first on the dance-floor! Then after that dance the village leader woman who had been running the day came up and requested a dance from me. Once again first on the dance-floor, with 200 international delegates watching us. Luckily Sam was made to get up this time too.

At the end of the day they did presentations to the international delegates who were there. We didn't expect that they would call us up. So we'd disappeared to the toilet, and was stood at the back when we heard 'Ankgit'. English, they want the English to come up. Khampasong looked round to see we were not in our seats anymore, and then to us coming through the crowd, along with 200 other pairs of eyes. We had to stand at the front, just Sam and I while they presented us with village handicrafts.

What a great day. Today was the finish at the Lao Culture Hall. The Prime Minister did the speech thing and then a walk around the stalls infront of the hall. It was all over by 11.30am, so we took the opportunity while in the town centre, to sort out our Cambodia visa. So here we are $80 paid and waiting to collect our passports tomorrow. We plan to leave Vientiane on Wednesday night, getting the over night bus to Pakse. We'll spend a about a week down there, and cross into Cambodia on the 20th of December.

Anyway, what else has been happening recently?! Well work stuff on the Asia Pro Eco Project is going well. We've hardly seen anything of Khanthone, which is no bad thing. We had Lao National Day last Friday which was good. We went to see Ka, as we have not seen her in a month. We were only supposed to stay and say hello, but ended up staying about 6 hours. She fed us constantly, and there was the usual constant flow of beer. We had wanted to go and see Joy, as we said we would. By the time we got there he'd gone bowling with his wife, so we headed on down to see the guys in Sticky's.

Sticky's was closing early, it being National Day and all. So we thought we'd go to Samlo for a last drink before home. Syd was there, the guy we'd met the week before. He asked us to join all his mates. What a bunch they are! A load of insecure middle-aged men with young Lao girls hanging off them. One particular tosser took offence to my 'Commie' T-shirt, I'd worn especially for National Day. He told us he was a Nazi, and that he thought I was taking the piss out of Lao people by wearing the shirt. I tried to explain the notion of irony to this one-brain-celled twat, and that it wasn't a dig at the Lao people as they are not Communist, they government are Communist. Also that I worked with and for Lao people, I was the last falang takin'-the-piss-mate.

This didn't seem to work, he still wanted me to take my glasses off so he could hit me. I took them off, he didn't hit me! He just put his face close to mine, as if that was supposed to scare me. No Nazi is going to scare me, I'm not backing down to a retarded piece of scum that should have been shot at birth. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, as the anarchist saying goes. And that's from a group of people that are perdominately pacifists. Anyway, I carried on trying to explain life in simple terms to this guy. I wanted to take it that one step further and ask if he is a Nazi, what was he doing in a Communist country in the first place, with a Lao girl hanging off him? What would his Aryan skin-head buddies think of that?!

I avoided that line of question. I know how far you can go with these people. That one would have fried his single brain-cell, and he'd have gone for me for sure. In the end Syd split it up and sent him on his way, telling him how out-of-order he had been. Also I think Sam was ready to tear his head off. I was quite happy arguing in circles with the stupid prat.

So that's about the most excitement that we have had. There has been other stuff, but I can't remember it all. I know Sam has said a number of times, 'that's one for the blog.' It just goes out of your head if you don't get it down right away. If I remember I'll stick it up on the blog. Besides, once we get back to traveling again I'll be able to keep the entries up-to-date. Back to daily blog entries, as there is not much else to do when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere.