Sabai Dee!!

It is said that Laos is famous for its Beer and Beauty! Cannot vouch for the Beer but Beauty for sure! 

I had an opportunity to visit Laos PDR, to attend a workshop on “Enhancing role of women in Agri cooperative Business” from 17-19^th December 2012.

This was supposed to be my first visit abroad, and hence I was very excited about it. I had a flight to Vientiane city via Bangkok. On the Delhi airport , it seemed that all the passengers in the flight to Bangkok (except me) knew each other and it seemed as if they were all going to attend the same Indian wedding. They behave exactly like baratis in the flight as well, the flight attended found some trouble in making everyone settle down for take -off. The passengers had brought their own alcohol and were trying to consume it directly from the bottle(Despite the fact that the Thai airlines provides alcoholic beverages and outside alcohol was not permitted). The flight attendant took away the bottle to be returned after the flight. Something similar to what happens in school when a child brings a toy/ mobile to the class and teacher snatches it from him/her.

Despite of the presence of my neighbor who bore a very of strong smell of alcohol I dozed off.  The moment I stepped out of the airplane, a very hot air wave welcomed to the Bangkok Airport. I had few hours until my next flight to Vientiane so I explored the airport. The Suvarnabhumi airport is the largest airport in Asia.  The airport has a lot of duty free shops. Other than restaurants, there are electronic gadgets, Thai souvenir shops, cosmetics,  pharma, handicrafts, spa etc. However, I did not find anything very cheap, so I did not buy anything.

The flight to Vientiane city was very good as the sky was clear and I could see the topography of the land from above. There was huge mountain range and the Mekong river was very much visible. The green land patch looked very beautiful from above, unlike the other cities where all one can see is buildings and concrete jungle.

The first thing I did was   to change some money.  I was surprised to notice that the smallest currency note of Lao Kip was 500!  The hotel cab (A landcruiser) was already waiting . The left side driven vehicles, roads were full of Toyotas and Suzukis and M80 style bikes. Reached the hotel in the after noon and found the organisers waiting for lunch.It was about 3 pm and I was informed that the Lunch time is 12 pm hence most of the restaurants were closed, but we managed to find an Indian restaurant on the riverside .

After the lunch, I went to buy a local simcard to make a call at home. The simcard was of 10000 kip and the recharge coupon of 50000 kip. The call rate to India was 2000 kip per minute. Unlike in India, they did not ask for any Identity proof or any other document.  The time in Laos is about 1.30 hrs ahead of India. Also the duration of a normal day here was 8 am -4.30pm. everything in the city closes down by maximum 5 pm. All offices and places to visit as well. Its dark after 5.30 pm.  The lunch time here is 12 noon and people have their dinner at  6 pm! 

The day of presentations:- 17^th November 2012. The workshop was organized to share the experiences of cooperatives in various countries to help Laos, which is a new entrant in this field, help progress in the path of development through business through cooperative enterprises.  The presentations began from a brief on gender issues in global perspective and the role of International Cooperative alliance on it.  It was followed by the policies and initiatives taken by the Laos government for gender mainstreaming.

The participants made presentations after that. The representatives from All China Federation of Marketing and Supply Cooperatives made a presentation which was very informative.  A few facts about status of women in China I was unaware about :-

1.      Difference in working age;-The working age is 16-54 for females and 16-59 for males

2.      Women are generally less educated than men.

3.      In terms of salary level，the salary income of women is generally lower than men in all industries. The largest gap shows in the mining and public service industries，and the salary of women is generally 74％ of that of men.

4.      Supply and Marketing Cooperatives (SMCs) of  China SMC mainly engages in the distribution of agricultural-related products and commodities, including sales of agricultural equipment and supplies, purchase and sales of non-staple agricultural products and supply of ordinary consumer products to rural residents.   

There was a presentation from a representative from Indonesia, Cooperative College of Malasia and National Cooperative of Natoinal Cooperative Organisation Of Malaysia (ANGKASA). Angkasa had been established in the year 1971.  They have adopted a National Cooperative Policy.

The cooperative is in various fields such as Fashion Products , The supply of goods for the school student needs which is sold at an affordable price compared to the market with comparable quality.  

Cooperative in Retail, Coop-Mart, CLIXSTER is a service “Mobile Internet Community” implemented specifically as ANGKASA Official Line and Cooperative in order to form 1 Community, 1 Network and 1 Cooperative.   The presentations were very informative and we had very meaningful discussions followed by each presentation. 


Food 

This is what I ate for three days for breakfast. The best part of being a vegetarian in a country famous for is exotic sea food is that you are bound to have a healthy meal.

Lunch:-  Country is famous for a peculiar type of sticky rice.  For most of my meals I had the sticky rice which is served in a Bamboo Basket, with ketchup!

Emptied!!












Beer Lao- the Beer for wholehearted people, is the most famous drink in the city. Though I do  not drink, but it was interesting to see the advertisements all over .

The next day i.e. the 18th December,  we visited the  Lao women union office. On the way to the field visits. I observed that there were Policemen armed at every few kilometers to ensure safety during the ongoing ASEAN games.
They gave a presentation on the initiatives being taken by Lao Women Union for gender main streaming  .  They have  also started a microcredit business, however the business lacks the cooperative structure.

The incharge at Lao Women Union, showing the charts being prepared to sensitize men in women related issues!

  ICA offcials invited them to India to visit the successful examples of women cooperative banks and other microcredit cooperative business.

For the lunch we went to a boat restaurant. The place was beautiful and I enjoyed the boat ride and the landscape.

 Next visit was to a organic farming group. They produce and sell in fruits and vegetables in the morning market. The organic produce is sold at 20% higher price.  Though there is demand for organic fruits and vegetables in other countries, Laos is insufficient in supplementing the country’s demand, hence they sell the produce in the nearby market only.

Women farmer, harvesting the vegetables for selling to the Morning Market in Vientiane city the next day.

We visited the Trade fair, which was something very similar to any trade fair in a small city. Noticing that I barely ate anything, the officials took us to an Indian Restaurant for Dinner! :) I was very delighted!  This restaurant had posters  from bollywood. 

 My friends from Indonesia and China also loved the Indian spicy food, specially the garlic Naan and Dal Fry! 

19^th December 2012

I woke up with chirruping of birds. Had experienced this after a really long time. The morning was beautiful!  
The ICA officials had a meeting with officials at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and we in the meanwhile visited the Victory Gate which was next to MAF office. 

Victory  Gate (Patuxai) which  is a war monument in the centre of Vientiane, which was built between 1957 and 1968. The Patuxai is dedicated to those who fought in the struggle for independence from France.

One can go to the top of the Victory gate and enjoy a beautiful view of the city. The top three floors of the gate has numerous Souvenir shops. I bought some postcards from there.

View from the top of the Victory gate.

We visited Nikone handicrafts which is into the business of silk handicrafts. The train women in weaving . They use natural dyes.  They procure onion peels from the vegetable market and pay them for the same. The other natural dyes include Indigo.

Silk handwoven

Thai- Lao Friendship Bridge: - The Bridge is connecting Thailand and Laos. 

Smallest railway line of about of 3 kms runs from Thailand to Laos. A three coach beautiful but empty train! 

To the left is Laos and to the right is  Thailand! Below is the view from the midpoint at the Friendship Bridge.

Women Selling Lottery Tickets. This scene is very common across the city.

The tuktuk:popular mode of transportation!

The other mode is M80 model bikes, which necessarily have a basket!

Therefore the city is very clean!

One need not look far to find a dustbin to get rid of any trash and the city has mechanisms in place to ensure the cleanliness in the city.

Sunset from Mekong River promenade

Vegetable Vendor

The street food!

Glimpses of the night market on the river side

Paintings on Budhdhist Monks 

Gangnam Style!

Sketch of people for 25,000 Kip!

Visit to Pha That Luang

On 19th Evening I started for my much awaited visit  to Luang Prabhang. Boarded a VIP Bus from The north “International “ Bus station. The bus was a VIP as it was a double decker bus.It provided mineral water to the passengers and also had a dinner coupon. It also had few televisions for entertainment, which were not used probably.

I had the seat just above the Driver, which was a beautiful view. A man with his 10 year old son got the seat next to me, however when he saw me sitting there, he got his seat changed ! (Probably the space was not enough for both of them!). In the middle of the night a lady boarded from Van Vieng  who woke everybody up. She was furious on a fellow passenger who asked her to sit. She actually misunderstood him as she thought he was asking her to sit on the floor. Finally she came and sat next to me. She explained me the reason behind her agony. She had been waiting for this bus since past five hours and she was scared as she had a connecting flight to catch from Luang Prabhang the next day. When I told her that even I have to catch a connecting flights on the way back, she suggested I took an early bus as the buses often gets late here. This actually scared me as well.  Then we started talking about various countries. How she was thinking of shifting to New Zealand because the education in London was very expensive. She was wearing clothes insufficient to protect from the cold and she asked me if I had anything. I had a pair of suit in my backpack so I gave her a kurta to cover herself up .

In the morning I woke up three times to find that the bus was standing at the place. On asking fellow passengers , I  came to know that about 40 kms ahead, a truck had been knocked down. The accident has been huge and all the traffic was stuck. Equipment is on the way from Thailand to clear the situation. The African lady decided to hitchhike and left. So here I was , stuck in a place for indefinite period with people who dd not understand a word of English. All the Europeans took their back packs and decided to walk till the accident site and hitchhike. They also asked me to join but thanks to the huge trolley I was carrying, I could not think of walking with them with such a huge luggage.  The driver arranged a minivan sort of vehicle and took few people from the same country in it. He did not allow any outsider(two Europeans and me). Slowly slowly people started moving and almost all the people from my bus had left.(There were two more buses standing there). Now I decided to go back to the City. I was about 250 kms from the Vientiane city and 200 kms from Luang Prabhang. A bus came from the other side to move to the Vientiane city there was a group of Europeans here. I asked about the situation and they said that it may take hours to clear it up and the transportation to start. So I decided to board the bus. This bus did not have any seat available. The mechanism was that there were the plastic stools placed in the lobby (space between the seats for movement) and I sat on that. I was very tired and almost fell twice from it. The view was amazing and I could guess what am I missing by not going to Luang Prabhang, but risking a paid ticket was not something I could afford at that time.

The bus ticket costed 10 $ i.e. 80000 kip and I had a total of 63000 kips with me. I was carrying 100 $ notes , the change for which was difficult to find. I tried to explain them  that I did not have the currency, which they did probably as they did not asked me to pay the balance after I gave them 50000 kip.

We reached at about 3 pm to the Vientiane city. I did not have money for a tuktuk as it charged 20000 kip and I had only 13000. So I made this tuktukwala talk to the organizers to drop me to a place where there were hotels  and exchange bureau nearby. He took me there and it took about an hour to find an open bureau and to get the money changed. He finally asked for 30000 kip, 10000 extara as waiting charges and I readily gave.

Next started the hotel hunt. There were good hotels all in a range of 40-45$ a night. But I wanted to save so I checked in in a guesthouse near the riverside.

Got freshened up and went to eat as I was famishing as I had not eaten since last evening. Found an Indian Restaurant and had Baigan bharta and Naan. Roamed in the night market, listened to some English muzic played in some shops. Gangnam style was played on loop at one of the shops which was selling the T- shirts of Gangnam Style! 

Next morning went to the post office,Talat Sao mall- morning market(something like the Palika Bazar of Delhi) and  Budhdha Park. 
It was good to take a walk in the city without having a destination to reach. Just exploring the city, its buildings, observing people , admiring the beauty! 

Fruit stall at Morning Market!

Eatables!

French Titles for various Ministries!

Visit to  Budhdha Park

Glimpses of visit to Budhdha Park 

Hanumanji!

Krishna Bhagwaan! 

My Solace for Vegetarian Food for the last two days. Owned by a Tamilian, serves mouth watering South Indian Dosa  with fingerlicking chutney and Amazing Baigan Bharta!

The evenings are beautiful! One can sit at the bank of the Mekong and just keep admiring the beauty and experience an inner peace.  On the way back from Laos to India via Bangkok. I met two Indians who had come to visit Laos and were on the way to Bangkok to celebrate Christmas in Bangkok. They shared their stories of how they were offered weed everywhere they went in the Vientiane city.  It was nice to have a company to speak in Hindi after such a long time.  The wait at Bangkok airport was for about 4 hours, which easily passed observing and noticing passengers from across the world! This is probably one thing which interests me. I can keep watching people to notice something peculiar about them and trying to find co-relations ! 
 Was welcomed to Delhi by the chilled cold weather!  

Khwp jai!