 | ||
| | ||
         
|
Laos Essential Artistry Posting Page
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
 Laos Essential Artistry is back in Laos! It always feels great to be back and it’s nice to have a little time in the morning over fresh Café Lao (traditional Lao coffee with condensed milk) to briefly report on our experiences to date. Unfortunately we found out that one of the impacts with the rise of oil prices back in the summer was that the international carriers all lowered their baggage limits. We used to be able to check two bags each up to 32 KG. They’ve now lowered the limit to 23 KG and if you’re over the limit like we were, they charge $32 per bag if the weight of the bag is between 23 and 32 KG. So that’s an extra $128 we weren’t planning on paying. Plus, at the Bangkok airport, when we checked into Lao Airlines they saw that our baggage tickets showed we were overweight, and although they were checked all the way to Vientiane they got to charge us another 30 baht per pound and being 70 pounds overweight we got to pay an additional 2100 baht Another $60, so in total we had to pay an additional $188 for baggage! Our bags are always packed full because we bring a lot of second-hand clothes going to Laos (as Oprah Winfrey says you to move forward you have to give back) and of course coming back our bags are fully packed with textiles, so we’re going to have to reconsider how much we want to bring back, though it’s still cheaper then sending items by air. The really amazing thing is, an it shows how small our world is, when we were waiting for our Lao Airlines flight and I went to the bathroom I saw a youngish Lao man, with dyed brown hair and thought briefly he looked familiar. But when I left the restroom to go over to where Bai was sitting he came over and as soon as he started talking I knew it was Thavivan, my best friend and Lao tutor when I was living in Laos in 2000/2001 and whom I haven’t seen for eight years! He had since immigrated to Australia and married an Australian Lao and was now an Australian citizen going back to Laos with his wife and her brother for the first time in six years! He actually was on a different flight as Lao Airlines flies to Vientiane at 7:00 p.m. and Thai Air flies to Vientiane at 8:00 p.m. and he was on the Thai Air flight. It was great to see him and we are hopefully going to get together in Vientiane before he goes to Xieng Khuang and then down south for a boun for his mother (in her 90’s and still alive) and father (who died about five years ago). I went to Thavivanh’s village once for a Catholic boun as the entire village is Catholic. It was a lot of fun and as are all religions in Lao it was very syncretic with a lot of Buddhism woven in. Yesterday we spend a lot of time with Bai’s family in a small house we rent for Bai’s sister and brother to live in (Bousai is the weaver and graduated from the National University in July 2008). It is close to Wat Sopaluong, most famous for it’s sauna anyone can go to, and I’ve inserting a photo I took of a monks robe drying outside with the shadows of leaves creating imaginative patterns against the bright orange color of the robe. We’re going to be in Vientiane until the 26th when we’re going to fly to Sam Neua for two days, come back to Vientiane and then we’ll be going up to my wife’s village. The weather is great, in the low 80’s during the day and in the lower 60’s at night. With our economy being the way it is, and the reality being businesses like ours not really selling a lot, our emphasis is going to be on collecting stories for our blogs to keep our customers informed about what’s going on in Laos, plus we’re going to work on developing connections for providing access to sinhs designed for weddings and bouns that our customers in the states tell us is desperately needed. We’ll keep you informed about what we find out. by: Laos Essential Artistry 
|
Previous Posts
Archives
|
| | |||||
| |
|  | |||
| |||||
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]