Category Archives: Daily Life

Cycling Sisters

January 10, 2010 Sharon 1 Comment

Now that I’m back in Vientiane, it’s time to get back in the cycling groove. Team Dai is training for a 3-day, 400-kilometer ride to Phonsavan in March. I’m excited that they changed the destination from Luang Prabang (only because now I’ve BEEN to Luang Prabang – see my posts from last week, but I haven’t been to Phonsavan).

My sister Megan is visiting, so I proposed that we join Team Dai’s Saturday training ride. She agreed – with the disclaimer that she’s a runner not a cyclist, and I would have to promise to turn back whenever she got tired. “Sure,” I said. “No problem!”

We lowered the seat on Tony’s bike, and I generously gave up my gel seat cover for Megan’s tender bottom. And off we went. We met the team at the Patuxai Monument at 7 a.m. The route started on a paved road, but really “paved” is such a relative word. In many parts of the world, “paved” means smooth flat asphalt, which is a very nice surface for riding a bike. On this particular road, “paved” meant a hilly path with pockets of tar, pockets of rocks, and pockets of dirt. I can’t believe we didn’t (a) get a flat, or (b) lose any teeth.

About 30 minutes into the ride, Megan said, “I think I’m gonna want to turn back soon.” I ignored her the first few times. Then the team stopped for a pee break, and she said it more forcefully, “I think it’s time to TURN BACK.” So I had to ‘fess up. “Meg, I have no idea how to get home from here,” I said. She was not pleased. My sisterly vibe was sensing a major undercurrent of hate. But she put on a happy face and soldiered on. She’s such a trooper.

Our next rest stop was at a little waterfall. We ate bananas and chatted with the team. The ride organizer, Paul, explained that the hilly part of the ride was over. Then we rode out of the park, turned left and saw a small mountain. Later, Paul said, “Sorry, I forgot about that one!”

Eventually, we reached the Mekong River and followed it back to town. That’s when the pretense of pavement ended. No more pockets of tar; just pockets of rocks and dirt. When we dared to pull our eyes away from the obstacle course of a path, the scenery was gorgeous – rice fields, forests, villages, and all the usual goings on you see in river communities. Every time we rode through a village, children stopped playing to yell out “Sabaidee!” or just stare at the wacky group of “falang” with their fancy bikes and silly helmets.

Eventually, after 3 ½ hours and about 37 miles, we emerged in the middle of Vientiane and headed straight to a café for breakfast. I can’t even describe how much dirt coated our bodies. Meg had a little mud mustache from the sweat mixed with reddish dust, and I looked like I’d just spent a lot of money on bronzing powder. Later, we dragged our battered bodies to Manee Spa (across the street from my house) for a massage, but they were fully booked. We almost cried. Instead, we bought iced coffees from my favorite streetside coffee lady, Saeng, and watched Kung Fu Panda on TV.

For more on this fascinating topic, check out my earlier post on Team Dai and/or the team’s own website.

Megan rarin’ to go at the Patuxai Monument in Vientiane.

Megan feeling a little less enthusiastic at the waterfall break stop.

Daily Life

2010 Reading Challenge

January 1, 2010 Sharon 3 Comments

My friend Colleen blogged about this reading challenge, and I decided it sounded like fun. Then another friend, Tara, jumped on board and blogged about keeping a journal of every book she’s ever read. Another cool idea!

I decided to do both. In my first few months in Laos, I plowed through about 10 books (not much of a social life, new-job stress, rainy season, no car…). I hope I can keep up the pace now that the weather’s gorgeous and I’ve found a few friends. I really have no idea how many books I usually read in a year.

Although I’d love to reminisce about the books I read in 2009, I’m sitting in a cafe drinking fresh coconut milk (they just hack off the top of the coconut and pop in a straw) in Cambodia with my sister Megan. We are taking a little break before heading back out to explore. I’ll have to write a 2009 recap when I get home!

Daily Life, Laos

Live and Let Dai

December 19, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

i seriously don’t have the energy to hold down two keys at the same time, so pardon the lack of capital letters…

Oh fine, in the interest of readability I’ll push myself that extra mile … even though I’ve already cycled about 50 today. Yes, you heard me right. I rode 50 miles today on my Chinese knock-off Giant bike.

If I had been traveling vertically instead of horizontally, I would have qualified at NASA to be an astronaut. If I had pedaled off the coast of Florida, I would have reached the Bahamas. If I were an elephant, that’s how far I would walk in one whole day.

None of that really matters or even makes sense, though. The point is that I rode my bike FIFTY freakin’ miles. It’s even more impressive to talk about kilometers:
So, how far did you ride today, Sharon?
Oh, around 80 kilometers, I suppose.
Wow! You must be quite a fantastic athlete! Whoops, you’re tipping over again. Atta girl, hold that body upright.

Since moving to Laos, I’ve heard legends of a mighty group of cyclists who rode from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, an uphill journey of nearly 400 kilometers. My friend, Whetu, and I embraced the abstract concept of this challenge and began “training.”

We take an early morning spin around the city three times a week … except when one of us had a bit too much to drink the night before and/or didn’t get a good night’s sleep and/or had the sniffles and/or couldn’t bear to leave the snuggly comfort of sleep. In such cases, the other person always feels a wee bit of guilty relief to get the text message: “Sorry no ride today. See ya at school.” More often than not, our stick-to-it-iveness has surprised even ourselves.

Earlier this week, we officially joined Team Dai (pronounced “die” unfortunately). One of the organizers explained: “The team name means ‘Can do’… as in ‘anything,’ referring to the ability for a team of committed energetic people to achieve amazing things that they’d never dream of individually.”

This year, Team Dai will ride to Phonsavan, about 400 kilometers northeast of Vientiane, and home of the mysterious Plain of Jars.

Today was the team’s first Saturday training ride. I didn’t sleep well last night, tossing and turning with anxiety that (a) my alarm wouldn’t go off, (b) Whetu and I wouldn’t be able to find the group at the meeting place, (c) Whetu and I WOULD find the group and they’d all be comparing notes on their most recent endurance cycling events, or (d) they would ride too fast, and I’d be left in the dust.

We both have punctuality issues, so we showed up at the Patuxai parking lot at 6:10 for the 6:30 a.m. ride. We looked for other potential Team Dai members but saw only men walking backwards, a guy riding in circles on an old beat-up bike with a Laos flag, young people doing stomach crunches on the park benches, and barefoot children who couldn’t peel their eyes off us.

Finally about a dozen other riders showed up. The team’s training coordinator, Nick, gave us a primer on hand signals and riding etiquette and then explained the day’s route. We were heading out to the Friendship Bridge and then doubling back, taking a loop around the outskirts of Vientiane and then pedaling back into the heart of town for breakfast at a popular café.

The group maintained a steady but do-able pace, and I enjoyed getting to know this diverse bunch of expats. The riders I met were from England, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden, Australia, and France, and they all had such interesting stories about their work and travels in Laos. Chatting with them made time pass quickly, and soon we were heading back towards town.

Just as my tummy started rumbling in anticipation of hot thick coffee and fried eggs, Nick turned back and shouted, “Do you guys want to keep riding?” I nearly toppled off my gel seat when the group shouted, “Sure!” So we turned AWAY from town. I refused to let dangerously low blood sugar and ruptured hamstrings quash my enthusiasm, so I stuck with the pack even as a few others veered off for home. I reluctantly waved good-bye to Whetu, who had a flight to catch.

Eventually, the only thing that kept me going was a meditative mantra: Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, coffee, coffee, coffee … When we pulled up to the restaurant, there were only six of us left. They seemed unfazed by today’s accomplishment, but I refuse to diminish what my flabby body did. That 3-day challenge no longer seems impossible (daunting … unpleasant … kind of insane, really, but not impossible).

In case you missed it the first few times, I rode my bicycle for 50 MILES!!!

Daily Life, Laos

VIS Christmas Party

December 14, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

Saturday night, we celebrated Christmas with our Vientiane International School friends at The Jukebox, an open-air pub owned by an American teacher and his Lao wife. I served on the organizing committee, but I didn’t do much (other than work with another teacher to compile a music playlist).

Everything was fabulous! Lovely decorations, delicious food, a bit of dancing, and lots of fun conversations. The highlight may have been Santa Claus, the school’s tae kwondo instructor, who passed out presents and thoroughly entertained us.

Daily Life, Laos

Mooning the Night for SEA Games Soccer

December 13, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

The Southeast Asian Games have taken over Vientiane, but it seems you have to be someone or know someone to get tickets. Last week, I begged my Lao language teacher (who is a third-grade teaching assistant at VIS) to let me tag along with her to the Laos-Singapore soccer match. The next morning, she stopped by my classroom to give me a T-shirt that said “Cheer for Laos!” in Lao. Very cool. We agreed to meet at the staff lounge at 4 p.m. to catch our ride to the stadium.

You may be thinking, “YOU wanted to go to a soccer match?” I know, I know, I’m the least sporty person ever. I was in it for the cultural experience.

One of the SEA Games mascots, Champa, playing soccer. He’s so cute! The other mascot, Champi, is a sporty girl elephant.

When I showed up at the staff lounge wearing my T-shirt, Mai was speaking Lao on her mobile phone. My language skills are limited to asking prices of bananas and telling time, so I couldn’t follow her conversation, but she didn’t look too stressed. When she got off the phone, she said, “We have a problem. We don’t have tickets.” She hadn’t told the other Lao girls who were coming, including the one who was on her way to give us a ride.
The co-dependent, type A, intense Sharon who moved to Laos in August would have gotten a bit upset. After all, Mai had said she could get tickets. However, Laos has a mellowing effect. Everything moves a little slower with a lot less urgency. I consciously decided to enjoy the evening, regardless of how it turned out.

Mai and me looking quite nonplussed that we don’t have tickets to the match.

Mai explained that her friend’s mom’s friends, who were supposed to buy the tickets for us, came up empty handed. They told her the tickets were sold out. Mai then took another call from a friend who was out at the stadium. She told us not to bother driving out there as nobody was selling tickets, not even scalpers. Weird. Before I realized it, the school’s receptionist was calling a woman who has two kids in our school and often substitute teaches. Her husband works for Tigo, a mobile phone company and SEA Games sponsor. She informed us that her husband was quite frustrated because, for some unknown reason, government officials had confiscated all the tickets. The plot thickens.

Mai broke the news to Ton, a teaching assistant who had also hoped to attend the match. The three of us walked dejectedly out to the school gate to meet another friend of Mai’s. Keo is a lovely little wisp of a woman who writes for the Vientiane Times. Her brother pulled his Toyota truck up to the school gate, and we all piled in. Mai rattled off some Lao, which again didn’t seem to involve fruit or numbers, so I didn’t understand it.

Keo’s brother drove us to a market, where we found an unmanned SEA Games ticket counter and shopkeepers who just shrugged their shoulders when we said we were looking for soccer tickets. As we pondered what to do next, Mai and Ton got distracted by street food. They bought grilled beef-and-veggie kebabs and some absolutely delicious lettuce-wrapped snack, neither of which I would have dared to try on my own. Mai said the lettuce wrap is very time-consuming to make and involves cooking sticky rice, leaving it outside to dry in the sun for a day and then cooking it again. Kinda glad I didn’t know that before I ate it.

Here we are hanging out at the market, from left: Mai, Keo, Ton and me (the gigantic white Amazon woman).

Nobody selling tickets!

Mmmm… street food!

Back in the truck, we all agreed it was hopeless to go to the stadium. Instead we drove to a Mekong-side restaurant called Moon the Night to watch the match on the big-screen TV.

I asked the girls if they knew the meaning of “moon” as a verb. They were quite surprised to hear the definition, and they made me use it in sentences for different situations. “Hey, that guy is mooning me out his car window,” I said. “Or maybe you’re in your university dorm room and you see some drunk friends down on the street, so you moon them.” Why did I feel compelled to start this discussion? It only went downhill from there.

The match was arguably the most boring soccer I’d ever seen. Final score: 0-0. Nevertheless, I had a great time getting to know my new Lao friends. We finished off our street food and then ordered from the menu. Mai told the waiter to go easy on the chili, but I still had to drink a liter of Beer Lao to put out the fire on my tongue.

Daily Life, Laos

Wat ‘O’ the Week – Wat Sithan Neua

December 13, 2009 Sharon Leave a comment

I’m cheating a little bit with this Wat ‘O’ the Week post. I actually visited this temple on the same day I went to Wat Phia Wat with Catherine.
We had hoped to visit with a monk she knew here, but unfortunately, we were told that he had gone to the States to study for a year.
Wat Sithan Neua is tucked in a back alley just a block from the Mekong River. The monks were hard at work landscaping the temple grounds.

We found a monk who spoke a little English and asked him about the temple’s “sim” (ordination hall). He said it was about 70 years old, but he refused to indulge our request to unlock it.

The small sim featured muted colors and delicate designs, but the building was in serious disrepair. A peek through the crack in the ornate front door revealed restoration work underway inside.

A flashier new addition to the temple stood nearby with rickety scaffolding rising out of piles of sand and up to bright red and gold paintings. The old sim literally paled in comparison.

Daily Life, Laos

Conjuring Up Christmas One Cookie at a Time

December 13, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

At my bridal shower 17 years ago (!), Tony’s mom gave me a book of recipes for some of his favorite dishes. I nearly collapsed with laughter, barely able to blurt out, “Oh, you don’t really expect me to cook for this man?!”
Actually, I did try to cook for him in those early days, but we both felt a great sense of relief when Tony patiently wiped away my tears of exasperation and gently released my grip from the pot full of unidentifiable burnt crustiness. We knew the kitchen was no place for me. Since then, I’ve whipped up the occasional fried eggs or Campbell’s Soup Infused Casserole, and I do make good use of the George Foreman Grill. Otherwise, the kitchen is Tony’s domain.

However, there is one recipe from Catherene Anne that makes an appearance every Christmas: Peanut Butter Blossoms. I know these are common cookies and probably don’t seem very exciting to most people, but for Tony and me, they fill the house with the smell of Christmas and remind us of his mother, who was truly a brilliant cook.
So there we were – in Laos, recipe in hand, on the hunt for very un-Lao ingredients. Luckily, we live in Vientiane, a capital city with embassies from around the world and markets happy to cater to the expats who work here. At the little mini-mart across the street from our house, we found the easy items: white sugar, butter, flour (there were three kinds, all labeled in Lao, so I just closed my eyes and picked one), milk, eggs, and surprisingly, vanilla. I almost bought a bag of MSG, mistaking it for sugar, and fortunately I noticed the small graphic of a shrimp on a bag of tempura breading before using it as flour. Fishy peanut butter cookies? Hmmm … that might be popular here…
Tony rode the motorbike to another swankier shop to get the rest of the ingredients. There were no Hershey’s Kisses to be found, so he bought a couple bags of Hershey’s Nuggets. In all, one batch of cookies cost us around $50.

Saturday morning, I plugged in the iPod and turned on some holiday tunes while I searched in the kitchen for bowls, spatulas, cookie sheets and the rest of the paraphernalia. (When you don’t visit the kitchen very often, it’s rather frustrating to suddenly take on a big project such as this.) I soon found that Daeng had scrubbed all the Teflon off my cookie sheet, but no worries, I used a lasagna pan instead. Mixing flour into the peanut butter mixture is back-breaking work, and the fact that our kitchen was designed for midgets started to grate on my nerves. The counters come to my upper thighs, so I nearly had to double over to hold the mixing bowl. The Christmas songs also began to irritate me after just a couple minutes. They felt out of place in this tropical weather. I switched to some soothing classical stuff. I needed soothing.

Finally, I had a pan full of dough balls ready to pop in the oven. Except I didn’t know how to turn on the oven. I summoned Tony, who solved the mystery. He discovered our oven has a knob with two settings: Off and Max.

Not one to deviate from a recipe, I pulled out the first pan after exactly 10 minutes and smushed a Nugget in the center of each ball. As I always tell my students, we must make mistakes or we’ll never learn. I learned that 10 minutes wasn’t long enough, and a whole Nugget is a whole lotta chocolate. I left the rest of the cookies in for 15 minutes and used half a Nugget on each one. Perfect! Well, perfect enough.

The cookies met with resounding approval (if not some skepticism over who baked them) at our school’s Christmas party last night, and even the Lao staff enjoyed them. As Tony said this morning after gorging on the few remaining cookies, “I feel like Courtney Love, and Peanut Butter Blossoms are heroin.”
Here is Catherene Anne’s recipe. Enjoy!
Peanut Butter Blossoms
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 eggs
¼ cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
3 ½ cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 packages Hershey’s Kisses
Pre-heat oven to 375°F, assuming you are lucky enough to have an oven that tells you the temperature.
1. Mix together sugars, butter and peanut butter.
2. Fold in milk, eggs and vanilla.
3. Add flour, baking soda and salt.
4. Roll into small balls. Roll the balls in sugar.
5. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet (or lasagna pan) for 10 minutes.
6. Unwrap Kisses while cookies are baking.
7. As soon as cookies come out of the oven, put a kiss in the center of each one.
Yum!

Daily Life, Laos

Restaurant Review … or Not

December 4, 2009 Sharon 1 Comment

When I got home from school today, I found Tony lounging on the sofa and our dinner waiting on the table. Daeng had prepared a concoction of stir-fried veggies, cashews and pork with steamed rice. Tony begged me to box it up for tomorrow’s lunch and go out to dinner instead.
Vientiane has a shocking number of restaurants for such a small city, but I’ve found that most online restaurant reviews and guidebooks focus on the same few. I decided it would be fun to venture off the beaten culinary path to check out – and report on – some lesser-known eateries. I was mulling this over in my head when Tony exclaimed, “I don’t want Lao food. I don’t want rice. I don’t want thinly sliced meat in broth. I don’t want vegetables I can’t identify. I want a burger!”
So, for now, the restaurant reviews are on hold. Instead, we’re heading out for burgers at Khop Chai Deu, a popular backpacker restaurant in the heart of town. Its menu features touristy gimmicks, such as insect appetizers. The food is mediocre. But they do have an upstairs deck with twinkly lights, and I am a girl who likes her twinkly lights.

Daily Life, Laos

Wat ‘o’ the Week – Wat Phia Wat

December 2, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

I’ve been stalking one of our second-grade teachers, Catherine, an Aussie who has lived in Laos for several years and shares my love of the local temples. She seems to know everyone in town, and she has some beautiful stories about her experiences here. So I tagged her to be my tour guide today – Laos National Day – on my visit to the Wat ‘o’ the Week. I rode my bike to Catherine’s house, which is next to Wat Si Muang (a temple you may recall from the fabulous That Luang Festival “wax castle procession”). From there, we crossed the street, rode down an alley and popped in to a side gate of Wat Phia Wat, a temple overlooking the Mekong River.
We immediately noticed the presence of many military men, including a few camped out on the steps of the temple’s “sim.”
After poking around the temple grounds a bit, we were greeted by On Aye, a friendly temple resident. He told us that he’s living at Wat Phia Wat while he completes his medical residency in family medicine at a nearby hospital. (Side note: Some of you know about my former career working for the American Academy of Family Physicians, so it was interesting to hear On Aye explain that family medicine is a relatively new specialty in Laos.)
On Aye gave us a primer on some of the temple’s features. We walked to a collection of gilded sculptures, and he explained that they depict Buddha’s life:
First, there’s Buddha’s mother.

Next, we see newborn Buddha taking his first seven steps and lotus flowers blooming in his footsteps.

Here, On Aye tells us about Buddha’s first meditation experience.

Here, Buddha is teaching.

And, finally, people pay their respects to Buddha after his death.

On Aye walked us to a banyan tree, surrounded by more Buddha sculptures. These were similar to the ones Tony and I saw last week at Wat Hai Sok. “You can see everywhere the temple usually have this tree,” On Aye said. Turns out the Buddha statues are “Days of the Week Buddhas.” Many people like to leave special offerings or make a donation to the Buddha that represents the day they were born.
The Monday Buddha says, “Stop, in the name of love!” in his peace-making pose, also known as (seriously, I’m not making this up) his “Pacifying the Relatives” pose.

The reclining Tuesday Buddha symbolizes the moment he entered Nirvana. I loved the little clumps of sticky rice left by worshippers on Buddha’s arm and hand. (If I only had a dollar for every time I woke up to find rice stuck on my arm … or in my hair …)

On Aye and I were both born on a Wednesday. The Wednesday Buddha takes two forms, both related to accepting gifts of food! No wonder I felt an immediate connection with my birthday Buddha. Wat Phia Wat’s Wednesday Buddha is holding an alms bowl under his lovely shawl.

The Thursday Buddha also speaks to me … ommm. He is sitting in a lotus position for meditation, seeking enlightenment.

Friday’s Buddha is standing at the Banyan tree, contemplating how he will explain the suffering in the world to his followers.

Saturday’s Buddha is again sitting in meditation, but this time the Naga King is protecting him.

Sunday’s enlightened Buddha stands still for seven days under the tree to contemplate his achievement of complete knowledge.

As we meandered back to our bikes, On Aye explained that the military was using the temple as a sort of base camp to provide extra protection and help keep the peace until after the Southeast Asian Games – a biennial multi-sport event involving participants from the 11 countries of Southeast Asia, which will take place in Vientiane Dec. 9-18.

When Catherine and I pedaled out the gate, On Aye had joined some of the soldiers for a game of bocce ball.
Just like last week, I am coming up empty-handed in my online search for information about this temple. Darn. So in the absence of information, here are more photos!

Daily Life, Laos

Quiz Night

November 29, 2009 Sharon 2 Comments

A Brit, an Australian, a New Zealander, an Iraqi and an American go into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a tacky joke, but really it was the beginning of a fun evening – Quiz Night at Sticky Fingers Restaurant here in Vientiane.
Our multi-national team was one of about 12 in the competition, and we comprised a second-grade teacher and librarian from my school (plus the librarian’s husband, who was really only there for moral support although he gave us a couple answers), a middle-school teacher from another school, and me. We dubbed ourselves the United Matrons.
The emcee and restaurant owner, Marnie, also has a yoga studio where Tony and I occasionally take classes. She provided a multi-media quiz covering history, music, movies, celebrities, ancient wonders, English literature, sports and explorers.
I admit to feeling quite stressed all day in anticipation of this event, and I even made Tony test me with the Trivial Pursuit cards. We only realized later that our 10-year-old game might not have provided the best preparation.
Fortunately, each member of our team brought something useful to the table. We really strutted our stuff with English literature, and not surprisingly, ancient wonders (most of which one or another of us had seen in person).
Our team actually took the lead for a short time, only to crash and burn. The celebrities category required us to match baby pictures to the names of famous people. One indication of how badly we did: We thought Demi Moore’s photo was Tom Hanks.
As for sports … Seriously, does ANYONE know how many players are on an Australian Rules football team? History kicked our asses, as well, which is pretty pathetic for a group of teachers who travel all over the world. We had to put a list of 10 historical events in to chronological order. The only American on the team, I’m embarrassed to say, couldn’t quite pinpoint when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth OR when the Salem witches went on trial. Not a proud moment.
In the end, we made a respectable showing and weren’t horribly humiliated. Next time, we may consider throwing the game. The losing team got a pitcher of cocktails as a consolation prize.

The Guide Hog

Category Archives: Daily Life

Cycling Sisters

2010 Reading Challenge

Live and Let Dai

VIS Christmas Party

Mooning the Night for SEA Games Soccer

Wat ‘O’ the Week – Wat Sithan Neua

Conjuring Up Christmas One Cookie at a Time

Restaurant Review … or Not

Wat ‘o’ the Week – Wat Phia Wat

Quiz Night

Adventures in Teaching and Travel