Back to Thailand

February 21 – March 7, 2009

My final two days in Vientiane greatly improved my opinion of the place. Once again a network contact led me to interesting experiences and kindred spirits. Nadia McLaren, an Australian with Middle Eastern ancestry, whom I met in Brussels three and a half years ago introduced me by email to Michael Boddington. Michael, who has lived in Laos for the past seven years. is the founder of an NGO called COPE, which you may have heard of. It’s an organization that provides prosthetics for people who have physical disabilities, particularly those who have lost limbs in explosions of land mines and bombs dropped by the US during the Vietnam war. On my last day in Vientiane I spent an hour going through the COPE visitor center, guided by a pretty young staff member named Ty (Tee) who explained to me the situation that has resulted in so many people being maimed or killed. I could not help but be moved by the displays of the vile weaponry – cluster bombs and mines, that has been used in war, and the videos and photo displays showing their impact on the people.

I then met up with Michael and over lunch he told me a bit about his background. He’s British but has lived abroad for many years, has a background in agricultural economics but has been mainly a social entrepreneur, is now married to a Laotian woman, and is determined to retire sometime soon. He then gave me a crash course in Laotian history and took me on a short tour of city landmarks (the city has more beautiful features than I had imagined). After making a quick stop at the Thai embassy to pick up my visa and passport, he dropped me at the bus station in time to catch the 2:30 bus across the Friendship Bridge back into Thailand.

Nong Kai lies across the Mekong and a little way downstream from Vientiane. It’s a quiet little town, the kind of place where they roll up the sidewalks at 9 o’clock. Though it might become boring after a while, it’s been a good place to get some serious work done. The hot and humid weather has kept me mostly inside my air conditioned guesthouse during the afternoons, a further encouragement to keep at the task of reviewing the proof pages of my book before it goes to press. (This seems like a good time broadcast a little more information about the book, so I’ve included a brief description and detailed table of contents below. Please take a couple minutes to check it out. My blog post, in addition, includes a few endorsements from readers(at http://beyondmoney.net)).

There are tourists here but not in overwhelming numbers, and they are concentrated mostly in the area along the river where there is an abundance of guesthouses and restaurants. I’m fortunate to have found a nice clean well managed guest house that provides A/C and free fulltime wireless internet access. There’s a lovely promenade that runs along the river bank that affords a pleasant stroll in the coolness of the early morning and evening hours. At the west end of the promenade is a busy river port where a diverse assortment of goods are shuttled daily across to the Laotian side.

Most Thais around her speak little or no English, which makes life a bit more challenging, especially when ordering food or negotiating prices with vendors and tuk-tuk drivers. When I get some spare time, I’ll make an effort to learn more Thai words and phrases. I can’t say that I’m impressed with the food around here. Compared to Bangkok and Chiang Mai, the food here is rather uninteresting and monotonous, and except for a few places that are operated by farang (foreigners), most of their attempts at western food bear only slight resemblance to the real thing. Pork and shellfish, which I avoid, dominate the menus even more so than in other parts of the country. Fortunately, chicken is commonly available, but tofu is a rarity. They also slip MSG into almost everything unless you know how to ask them not to – mai sai choolote, and strangest of all, they routinely add salt to fresh squeezed orange juice.

There’s a lot more that must remain untold for the moment since as I write this the clock is ticking towards departure time. I’ll leave in a few minutes to catch the night train to Bangkok. I’ll try to fill in more details when I reach the other end and get set up in a comfortable place. You can get a little more of the story by viewing my pictures of Laos and Nong Khai (and reading the captions) at my photo gallery, http://picasaweb.google.com/tomazhg.

Cheers,

Tom

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.
+66 82 267 9276 (Thailand)
+60 17 329 4306 (Malaysia)
thg@mindspring.com
Website: http://www.Reinventingmoney.com
Blogs: Beyond Money: http://beyondmoney.net
Tom’s News and Views: http://tomazgreco.wordpress.com
Photo gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/tomazhg
Skype name: tomazgreco

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 11:33 am and is filed under Tom Greco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.