We live here in a house at the end of a single lane dirt drive that runs off an almost-wide-enough-for-two-vehicles dirt road that leads back, via a positively multi-laned, (in relative comparison), dirt highway to a road that has some sort of permanent sealing on it. (I don't believe it is asphalt, it looks more like concrete. Either way, I do not wish to have cause to meet it on terms close enough for me to decipher its exact origin.) But never the less, that fact remains that we live in a house. It is, in many ways, a pleasant dwelling and if you can forego the aforementioned goat track and all its inherent chiropractic adventure, it is a comforting place to call home. The view of the sun sneaking its way above the horizon, a gigantic rich red glowing ball hovering above the rice fields, before launching into its day is a sight to behold and one that is not easily forgotten. It is peaceful. There is no traffic to assault either the ears or the eyes. (Unless the rarely seen bullock drawn cart slowly ambling its way through the rice fields can be classed as traffic) There are no noisy neighbours with their infernal doof-doof running late into the night. OK..... Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch. There is SOME music that goes on. The Lao people seem to be, by and large, a happy people who take great joy in not only supporting their country's economy by consuming copious amounts of the greatest resource that Laos has to offer, Beerlaos, but also in participating, with much vigour, in that ancient Asian custom we have come to know as....Karaoke. Every Sunday afternoon. From across the rice fields, each week, drifts the sound of not one, but several gatherings where the apparent ritual strangling of cats, (of which there seem to be a limitless supply), takes place. This recurrent aural assault is of course accompanied by backing tracks that always, (and I do mean always), contain the melodic, soothing sounds of that wonderfully rich classical Asian instrument...the cowbell. Quite how the cowbell became such an integral part of Indochinese musical custom I am not sure. Perhaps there is an ethnomusicological dissertation awaiting a PhD student who is keen of spirit but perhaps not so keen of ear. In order to embark upon such a tertiary chore one would need to be unfathomably foolhardy or be possessed of a hearing impairment so severe as to render one's self entirely deaf. Perhaps both ought to be considered a prerequisite. So yes....sometimes there are celebratory gatherings near our home that involve this tolerated custom. However, unlike the blue collared suburban chicken coop of the developed world that I am used to, this festivity does not go on until the early hours of the morning followed by the ubiquitous shouting that comes with the revelry of either joyous inebriation or drunken fisticuffs, I could never really tell the difference.
Somewhere in here I was talking about our house.
Its architecture is a blend of Asian and Western influence with its solid concrete walls rising to meet the high peaked roof trimmed and adorned with quaint Asian curves and swirls. The dark, simple timbers of the interior create an atmosphere of sombre, colonial splendour for the masses. The need for interior decorating a must. A splash of brightness or colour here and there indeed transforms the house into a home.
Looking around Vientiane, it would seem that the process of building such a dwelling, or any for that matter, seems to follow the same pattern. Find somewhere, (anywhere), to fit a house. Put some dirt on it. Pour concrete over it. Make some sticking up bits out of concrete. Then fill all the gaps with bricks. Quite how long these buildings are expected to remain in their preferred erect state is unclear. Having endured the lengthy red tape that is required in the cyclone-prone tropical north of Australia's building process, it is in some ways a breath of fresh air......and also a potential disaster waiting to happen. Our home is not very old. A couple of years I believe. And yet the cracks and lines in the walls and supporting columns in some places are no less apparent than those on the face of Bob Hawke. Sitting on our front balcony, (where all the palings charmingly display hand carved elephants supporting the balustrades), I look across at a building site where I have watched this standard building procedure take place. All that needs doing now is the roof being attached and the brick walls being plastered almost as thickly as a 40 something's bridesmaid on a hens night. Both are hiding something. What I find interesting is the fact that the columns never looked perfectly vertical to my eye, and the top layer of bricks is about as straight as a women's soccer tournament. I'm guessing that building inspections, like many other things here, are conducted at a distance and over, (or perhaps that should be under), a counter rather than actually on the job. Not far from our home, there was a pond on the side of the road when I arrived here 2 months ago. It is no longer there. It took several days to pump out all of the water and reveal the gloomy mass of fallen trees, dead animals and forgotten trinkets that had existed at its murky bottom. It was in fact quite surprising to see just how deep it actually was. It then took about the same amount of days to back fill it with mud, trucked in from goodness knows where, and packed down by nothing more than the very trucks that delivered it which then had to be towed out of the resulting quagmire by the next waiting delivery. I can only assume that this has all taken place in order to now build upon this wonderfully rugged, architectural blank canvas. The wise man may indeed have built his house upon the rock.....but I don't recall there being a man, or woman, of any intellectual persuasion being described building their house upon the mud! This being the case, how are we to know if this action leans more toward the wise or the foolish? Perhaps looking to your immediate right may help. Just next door there is a new shopping centre and restaurant that already has a car park exit consisting of a concrete slab that hovers some 3 ft above the ground. One wonders if this will serve as a visual learning tool for the prospective neighbours or just something for them to ignore as they slowly sink closer to England or perhaps Wales. (One assumes this is approximately where one would end up if you were to dig completely through the earth's core and out the other side given our proximity to China.) The other thing that perplexes me is the seemingly complete lack of use of bamboo in the Lao construction industry. I can't say I've seen a lot of Asia, but from what I have seen, and also am led to believe by others far more learned in all things Asia, is that given the availability and inherent strength of bamboo, it lends itself rather perfectly to a variety of construction applications, in particular scaffolding. For some reason, (I don't know, perhaps it only grows in the more mountainous areas of Laos), it is not used here in Vientiane. Instead, loads of small timber trunks are substituted and are used for any multilevel scaffold or bracing requirements. It looks rather peculiar, but it gets the job done.
I wonder what the Greenies would have to say about it? It would appear that entire forests would need to be brought to their proverbial knees purely for the peripheral purpose of constructing large amounts of concrete walls for apartment buildings.
Of course the local landscape is littered with the resultant dwellings created via this apparently haphazard, earth subsiding, deforestation modus-operandi. I have even seen occasions where the 'put some dirt on it' step has been omitted entirely. Why bother with all of that noisy mess when you can simply build directly on top of a swamp living in the faint hope that A: your house won't sink any lower. And B: the water won't rise any higher. Either way, it would seem the fool's odyssey.
In the end, and there must always be one, these houses, just like any others, will indeed fall down. When?......is the great question. It is of course quite possible that my distinctly home-brand building and fabrication expertise has left me inadequately disposed to make judgements on the fineries of construction in Asia. For all I know some of these houses may just look as though they're standing in front of the proverbial bucket just deciding with which foot to kick it, but may in fact have many years, decades or even centuries of vertical permanence about them. Others, of course.....will not.
Some of these building practices do indeed seem a little odd, certainly to my untrained eye, but one thing cannot be denied. Yes, there are some shonky looking places in this town. Some I would rather not set foot in, others still under construction that I would rather not look at lest I be called at some point in the future to cross the threshold and enter the belly of their tenuous interiors. The fact remains that some of the creations that come out of this tradition are indeed nothing short of splendid.
The pure majesty and opulence of the Wats, (temples), and shrines that pepper this city's architectural landscape are more than enough to compensate for any of its anatomical misgivings. It took an army of marauding Siamese in the early 1800's to bring down these magnificent creations that otherwise may have stood for many centuries. So let it not be my position to judge, but merely to observe and enjoy the great things of this city. We have a house here, (that manages to remain in an upright manner), that we have made into a wonderful home. Our children are blossoming into glorious young gentlemen. (Zachary has only just returned from Hanoi where he represented the school on the junior volleyball team. A lone 6th grader in a world of towering grade 8's. They came second.....a mighty achievement as 6 weeks ago none of them had ever even played volleyball) And there are still many wonderful and delicious morsels of life yet to be encountered on our continuing adventure. I can hardly wait.
P.S.
If you are a disadvantaged child in Laos......it would be a useful thing to have a fleet set of heels around this textiles boutique.
