February Report (due to popular demand, a new type of blog entry that actually tells you what we've been up to ...)

Rainy Dawn in Hanoi.  We didn't dress like that deliberately

The last time we updated you on what we were up to, we had  been thrown in at the deep end as English teachers in Luang Prabang.  We were, to be honest, feeling slightly overwhelmed by Lesson Plans and Past Participles, needing to be conveyed in a language our audience couldn't speak because they had come to us to learn it.  We are pleased to report that this story has had a happy ending.

Over the days our confidence grew, and by the end of our three weeks I think we had grasped that whilst every student may not have understood every concept, we were if nothing else playing a useful role by enabling them to hear spoken English, and have a shot at writing and speaking it themselves.  On our last days, Henry was to be found leaping up and down, and asking the same of his monk charges, to illustrate the tenses of the verb "to jump".  Meanwhile I was causing something of a stir by dividing my class into two groups of eight and taking each group out, one after the other, to sit with me at a bench beneath a frangapini tree, where I had them read their work to each other, before discussing it.  Both were, we think, real liberations from the rituals and rote of the classroom, and a reminder of why we were here.

After a weekend break in a small village eight hours upstream for kayaking, a massage, and a very good curry (see The Dinner Party) we headed back south to our next main destination: Paklai, and the annual Elephant Festival.  We have Henry's colleagues from the RSPCA to thank for this -- and very thankful we are too.

This episode ticked both the 'Roughing It' and "Did we really do that?" boxes, with the odd spot of heat exhaustion thrown in.  After our 13-hour journey south on small wooden stools in a slow boat (see The Luncheon Party)  we were picked up in a smart air conditioned 4x4 by a Lao businessman: we'd be spending five nights in his home as his paying guests.   We were slightly disappointed when we pulled up at his flash portico'd front porch, as we'd envisaged something a bit more primitive with which to test ourselves.  We need not have worried.  He and his wife ushered us into what can at best be described as a dingy grey room, at worst a prison cell, of unrendered walls and a filthy small window, overlooking a chicken yard which ensured that there was never any danger of us sleeping in beyond cock-crow at 5am.  The bathroom, reached through several dark ante-rooms, managed somehow to combine dust with dampness, rust and a musty smell, with some dodgy electrics dangling perilously close to the rubber shower attachment.  But he and his wife were eager hosts, insisting we joined them for dinner that night (seated on the floor, dipping various meats and vegetables into communal sauce and rice) -- never to be forgotten, and truly Lao in its simplicity and its sincerity.

The next day our work began (see Too Many T Shirts and Insecurity Guards): four days with several other volunteers setting up a stall in the main fairground area, selling T-shirts in 35c+ heat, and attempting to prevent mayhem from breaking out when the stars of the show, the elephants, were on parade.  Our evenings were spent cooling off with cold beer (80p for a big, big bottle) and rice-based meals in the company of a wide range of fellow volunteers and travellers who made for such varied and engaging international company.  I suspect it is true what they say: if you travel with someone, you will always have company, but if you travel alone, you will always have lots of company, as the same small groups kept forming and reforming around the rice-bowl, and often we would join them.

From here it was a five-hour journey, the least comfortable of our lives, by minivan to the capital of Laos, Vientiane.  My affection for this country was most sorely tested at this point (along with my buttocks), as I questioned how any government could permit such a shambolic road system to exist between its capital city and any of its towns.  Think of a dirt track leading off a country lane in rural Cumbria, double the number of potholes, treble the volume of red dust, quadruple the heat, and you have a sense of it.  We recovered with a gin and tonic (the first of our four months' travels) in the city's finest colonial hotel (before a deliciously cheap French meal and night in our budget, 'does-the-shower-work-today' hotel down the road.)

The following morning I mis-memorised a streetmap, went for a pre-breakfast jog, ended up miles from the Mekong -- but was able to have enjoyed a snapshot of Laotian city dwellers beginning their day.  We then  packed and headed for the airport and our final destination -- Vietnam.

Thanks to Henry spotting that I'd misunderstood the visa regulations (my extensive research had led me to conclude that they could easily be picked up on arrival at the airport in Hanoi; Henry discovered they couldn't; we arranged the visa in Laos and discovered  that if we hadn't we'd have been escorted back there on arrival in Hanoi) we were soon in the damp and slightly chilly streets of the Vietnamese capital.

What a contrast to sleepy little Laos!  Motorbikes, horns, traffic, vendors -- and the bells of a Notre Dame like cathedral from the little square where our hotel was located.  The grey skies and (almost English) February temperatures were  a delightful relief, as was our dawn walk around the city's central lake the following day -- observing badminton and ballroom dancing exercise routines from a polite distance, while I directed Henry's photo-shoot.

Ballroom Dancing by Daybreak

I'll stick to my morning run

After breakfast of two fried eggs, bread and jam, we became tourists for 48 hours.  We wandered the streets, visited 3 museums, and paid our respects to the embalmed corpse of Ho Chi Minh, lying in his open coffin in the Mausoleum more than forty years after his death.  His genial face beams from all the banknotes and many of the billboards. "Uncle Ho" is, I think, the first totalitarian leader I've come across to have pulled it off without a genocide at the time and all round embarrassment several decades later -- but I would be interested to know others' thoughts on this.

Tonight we save a hotel bill (all of $23) and take the overnight Reunification Express train south to the Imperial City of Hue, on the banks of the most delightfully named Perfume River.  I dare say it will smell of sewage, but if the city itself is half as fascinating as Vietnam has been so far, it will be worth it.  We then head further south along the coast to the mayhem of Saigon (nobody calls it Ho Chi Minh City now, apparently, in spite of the banknotes) -- and our flight home.

Thank you for reading this far.  Do let us know if the blog is of any interest -- we've changed the settings so that I don't think you have to sign up or do anything fiddly to leave a comment -- it always gives us a real buzz to know when anything we've written has struck a chord or raised a smile.  And we shall look forward to raising a glass with you soon, on our next return.

With love,

Henry and John

Henry & Donna
(not an Engagement Photo, but one of our very best new friends we met whilst teaching.
And it's one of the few decent ones with poor Henry in it ... all my fault, but it's what happens
when you leave your partner to take all the pictures ...)