Impressions and Images of Laos

Scattered throughout the quarters of Lao I've seen so many once stately, beautiful, french influenced homes, now with a unequal different ambiance - dirty, unkempt, yet with hints of rustic romanticism - then on 2nd looks the grime and mold certainly removes the rose coloured glasses. I like the familiar European feel though as I bike pass but they they do deserve some major TLC.

What Dam and French Villa

The Lao people are different than the smiling respectful Thai, their demeanor being indifferent and even snaring as you walk by and shopping is rather nightmarish. Then again I'm not used to shopping with someone small almost pressed up against me (unless a child which I'd rather leave at home while shopping). I dear not show any interest at any of the contents inside shops or stalls because. I became aware of how much I value being given room to shop back home. This 'attention' totally put me off shopping altogether - their loss. However one woman literally kicked me out of her shop with "You go, You go!" as I made the mistake of actually looking at 3 tops she had but didn't like them. To her  was committed - then I realised this was a major culture issue. 

No sooner had I jotted down the above thoughts my bike chain fell off and I got all greasy trying to reattach it. I prayed for help and I started hearing workshop equipment and headed for it. Sure enough I found a small work-site on a private property and before I could string any badly spoken Thai together (Lao can understand Thai - sometimes) the men figured out my hand signals to mean screw-driver (clever eh?) and they fixed my bike quick-smart and were all very good natured about it. Over all I had a couple of lovely experiences but mostly people were harder to talk with as they seems to look at me as if I had money to spend. So it got frustrating fast.

My favourite place in Laos: Hophtakeo Temple built in 1565

Images of Laos

My little hotel room at 500B a night - round $20NZ

Typical street view

Wild and dirty and different all at the turn of the head

The water front

Well there you have some of the best pics of my week in a communist country, a fact that was lost on me until I left. I have a new visa giving me 3 months in Thailand before I visit a new land.

Visa Runs, Laos & Patience

Typical scene in Laos

What was meant to be a quick and easy visa run turned out to be an adventure. Not as glorious as Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom - I'm yet to walk into any temple and find this 'doom', and unlike Indiana, I'm not bush-whacking through jungles, nonetheless, I found myself using my God-given power of patience.

It started Thursday night, when I was expected to be at the designated pickup point for a 7pm departure. I was booked and traveling with an 'Agent Tour' the 9 hours to Laos. The idea is, the agent is the middleman who makes it easy to get my returning Thai visa. Makes perfect sense and the tour is packaged to include hotel, food, visa (sorting out the messy fine print) and travel, returning within a few days with a new shinny holographic visa pasted into my passport. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

So being a typical westerner with a slightly organised and task orientated personality I arrive 20 min early. At this point my patience button is fine, as we all know that it really doesn't start working till 10min before an event is supposed to happen. But you can begin to feel it warm up.

No sign of the van. 

Start talking to self in mind. Mentally going over the instructions - yup, in right place. Calm self down with extra reassurance in checking my written instructions also and reminding self that they still have a 10 minute window. Button explosion aborted - phew!

7pm - Still no van. Patience drains from me! leaving me trying to reason with self again. "It's a busy night, there is always delays." I internally implore. Appeasing her a little more, we give it another 10 minutes. I'm all eagle-eyed now at every vehicle that enters the parking lot and even follow one promising looking van round as written on the back window was 'TOUR'. But he pulled into an auto shop - so much for that, I return to my perch.

The phone number I have on me for the driver didn't work. Obviously a miscommunication between it being recited and being written down with only a verbal check. Time to call the boss - my earthly one. Aware of my expectations I ask if I need to be concerned or give it more time (this could be a culture thing). He reassures me that time will reveal all and tells me they're praying for me (our friends have meet to eat dinner - that I'm missing waiting for this van!).

I realise I hadn't given prayer my greatest attention. So in doing so now a calm relaxed state came over me and I was in the space to just chill and enjoy the evening. It was OK to wait - for all of 5 minutes, then self started ranting between the ears "does this company not care about it's business?!" 

Praying again. Calmness again. New thoughts started entering my mind. "This time in 24 hours this will be in the past." "You'll look back and laugh about this, it'll be over soon". 

I started feeling as if the whole situation was taken care of and I sort of felt like a kid again waiting for my parents to get us where we're going, trusting them, yet asking 'are we there yet?' a few times during the process.

This went on for an hour. But now I was relaxed and not pent up with anxiousness. I call the boss again, "Um, I'm still here - I think there is a problem" I state. This time he's rather perplexed to know what to do. But one of the dinner party told him what was happening as she'd previously been on the same tour. In short, I was given the wrong time to meet, in fact I was 24hrs late!

My Lao visa and Kip

Now perplexed, mildly dumb-founded and amused two boys from the mission compound popped down and helped me nut out what the next strategy would be. I was very grateful for their help as one had made the trip himself and the other was so laid back in personality it became a fun adventure that he wanted to come on to, had it not been for work the next day he would have, just for the fun of it. Our negotiations took a further hour and the new plans had me away for a further few days.

Ready to go, the boys thought they'd travel across town with me to the bus station, to see me off and because we were having so much fun laughing about the absurdity of the situation. I'm so pleased they did, as just when we were talking about the time of night we were at and the likelihood of the availability of a bus at 10pm - the unthinkable happened - our taxi broke down on the motorway overpass! Murphy's law came to mind as we paid the driver, got out and legged it while laughing along the median strip for half a kilometer until another taxi pulled over with a kind-hearted passenger and took us the rest of the way.

Finally seated and the boys fare-welled my bus left the terminal at 12:20am. I was the only farang on the bus and apart of being stared at and touched a couple of times through the night (lady behind me seemed fascinated with my pretty face - her words, in Thai) all went well. The rest of the trip went without hitch, though 12 hours long and a bus transfer somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the wee hours. And best yet, the silly opposing antics stopped once I got to the boarder.

So here I was, less than 24 hours later chuckling to myself and thanking God that my first real Thai adventure (the hard parts at least) were behind me. The rest of the trip with the hotel getting, food buying, visa application all went smoothly with a great few days biking round the sleepy rustic town of Vientiane.

Check out my images and impressions of Lao 

Hope for Bangkok

Part of my 'job' description while in Thailand is to visit each of the 28 church plants to get to know and interact with the people. I participate in church and any afternoon program they have and I share when I'm asked, which is every time I'm visiting with either my testimony, and/or my design ministry and how it can be effective to a church. On top of this I'm asked to write about my experiences, so starting to do so. 

What do you do when you have 20 people, one fine day and a van?
The team at Hope for Bangkok’s Nawamin Church Plant had a great Sabbath idea a little different from most. The focus is on their Family Ministries initiative, where they encourage families in the community to take time out together through a monthly ‘Nature Discovery’ outing. 

Totally enjoyed the little delicate flowers in the water pots, 

Now, I’m all over that idea like a rash. I’d just spent my 3^rd week in Thailand and all I’d seen till this point was the urban life of the inner city; so to be invited to come along with the promise of countryside and trees totally appealed to me.

So here we were; 10 adults with a gaggle of children, a push car, guitar, bags of subsistence, and water out for a lovely jaunt into the country. Destination? Kaset University, heading that-a-way about an hour and half. We were booked to have a tour to learn about all things creepy-crawly, and visit their agriculture farm. In short, the University is a credit to Thailand, beautifully landscaped and presented, we were not disappointed. Trees offering dappled shade, small lakes, and grassy plains for expelling the energy of our pint-sized sojourners awaited us.

We explored the Butterfly enclosure and its accompanying museum where the first ‘family’ task was given - to explore and document their favourite ‘families’ of any of the creepy-crawly displays presented. It was a delight to see little groups of parents and children working together. Next, the happy crew explored the vegetable farm and learnt about some of the innovative and healthy ways the university grow their produce. Being typical tourists as we were, no trip to the country is complete without the clickdidy-click of photo-hungry people, in particular children, who photographed everything they could to the utter exhaustion of camera batteries in a few instances.

At the butterfly enclosure

Now to this point, as we enjoyed the hot sun-shiny day, I was involved in an activity that was very ‘familiar’ to me. My upbringing in New Zealand was full of wonderful memories of family outings, such as this, and camping holidays. But, I learned that to my new Thai friends, this was a unique experience. Families don’t spend such time as this together. Nana, whom I’ll introduce in the next paragraph, in her 65 years, had never ever been on an outing such as this in her life! So I looked upon the picnicking party with new eyes and marveled at what I saw. 

She never told me her name and it is respectful
to call an elder grandmother or father, I called her Nana

I watched a couple of mothers feeding their brood, one of their teens included the two young teens accompanying us solo (as girls do), a mat was laid down for the kiddies and I heard all sorts of mouth-filled banter from who had the latest Angry Bird keepsake to other very important subject matter. I watched the community’s grandmother, Nana, being included by another family. This lady and I had bonded earlier in the day. She shares the same age as my parents and spoke English very well. Best of all she totally complemented me on my Thai and reassured me it wasn’t said in flattery, this gave me the confidence to try it out throughout the day and she was both my instructor and translator. In fact, technically she is not yet a Nana, her two sons have not provided her any little angels to call her own, so this wonderful woman became Grandmother to her neighbours little ones, and she is loved and included by all. 

On my right were our hosts and church planters, with their visiting parents from the Philippines, two sisters and a brother brother-in-law as well as three children between them.

the family that stood out

The family that stood out to me the most were a lovely warm Thai brood of Dad, Mum and three young ones, all in green. Up until this day, only the mother and her three children had chosen to come along to anything the church-plant has offered, but today the husband and father joined in. In a country where men are preoccupied with all things manly, like work, and seem to do their own thing, I saw this man being totally present with his family with genuine warmth and enjoyment. They laughed and had fun throughout the day. 

After we ate our lunch under the, before mentioned, dappled shade of the trees, scripture songs were sung by guitar in Thai. The children particularly enjoyed this and I was called upon to help sing one in English, which we did twice – gotta love kids action songs! Then I was up, in leading the group in a game applicable to the day’s outing. 

Giving the parents a little breather from the wee ones, I instructed (through Nana) for the collection of leaves, bark, seed pods, and any flowers (already off the plant) to be gathered and brought back to the pathway next to us. Once done, the parents joined in and everyone had to create a tree from what was scavenged, every family unit working creatively together. For me, this was the highlight of the day. Afterwards, I spoke to everyone of God being the Creator of all we’d seen today, and although we can be creative at what we put our hands to, only God can create something as amazing as each of us and all we can see. It was short and sweet and in easy English for Nana to relay it.

And the winning families are.... everyone

After a prayer we packed up and headed for home. A longer journey than coming out due to traffic, but a great day was had by all. 

A little fact realised at the end of the day. Of the 20 of us that enjoyed the outing, only 7 were Christians, the remaining 13 were Buddhists families.