Well, this story is getting a big stale, eh? If you’re new to Family Night, here’s the scoop: Tony, a couple friends (Carol and Nikki) and I take turns picking a local restaurant for dinner once a week. By “local,” we mean nearby and geared toward Lao customers.
This week’s Family Night restaurant had all the requisite components: twinkly lights, yellow Beer Lao-sponsored restaurant sign, karaoke, indecipherable menu, no English speakers on staff, and friendly fellow diners. Carol had chosen the open-air Soundara Restaurant, a little joint just a couple meters off Tha Deua, one of Vientiane’s main thoroughfares.
We grabbed a table overlooking the motorbike parking area (really just the shoulder of the road), where the bored parking attendant and a little boy played with battery-operated dinosaurs. The roadside restaurant’s location explains the gritty film on the tabletop, but there’s no excuse for the nails poking out of my chair that nearly shredded my jeans.
Before we could say “Beer Lao,” the ubiquitous refreshment appeared on the table. Ordering food, however, proved a bit more challenging. One waitress fooled us with her confident use of English numbers and animal words. We tried to order random dishes, so we said – and she repeated while scribbling on a pad – “One chicken, one fish, one shrimp, one fried rice” and so on. She scurried away, and we waited. And waited. Finally, she returned with three other waitresses and the busboy, who all chattered at us in Lao despite our humiliated laughter and our insistence, in Lao, that we didn’t understand.
At that point, it was time to call reinforcements. Nikki dialed our Lao friend Addie, who answered the phone with “I’ve been expecting your call.” Nikki handed her phone to the restaurant staff, who huddled around the telephone to record our order.
In the meantime, we all continued to sing along with the men at the next table to the Thai pop songs (and occasional English-language tune) playing on the karaoke screen. This place was clearly unprepared for a band of western songsters: they played neither Mariah nor the Eagles, much to our disappointment.
More disappointment came with the food. The soup cleaned out my sinuses, but the fried chicken comprised mostly chunks of cartilage and the veggies were uncharacteristically bland. Just as we were ready to write off this place for good, the fish came out and rocked our world. Usually restaurant fish here is literally just a fish: intact and grilled. This one had been dismantled, mixed with some herbs and spices, breaded and deep-fried. Bring it on!
The verdict? Pleasant enough ambiance, mediocre food, interesting karaoke selections, monolingual but undeterred servers, and Vientiane’s most tasty fish.
All Family Night photos this week are brought to you by Carol.
The home of good ol’ North American-style comfort food here in Vientiane is Joma Bakery Café. It’s the place to find pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, a hot iced cinnamon bun after an early morning bike ride, a tasty Greek salad that won’t give you tummy trouble, a killer BLT and many other treats that offer a safe and nostalgic break from Southeast Asian fare.
On weekend mornings, we often lug our laptops to Joma for breakfast and free wifi. This morning, Carol, Tony and I checked out the restaurant’s new branch. We had heard they were building a separate play area for youngsters, but unfortunately, that area was still under construction.
We had scarcely popped the first bites of “Bagel Egger” in our mouths before the place erupted with children. Determined to get our money’s worth, I gulped down my free refill, but then we made a break for it.
Note to self: Stick to the two-story, decidedly kid-unfriendly Joma Bakery Café downtown.
Here’s Carol in the midst of the Romper Room bedlam. Just as I turned off the camera, one of the urchins leapt on the sofa and landed on her shoulder.
You can make a lot of safe assumptions when you peek in a Vientiane restaurant to check out the clientele. Mostly Lao people? The restaurant probably serves cheap, delicious, spicy Lao food; the menu most likely won’t include English descriptions of the dishes; and if you don’t speak Lao, you shouldn’t try to place special orders. Mostly expats? The restaurant probably tailors its dishes to our less adventurous palates; the menu likely features illustrations and/or sometimes-decipherable English descriptions; and you can usually find someone who understands your Lao/English/Body Language special requests.
That’s why we felt a bit sorry for the couple who were strolling along the Mekong River, saw our group hanging out at NeNaTa Restaurant on Wednesday and clearly thought to themselves, “Hey if those white people are eating there, it must cater to westerners.”
Ha! Little did they know that it was Family Night! As usual, we ventured out to find a local joint in our neighborhood. It was my turn to pick the place, and I chose this riverside restaurant that you can’t access from the main road. We had to maneuver our motorbikes past the barricades blocking the dirt road that runs along the Mekong from our village to downtown Vientiane. The road is under construction as part of a massive flood-management project. NeNaTa Restaurant is the only eatery along this stretch of road, and we were the only customers (until those other poor saps showed up).
As expected, the menus were devoid of English, and the staff were friendly but monolingual. I called our Lao friend, Lae, and handed the phone to the waitress (cook? owner?). Lae prattled on for about 5 minutes, later explaining that she told the woman foreigners don’t like MSG, bones, blood, animal faces, or anything with a strong smell. We had no idea what she had ordered for us, but it all turned out to be delicious: steamed rice with grilled fish, stir-fried vegetables, deep-fried shrimp, a seafood medley, and stir-fried chicken and veggies.
I don’t know how that other expat couple fared.
Here are some photos. The “parking lot” was behind the elevated restaurant, which backed up to family garden plots.
The front overlooked the Mekong, where locals hung out among the construction materials.
The “family”: Tony, Nikki, Carol, and Jon.
As we enjoyed the sunset, our view was suddenly blocked by a truck and forklift transporting paving stones.
Sometimes you just gotta laugh.
This guy found his own riverside bliss.
I’ve got to remember to buy one of these lovely toilet paper dispensers for our summer picnics in Michigan.
With a significant population of Chinese living and working in Laos, our little city saw its fair share of Chinese New Year festivities. However, nothing will ever compare to celebrating Chinese New Year in China. As we kicked off the Year of the Rabbit, Tony and I were feeling a bit nostalgic for the real thing. Luckily, Vientiane has a newly renovated Chinese temple at the Mekong riverfront.
According to the website Chinatownology, this is a Teochew temple called Fu De Miao, which was first dedicated in 1968. The area around the temple was previously a muddy embankment but is now a park, constructed as part of a $37 million flood management project funded by a loan from Korea.
We visited the temple recently and liked it immensely. The only thing missing was deafening fireworks.
As international teachers and travelers, we can’t keep track of the people who skitter in and out of our lives. Some encounters are short, entertaining and casual, such as a chat with tourists who heave their oversized backpacks in the corner of the fruit shake shop and share their travel stories. Other encounters have an enduring impact. In this post, I introduce you to Lily Russo, a yoga teacher who visited Vientiane recently and changed my life.
When we returned to Laos after our month-long winter break, I received an email from the Vientiane Yoga Studio saying there would be a guest teacher for the next couple weeks. After just one class with Lily, Tony and I both developed a big crush.
Colorful feminine tattoos devoid of dark outlines embellished her arms – rainbow finches, symbolizing her parents and her brother, on one arm, and elegant blooming flowers on the other. Her soothing voice offered specific instructions to attain proper alignment in the asanas while making each person in the class feel like we were doing everything just exactly right. Her vinyasa-flow-style classes challenged us to find our edge, to focus on the breath, to revel in our strength and flexibility. Energizing music, often lyrical takes on traditional mantras, accompanied her practice. Emerging from savasana at the end of each class, I always felt happier and more relaxed than I did at the start.
For three weeks, I didn’t miss a class with Lily. I also caught myself chanting softly and practicing pranayama (breathing exercises) at school. I felt joyful and light, even when faced with life’s daily frustrations. Patience, not usually an attribute assigned to me, suddenly came quite easily.
A week after Lily’s departure, I still feel the inner peace she brought to our hectic little city. My history of on-again off-again yoga obsession suggests I’m unlikely to maintain that gentle connection. But I hope I can.
Lily and her husband, Chris, left Laos to travel through Thailand and later up through Nepal and India. They plan to arrive in northern India about the same time Tony and I move to New Delhi, so we’re keeping in touch. (If she sees this blog post, she may start to worry that I’m a stalker. But I swear, I just deeply appreciated her reminder of yoga’s transformative power.)
This week, a new guest teacher arrived with her own brand of inspiration. Toni, a lovely yogini from England, leads strong hatha classes followed by wonderful restorative yoga. Unfortunately, she’s only here for two weeks. If you know of any fantastic traveling yoga teachers, please send them to Vientiane!
Following Lily’s last yoga class, she invited us to play on a slack line she had rigged up behind the studio. I had never heard of a slack line, but according to the rest of the ladies, they are incredibly popular in parts of Europe, Australia and the U.S. It’s basically a tightrope strung a couple feet off the ground. Here are a few photos.
Lily offers some slack-lining tips.
Getting on the line is the scariest part.
Such concentration! But I couldn’t do it without spotters.
When I was training with Team Dai last year, our weekly “city loop” took us past a billboard advertising Café Sinouk and promising a coffee factory and gardens. I always thought a rest stop for coffee sounded perfect, but the team disagreed in their competitive zeal to finish the route. Now that my power-cycling days are over, I recently recruited Carol and Tony for a leisurely ride to Café Sinouk.
We started on a quiet, meandering dirt road that runs along the Mekong River. I’ve visited this temple many times on my bike rides, but Tony had never seen it. (You can read more details about this temple at my old blog post, Highway to Hell.)
Tony’s thinking Hell doesn’t look so bad, actually.
We left the river road and pedaled alongside cars, motorbikes and tuk tuks on Vientiane’s version of a major thoroughfare for 11 kilometers until we reached the aforementioned billboard. At the end of the long driveway, we found a little coffee shop, where the owner sat with some friends.
“I’m sorry, we’re closed!” he said but then kindly offered to serve us some coffee. He and his companions even shared their little tea-time cakes.
Even the dogs were enjoying an afternoon break.
Mr. Sinouk invited us to return on a weekday afternoon, which sounds good to us!
I’ve driven past this temple many times and glimpsed its imposing columns and traditional roof from the road, but the tour buses parked outside the gate discouraged me from checking it out. There’s nothing less zen than trying to explore a temple with a throng of tourists.
When we returned to Vientiane from Bangkok a few weeks ago, we still had a few days off before school resumed, so I cycled over to Wat Haw Phra Kaew and met up with my friend Nikki and Michelle, her friend visiting from Canada.
Unlike most temples in Vientiane, this one actually got some internet press. Wikipedia has a good synopsis of the information I found on a variety of sites:
Haw Phra Kaew was built between 1565 and 1556, on the orders of King Setthathirath. The temple housed the Emerald Buddha figurine, which Setthathirath had brought from Chiang Mai, then the capital of Lanna, to Luang Prabang. When Vientiane was seized by Siam (now Thailand) in 1778, the figurine was taken to Thonburi and the temple was destroyed. When it was rebuilt by King Annouvong of Vientiane in 19th century it was again destroyed by Siamese forces when he rebelled against Siam to attempt to regain full independence of the kingdom. The revered Buddha now resides in Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok. The temple was rebuilt for a third time by the French in the 1920’s during colonization of French Indochina.
At the entrance to the wat.
You know I love the nagas!
Visitors leave their shoes at the bottom of the stairs when they enter the temple to show reverence.
A view of the grounds.
Some random shots.
Photography is forbidden inside the building, where artifacts were on display.
Overall, I have say there was something missing for me at Wat Haw Phra Kaew. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but now I realize that the missing element was the monks. This temple is no longer a place of worship and has been converted into a museum. I always like to see the spiritual and mundane co-existing at working temples, where monks might be eating lunch or studying in the shade of a flowering tree. Usually, one of the monks is happy to chat about the temple or share some Buddhist principles. Now I realize that’s one of the best parts of exploring the local wats.
I had never heard of “sliders” until my parents moved to Michigan, where you can find them on every pub menu. After summering in Michigan last year, I now know that sliders are delicious mini hamburgers, about half the size of a regular one.
However, just when I thought I had a handle on burger lexicon, I ordered the “mini burgers” at Chok Dee, a restaurant here in Vientiane. The waiter delivered not a pair of sliders but rather a plateful of teeny tiny Barbie-sized burgers. I couldn’t eat them with a straight face!
‘Tis the season for deck-the-halls, family reunions, holiday-making and recruitment fairs for international teachers.
Unlike other professions, in which you find a new job before resigning from your present one, international teachers often have to announce their plans for the following school year before they head off for Christmas vacation. In our case, the deadline was Dec. 15. At that point, we either had to sign a contract to stay another year at Vientiane International School in Laos … or not sign it. An unsigned contract meant the school director could start advertising to fill our teaching positions, which meant we would be unemployed for the 2011-12 school year with no real prospects.
After NOT signing the contracts on Dec. 15, Tony and I promptly had a mental breakdown that segued into weeks of unpredictable fireworks of stress, second-guessing and desperation. With two mortgages and a 20-foot container worth of household goods to move from Laos, we needed to land not just any old job, but jobs with a substantial compensation package. The pressure was on.
We registered with two recruitment organizations: International Schools Services and Search Associates, which provide online databases to match schools and teachers. Many schools contact teachers via email or Skype, conduct interviews and hire for the following school year before Christmas. Most schools also attend job fairs, which take place all over the world starting in January and give teachers and recruiters the opportunity to meet face-to-face.
I checked the job postings every day, emailed schools with openings in ESL and English, cried every time I got no response (which was most of the time), and rejoiced with every automated “Thanks for your application. We’ll be in touch.” email that came back. My complete confidence that we would get hired before the job fairs slowly waned, and I reluctantly registered for both the ISS and Search fairs, scheduled to take place in Bangkok Jan. 4-12.
As we were packing for Bangkok on Jan. 3, Tony and I felt glum. Our goal was to find positions at a big, high-caliber international school with an excellent reputation. According to the databases, there were exactly TWO with jobs in our teaching fields: one in Saudi Arabia and one in Shanghai. Knowing competition for those positions would be fierce, and knowing that schools often look for hard-to-fill subject area teachers first (chemistry, math, middle school specialists, and for some reason this year – P.E.), we feared some other couple would sashay into the fair with their Chemistry-ESL or Math-English credentials and steal our jobs.
Tuesday morning, we checked in to the ISS job fair at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok. On Wednesday, teachers lined up nervously in the hall outside the ballroom, where recruiters from around 175 schools sat in alphabetical order by country at tables lining the perimeter of the room. At 8 a.m. sharp, the doors opened, and we all filed in like cattle, quickly dashing to find the schools that had advertised jobs in our subject areas. Right off the bat, we discovered the Saudi school had already filled its ESL position. We sprinted to the Shanghai school, which signed us up for an interview later that day.
As we stood in line for a school in Indonesia, I wistfully glanced at the table for the American Embassy School in New Delhi, India, one of my dream schools. They had positions posted for ESL and English weeks ago but filled their English job early. The day they pulled the English job off the database was a day of many tears and hopeless resignation on my part. Imagine my surprise when I saw their job list at the sign-up session included a position for high school English! I quickly hopped out of the Indonesia line and knocked a few people out of the way to cut to the front of the AES line. Shrieking with excitement, I greeted Elementary School Principal Susan Young. She and her husband, High School Principal Tim Boyer, have stellar reputations in the international community as mindful, fair, progressive administrators. Susan took a quick peek at our CV and then summoned Tim to schedule an interview with us.
Finally, we sauntered over to chat with the folks from Shanghai American School, where we had worked for four fantastic years. “We’re here to grovel for our old jobs back,” I said to Jeff Rosen, a friend and now middle school principal. He laughed and said he didn’t have positions for us at the Pudong campus but referred us to the administrators from the Puxi campus. Alan Knoblach, the assistant superintendent for Puxi, sighed, showed us his schedule (which was packed with back-to-back interviews from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.) and said he could meet with us right after the sign-up session.
By the end of the interview sign-up session, we had registered to meet with recruiters from five schools: Shanghai AS, AES in New Delhi, Shanghai Community International School, Xiamen International School (a small school in southern China), and Saudi Aramco Schools (a huge school district created for children of the Aramco oil company in Saudi Arabia). Things were looking up, but we were certainly not ready to celebrate.
Interviews take place in the recruiters’ hotel rooms, which feels a little weird at first. Fortunately, Shangri-La rooms have a nice little lounge space with a sofa and a couple chairs.
We met with Alan from Shanghai AS first, and he asked some good questions. At the end, it was clear he really wanted a middle school ESL teacher. I know I could do it, but the fact is I really prefer to teach the little guys in elementary. We appreciated that he threw us a bone and sacrificed his short break to meet with us, and it was good practice for the rest of the day.
All of our interviews went well, and we were genuinely impressed with all the recruiters and their schools. There was nothing to rival the weird experience we had two years ago when we interviewed with a recruiter from Kuwait while his wife slept in the bed! Halfway through our interview, he woke her up so she could sleepily show us her gold jewelry (which he must have thought was a selling point for his host country).
The AES (New Delhi) recruiters interviewed Tony and me separately, and I had probably the best interview of my life with Susan Young. She started by spelling out the school’s philosophy on classroom management and conflict resolution, based on the work of William Glasser. She described a learning environment where children are encouraged to make good choices and take responsibility for their actions, and all teachers are trained how to promote this behavior. She shared anecdotes that demonstrated the school’s commitment to collaboration and caring (including an initiative by a group of fourth-graders, who researched the health benefits of having recess before lunch and succeeded in getting the school’s schedule changed to do just that!). We discussed current research on language acquisition, homework and the value of play. She described professional learning communities, in which teachers explore issues they care about and make recommendations to administration. It became clear that this was a school that didn’t just talk the talk.
Later we received a note from AES Superintendent Bob Hetzel, who said he wanted to schedule a follow-up interview. We tried to call him, but got no answer. As I stood in the Shangri-La lobby with the house phone in my hand, he stepped out of the elevator.
“I was just calling you to set up a meeting!” I said and then joked, “How about now?”
“OK, now is good,” he said. We sat at a table in the lobby and had a nice chat about AES and our professional experiences. He asked what we loved best about teaching and seemed pleased with our answers. Before parting ways, he mentioned that he was checking our references, and we set up another meeting for the next morning. Fingers crossed!
By the end of the day, we were exhausted. We barely had time to come back to our hotel, shower, rest a bit and return to Shangri-La for the cocktail party. Despite the anxiety imposed by unemployment and uncertainty, we had a great time catching up with friends and colleagues from our years in Turkey and China, and we enjoyed getting to know other teachers and hearing about their lives in various parts of the world. It’s a great opportunity to meet administrators who may not have jobs for us this year but could be good connections in the future. As we left the party, the Shanghai Community International School recruiter said, “Check your mailbox downstairs. I left something for you.”
A contract! We were so thrilled and relieved to know we had jobs at a great school for next year. However, my heart was set on AES, and we decided to wait until after our follow-up meeting with them in the morning before committing to anything.
So, this morning we put on our dress-up clothes and trekked back to Shangri-La, where we ran into the AES administrators in the hallway an hour before our scheduled meeting.
“We’ll just wait for you in the lobby,” I said.
“Or we could just meet now,” said Superintendent Bob Hetzel. So once again, we had an impromptu meeting at some nearby sofas.
“We want you to come to AES,” said Bob, handing us a letter of intent and some other paperwork.
Tony and I both clapped and said, “Yay!” which led Bob, Susan and Tim to respond with claps and cheers of their own. Such an affirming moment! Asked if we had any questions, Tony and I were both a little too giddy to think straight. We said we would read over the paperwork and come back to attend their promotional presentation in the afternoon. We took the elevator to the rooms of the Shanghai AS and Shanghai ICS recruiters to thank them and tell them we had accepted the AES offer. We had already said thanks-but-no-thanks to XIS and received a thanks-but-no-thanks note from Saudi Aramco.
And now Tony’s at the pool and I’m writing and reliving this crazy experience.
Here we are with our new employers. From left, High School Principal Tim Boyer, Elementary School Principal Susan Young, me, Director Robert Hetzel, Tony, Middle School Principal Barbara Sirotin.
The only bad news they gave us was the starting date for new teachers: July 26. Ugh, it’s going to be a short summer.
Of course, I’m ecstatic about the travel opportunities in India, too, and can hardly wait to get started. I can’t stop watching the Incredible India commercials, such as this one:
Time to go join Tony at the pool and relax for the first time in months!
We’re wrapping up a hot and sunny fun-filled Christmas here in Laos. It started with a gift exchange, which was especially exciting with Blake’s pop-eyed, big-mouth gasp of surprise every time someone opened a present. When I gave him a little backpack (made by tribal ladies in northern Laos), he squealed, “My backpack!” You couldn’t pay for a better reaction.
Tony gave me a lovely Lao-style creche that looks just like the countryside homes up on stilts, complete with a hanging basket for the baby.
You know your friends “get” you when they show up with a suitcase full of weapons for the traditional Christmas war. It sounds morbid, but growing up in a military family, we usually received some kind of Nerf gun that shot sticky darts, velcro balls, foam arrows or other harmless ammo. After the last presents were opened, our family would leap behind furniture or take cover under large sheets of wrapping paper for a major skirmish. How special to share that tradition with our wonderful visitors!
Everyone played with their toys and lounged around for most of the morning, and then we jumped in a tuk-tuk and headed to Ban Moon. Barry, an Australian, and his Lao wife, Moon, run a little restaurant attached to their home. (“Ban Moon” means The House of Moon.) They served up a Christmas feast of turkey, ham and pork with roasted potatoes, carrots and pumpkin.
