LAOS A VERY QUICK TRIP

A miracle happened--I got a job. The Chiang Rai Technological University hired me to teach beginning mostly conversational English 3 days a week. Most students in Thailand start learning English in Elementary school, often preschool. They often have excellent reading & writing skills but little practice in speaking. These are a very shy people. How they manage to reproduce is beyond me. I think all the Western men coming here & marrying Thai women has really saved their butts (cute) in that department. Anyway we are mainly doing a lot of listening & speaking in our classes. I was told I had to get a 3 month B non-immigrant visa to get the job to show I would be able to stay the semester which ends the last day of September. This was just what I needed to stay longer. My visitor visa was only good till 7-7. I needed to stay longer for phase 2 of my dental work. This way I had one of the few ways to extend my visa easily. I was very happy about this but learned I had to leave the country to get this kind of visa & a trip to a Thai Embassy in another country was the way to go. Vientiane, the capitol of Laos, was the closest that I could do by bus & keep my expenses & time taken to a minimum. I had wanted to go to this city anyway as I heard it was delightful. It was going to be an 8 hour overnight trip, then another bus 2 hrs to the border. Then a Tuk-Tuk across the Friendship bridge into Laos. Then a taxi after all that going thru border checks, visa, customs, etc. into town. About 18 hours from Chiang Mai, Thailand, my departure point to Vientiane, Laos. It was exhausting but there are always some interesting travelers, & their interesting stories found along the way. Mine were in the form of Lise, a 1/2 Jewish gal, who was very reminiscent of Beth Midler. Her hubbly 8 years her junior, was named Chevy & he acted quite a bit like Chevy Chase. This was a similar senario in some ways to one of Chevys famous travel comedy movies so I knew I was in for fun along w/ the exhaustion. Chevy was 1/2 Thai & 1/2 India- Indian. Both were Americans, but Chevy was fluent in Thai. A really big help in doing all the border paperwork with less aggravation, since someone actually knows what is going on.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon. We had to wait till Monday morning for the Thai Embassy to open. So we had some pleasant meals together. On my own, I went to the National Museum. I always do this to get a quick course in local history, culture, etc. Also to see how they portray us Americans. In this country we do not look too good. We dropped so many bombs and caused so many problems in this "undeclared war" that we deserved the bad publicity at their museum.

Laos is not as cheap as Vietnam or Thailand but they know they have a good deal w/ all their wilderness, huge variety of plants, birds, animals, etc. They attract a lot of Asian tourists. China alone is creating a large tourist market in S.E. Asia as their middle class rapidly expands. I really enjoyed the bit of French charm combined with an understated quieter sense of Laotian beauty in architecture as well as many handmade items.

I bought material for 2 traditional Shins as their skirts w. hand woven borders are called.

All of one skirt of is made of handwoven silk w/ the border added. the borders often signify, scenes, locations of where the women are from, & god knows what else. The 2 handwoven scarves I got to match the skirts are very ethnic looking like the skirts. I have decided to get one traditional outfit or 2 from each country I visit. the tailors here are so reasonable that I can get handmade all the way for about what I would pay store bought in the U.S. I may look more like a refugee than an American upon my return. I am old, I can wear purple, I will follow my passion to dress ethnically that I could never afford to do in the states.

The Embassy lines and fees were ridiculous but I did the passport drop off Monday, got all back Tuesday, & my friends & I were on our way back, within 72 hours after arrival. I would have loved to have stayed & seen more of the country. It is not so easy to travel into & I was already there. the University wanted me right back to resume teaching they said. I scurried back. I was told due to my age and my coworker, a Brit named Peter who is 65 was told the same, we could not go back to work right away. We had to wait till more paperwork was done to qualify us oldsters for working there. Thais are really big w/ the paperwork scene. So now I was told do not come to work till 7-5. I could have seen more of Laos, easily, cheaply, I am so pissed. I will probably never go back.

The upside of my life here is shortly after I arrived in Chiang Rai I learned of this place called the Condotel. I left my name around & got a call on a vacancy 2 weeks ago. I loved it all but especially the very large clean pool. There is a low cost gym attached. I will be getting a punch card for that shortly. I have almost a full kitchen, lovely fully furnished furniture, granite counter tops, nice tile work, & wooden cabinets. I'm on the top (12th) floor w/ a great view from my deck. Lots of other goodies, like, fan & A/C all for $200 a month. Water & electric, my only other costs in this quiet safe neighborhood are maybe another $30 a month. I feel very secure here but feel that way anyway in Thai as it is a country with a very low crime rate. So I hope all goes well w/ the University job. It does include a guest house fully furnished for my use. It is too far for me to come home nightly so I will stay there a few nights a week. It is in a lovely area but it is still jungle all around here. . I will have to be careful on my walks as there are lots of Cobras & other scary things around. I may mainly use the bicycle available to me to get around the large campus, come to think of it.