Aligning stars

I’m happy to report that lately many things have been working for a change. Alternatively, I’ve managed to rise above the everyday craziness that is living in Vientiane but nonetheless the effect on my spirit has been a positive one. Here are some moments that have made me happy in the past days and weeks.

My seemingly never-ending struggle with car paperwork is over! As of today, I’m in possession of a brand new pink book for my car that allows me to take it out of the country. With that and Thai car insurance I should finally be able to take my car across the border to Thailand. I say ‘should’ because if there’s one thing I have learned whilst living here, it’s that it’s not done until it’s done (like having a flight ticket for a work trip for the day after tomorrow and learning that the whole thing is cancelled). Fingers crossed I haven’t jinxed it now…

Ordering drinking water over the phone in Lao language and coming home to see that the water has actually arrived! That means they (a) understood what I want and where I live, (b)  wrote down my order and sent someone to deliver it and (c) my landlady/cleaner/guard was around to let them in when they came round. Trust me, the number of times each of these three have gone wrong is something I gave up counting long time ago.

Our beloved Mekong beach is back and as a result we can play frisbee on the beach again! There’s something simply amazing about exhausting yourself by chasing after a plastic disc on the sand, watching the sun set over the Mekong while you do it and create a sandbox in your shower as you scrub yourself clean afterwards. The best part is that it’s at least another six months before the rains return so we’ve got plenty of time to enjoy it!

Last but most definitely not least, my wonderful friends who remind of the many finer things in life whenever my mood starts to sag. And then of course there’s cheesecake, this mind-blowing goodness that melts in your mouth and makes you smile for hours afterwards. Two particularly worth mentioning include a passionfruit cheesecake at La Signature and a Mars-bar cheesecake from Benoni Café.

Whilst writing this: COP17 has just started in Durban, South Africa. Two of my friends are part of the Lao delegation to the climate negotiations, I look forward to following their days at the conference. I’m also remembering the days two years ago when I was part of COP15 in Copenhagen. Let’s hope the stars are aligning in South Africa too and we get a real outcome from these two weeks.

Currently reading: In fact I have just finished all the books I was reading simultaneously. No worries though, my beach holiday for the next five days is likely to bring me back to a similar situation as I’m not planning to pack much more than a pile of books and a bikini.

A hat a holiday

People collect all sorts of things as souvenirs from their holidays. My recent trip to Vietnam with a friend revealed to me that my token souvenirs are in fact hats. Since moving to South-East Asia I have collected a wide-rimmed straw hat with a brown ribbon from Bali, a white cotton hat from Chiang Mai and more recently two more hats from Vietnam, a straw Panama hat and an olive green cap with a distinct red star on the forehead. I have also lost a hat, but that was a typical Lao farmer’s cone hat that was offered to the nagis occupying the Nam Song river whilst tubing in Vang Vieng. For a non-hat person, this is definitely  impressive.

Apart from hat shopping, here are some top moments from my holiday.

★ Getting my hair washed at a salon in Ho Chi Minh City – who knew this would include 45 minutes of head and shoulder massage in a dimly lit room with soft music and a cup of really good green tea?

★ Four dives into the deep blue with Rainbow Divers – with amazing diving buddies, a great boat crew and a dog named Scuba. The universe must have decided I was having too much fun as the situation was balanced by broken swim ware. Below is a picture of  our last dive site at Coconut Island just South of Phu Quoc island. 

★ Gate-crashing the beach of the island’s only four-star resort. Because we could and because we had a few hours to kill.

★ Shopping pearls. Though probably not quite as fresh from the ocean as the seafood we enjoyed at the same night market, I fell for the locally produced pearls and went a little bit crazy. But they’re beautiful!

★ Smiling with the locals. While the Vietnamese have the ability to go from zero to furious in next to no time, they are just like the Lao in their inability to return a smile with anything but a wider one.

Whilst writing this: I just learned about Restaurant Day, a great concept created back home in Finland. For one day roughly every three months, anyone can set up a pop-up restaurant anywhere and share their passion for food. I look forward to taking part next time I’m in Finland for this!

Currently reading: The last few pages of Colin Cotterill’s first Dr. Siri Payboun book, The Coroner’s Lunch. I’ve already lined up the next two in the series on top of my reading list and can’t wait to get my hands on them! I’ve also made some discoveries at the Phnom Penh airport bookshop and one of the local second-hand bookshops here in Vientiane so all I really need now is time.

Silk and needles

I’ve recently had various new experiences that have opened my eyes in many ways. Life really is full of surprises that widen one’s horizons if you let them. The two stories below feature silk and tiny, barely visible needles.

First, I saw with my own eyes where silk comes from, after literally stumbling across some silkworms. This is what some of the worms look like:

Silk worms eating mulberry leaves

They are also super soft when you touch them, just like the silk they produce. Each worm spins itself a protective cocoon from one single strand of silk that can be as long as 1,5 km. The cocoons are mostly white or yellow as in the pictures above. The cocoons are put in hot water and somehow the ends of some dozens of silk strands are collected (I failed to follow this part as I was simply staring at the process in amazement) and spun together to create the silk thread that is used to weave the fabric. Below is a picture of the process through which the cocoons turn into a skein of silk. 

From what I’ve seen elsewhere, the weaving is the hard part as it takes hours and hours to create a few inches silk fabric with a hand-loom. Suddenly I have much more appreciation for the art of silk making as well as the craft that turns it into all the beautiful clothes!

The second new experience I’ve recently had was acupuncture, part of the ancient world of Eastern medicine. I tried this in connection with a cold I developed after the boat racing festival, after I had lost my voice for four days. Two hours and some 30 odd needles later, I could speak again. I took two more sessions and experienced how I could suddenly breathe through my nose again. During these sessions I was also treated for allergic symptoms, unhappy tummy and poor circulation in my feet and hands and at least the tummy problems and itchy eyes have since been absent. Remarkable.