What we did

So Katherine and I enjoyed a lovely 2 day mini-vacation here in Vientiane. We didn't go anywhere, mind you. It's just that we were alone in our house for two whole days.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. We love guests. Adore them. Appreciate the hell out of the people who fly a god-awful number of hours to visit us here. In fact, I would say that we have been extremely lucky with the number of guests we have had, and feel blessed that so many people would choose to visit us here.

And for those of you who have not visited yet, please remember our unwritten rule. Those fine friends and family that come all the way to Laos have first dibs on visiting our next post. And remember, we’ll be picking from Russian and English-speaking countries, which include (in the foreign service universe), Barbados, the Bahamas, Trinidad, Belize, Jamaica, and much of the Safari-centric African continent.

But I digress. We love our guests, and were sad to see Kim and Matt leave on Wednesday and Astri leave on Friday, and we are very excited to be welcoming Alan and Diana around 8:00 pm tonight in Udon Thani. Well, speaking honestly, Katherine will be meeting them, I’m going to work. But I digress again.

But anyway, that time between Astri's flight at 4:30 pm Friday and Alan and Diana's imminent arrival today marked the first weekend we have been guestless (and in the same country) since mid-October, or thereabouts.

And we had a great weekend. Friday night we went to our friend Erin’s house for some maid-made pizza (very delicious, I think it’s the combo of mystery meat, pineapple, and tangy sauce) and a viewing of March of the Penguins with some friends. Katherine, having seen the movie before, took the opportunity to sack out on the floor, while our doctor friend Jon and I made semi-drunken comments about the funny penguins, the landscape, and the bitter cold of Antarctica. All funny stuff, but you probably had to be there.

Unfortunately for Katherine, she had been tapped to organize the monthly softball game at the Embassy field. Gametime: 8:30 am Saturday morning. I wisely promised nothing until Saturday morning, vacillating between ‘maybe’s and ‘no’s until 7:30 am the morning of the big game. Then, I happily told Katherine that I was, in no uncertain terms, NOT going to get out of bed to play softball. So I got some extra sleep while Katherine went and played softball with exactly 5 other people.

Of course, our little mini-vacation had a slight downside, as our house spirits decided we didn’t need water for about 16 hours. The upside, however, is we were able to lay around unshowered and unshaved with impunity until 1:30 pm Saturday when the GSO guy came over and routed our water supply around the broken pump. Also, Katherine decided we would have hot dogs and salad for breakfast, which was just an added bonus to our Saturday morning/early afternoon.

Saturday at about 2:00 we set out with our friend Jon to ride our bikes along the Mekong to the bridge to Thailand. The bridge is about 20KM away on the bridge road, but the road we took follows the river, which takes a HUGE bend away from the bridge before coming back. Anyway, we went about 2 hours out, basically taking any right turn we could, knowing we could never go too far right because we would end up in the river. Anyway, the roads we took went from paved, to gravel, to path, to gravel, to river bed, to cow path, etc. Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, by the end, we were in an area quite far from town, riding narrow paths between fields being planted, weeded, or harvested by conical hat clad Lao people who would cheerfully, if not somewhat bemusedly, stop what they were doing and watch us ride by. Two things would happen. Either they would yell “HELLO” or they would say, usually in Lao, “Where are you going? Are you lost?” Either way, we were as much a source of amusement to them as they were to us. We rode through bucolic villages of stilted houses surrounded by towering palm trees, rode past toothless, smiling old men leading their water buffalo to their fields, rode alongside groups of kids on their own Chinese-built, single-speed, bikes, rode past country Wats and homes in full party mode, their attendees yelling out hellos as we past. Every person we passed had a smile and, usually, a friendly comment. One of the best things about Laos, really.

Next time we go I’ll be bringing the camera.

All in all, an incredibly fun few hours. We made it back to town just in time to stop at the Australian club for a quick swim, a beer, and a great sunset over the Mekong.

Today was a bit more pedestrian, if only because it was not spent on bikes (get it? Pedestrian…no bikes…). Tennis, tuna sandwiches, tortilla chips, television, time with my cute wife, and a nap (I couldn’t think of a word starting with T that means nap).

I’m on my way to work, and Katherine is soon to be heading across the border to meet her parents.