Syn-Ti’s Blog

UN FAO Laos Website

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 17:45:52 +1100

Finally, after some months of waiting for approval from various departments, the website of the Representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) in Lao PDR is up! http://www.fao.org/world/laos/

Vientiane Restaurant Guide

Fri, 8 Dec 2006 13:10:15 +1100

I’ve started an online Restaurant Guide to Vientiane [Sorry, retired]. Not much there now but will grow.

Boom Boom in Vientiane

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 21:59:49 +1100

Full Moon Cafe now offers a Boom Boom Room service. Started by a bloke called Simon in Phnom Penh and spread to other parts of Cambodia, is a clever way of capitalising on the lack of copyright laws and enforcement. The model is this: over dinner, you choose from a bound catalog of thousands of albums, drop off your ipod and some cheap-labour local guy loads the mp3s up for you in the back room for 75 US cents per album. You pay extra for burning onto cds or uploading onto portable mp3 players.

Now there is sharing music, but profiting takes it up a notch to a level that I’m not entirely comfortable with. There are a few of recommendations in the catalog, but you cannot actually pre-purchase listen to the music - so I am not sure the good-for-the-artist argument applies. Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop me from investigating further...

As I peruse the catalog, I am impressed that it offers all the standard-release albums of my favourite singer, Bic Runga. Although the very limited classical section is unsurprising, I would have expected the world music section to be a bit thicker.

I start asking about what bit rate the music is encode at, and before I can ask the video resolution (for $5 TV episodes and $3.5 movies) the Lao guy, let’s call him Noi, invites me upstairs to work it out myself as he doesn’t have a clue. It’s just a PC, albeit a spanking new brand name one, with the external hard drive of media provided by Simon. The Lao guy seems generally interested in learning about the trade off between bit-rates/quality and file size. (BTW, a couple of TV episodes I sampled looked to be low-resolution format for video ipod only)

I also asked if I could copy straight to my portable external hard-disk as my thumb drive is full. Another blank look. I realise that perhaps my calling in Laos is capacity building this waiter. I am excited because he is actually much keener to learn that most people in my office that I am supposed to be training.

And it doesn’t end there. The next day I go back with my friend (her thumb drive was full and the album not copied completely) but before I can explain he recognises me and asks if I know how to make the video on the ipod he is holding work! Well I have a look and find the output is set to an external screen and he is so relieved he hasn’t stuffed up the customer’s ipod that he offers me a couple of free albums. Sweet! He asked how much it cost me to buy a copy like this overseas. He was really surprised when I said it was illegal in most other parts of the world!

The photo of the orchid was taken on our recent expedition to the orchid house at the National University of Laos (NUL) Faculty of Science, in Don Doc Village. If you would like to visit, call the Faculty first to arrange an appointment if you don’t have any other contacts that can get you in.

Garbage Trucks

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:11:30 +1100

A new installation to Vientiane’s streets. Along with the new foot paths, sealed main road (well one of them anyway) and underground drains, are modern garbage trucks as can be seen in use around the Patuxay (Arc de Triomphe copy).

There are even orange wheely bins to match! Sure they aren’t automatic and require four lao men to empty the bins manually. But my point being there are bins. Bins, what a good idea! Thank you whoever donated the funds (I could not see any logo on the truck). It’s definitely money much better spent than the aussie tax dollars that went to putting up this sign:

Xieng Khouang Province - Plain of Jars

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:07:06 +1100

Yep, that’s me messing around with thousand-year-old archeological artifacts.

The town of Phonsavan is isolated. It nearly has two main streets, fully equipped with buffaloes strolling down it. A fresh market, a bus stop, two shops trying to pass as falang restaurants. It’s best described as a hole. And I simply loved it!

It reminded me of the Australian rural landscape. The red earth. The cropped wheat-like fields and rolling hills. The people, made up of other ethnic groups, looked more like me. The villages were coming to the end of the rice harvest. I could sit looking over the plains all day. In one way it made me home sick, and in another way less so. I cannot wait until I can buy my own little bit of land and live in my self-built mud-brick mansion!

Still, it’s easy for me to say that for a weekend trip. Kat is living there for 6 months. The Pho (noodle) is great but three times a day?!

Being closer to the reality of UXO was frightening. I am so lucky not to have to worry about such things if I want to do something as simple as prepare a veggie bed or dig a dam in my backyard. It’s nothing short of heart-breaking to think of the land so littered with bombs, and also that Australia had a part to play in it.

Recently I came across Willy Bach’s site (http://www.angelfire.com/wi/poetryantiwar/) Warning: block pop ups and the background sound makes the site slow to load. It tells his account where he unknowingly participated in the Secret War in Laos. There are his poems, and some interesting links. You have to read it for yourself.

Also check out Photos from Xieng Khouang.