Digging up a bit of home.

Every month at Vientiane International School, the staff social club has a Sundowner event which is organised by the staff from a different designated country each month. This essentially means sitting around drinking Beerlao with the odd splash of wine, and a few nibbles. February was New Zealand's turn and for some crazy reason I suggested it would be a great idea to have a hangi.
Having not actually put a hangi down before by myself, and with not a lot of others around with a huge amount of experience I began to think it may have been a mistake to have ever mentioned it. The excitement of some of the other staff at the mere mention of it however meant that really......I was going to have to make a go of it and just hope for the best.
The logistics of such an undertaking were complicated by the fact that good hangi stones were always going to be hard to find in Lao PDR. With a few enquiries put into place we set off for Darwin for a brief Xmas trip. Apparently the trip was to catch up with family and friends. This, of course, was just a ruse. The real reason for the trip was to collect hessian oyster sacks from the Mr Barra fish shop and to source some muslin cloth from Spotlight and an old clean sheet from an Op shop. Mission accomplished, we made our way back to Laos to be met with a delivery from one of the many mining companies operating in Laos. A wooden crate filled with 80 or 90kg of spent excavator teeth.....You bloody rippa.
With things falling in place and the date quickly approaching I figured I ought to find a basket somewhere. Eventually I just went off to one of the many little 'hardware' shops dotted around the town and purchased 20m of steel rod and carried it back to VIS on my motor-bike, (adventure-plus trying not to swipe anybody on the way), drew up some basic plans and gave it all to one of the amazingly helpful Lao school guards who promptly whipped it into a perfect hangi basket.

Then of course we needed wood. Went to the 'Old Chinatown' part of town where there are piles of wood lining the roads waiting to be sold. Unfortunately, being only a week before Chinese NewYear, it was all more expensive than usual. (Not quite sure what the wood is especially useful for at Chinese NewYear but anyway....that's what the first 'wood-lady' told us) This meant that I had to fork out a massive $8 for the wood we needed. Never mind..... the goal was getting closer.
A couple of quick trips to the 103 markets to stock up on spuds, pumpkin, onions, kumara, (not quite but pretty close), and a bit of cabbage and we were almost done. The day before the event I dug the pit which involved breaking the shovel handle twice in the clay. Fortunately the cost of a shovel is $4 so what can you expect? Then I scooted off to the Japanese cold storage just up the road from home and bought 3 chickens and a couple of small legs of pork. Meanwhile another Kiwi from school had snuck over the border to Thailand and returned with a beautiful leg of NZ lamb that was cheaper than it would have cost at home......go figure. The fire was stacked and lit, veges peeled, basket packed, in the ground, a couple of prayers sent up and the wait began.

As anyone who's ever been involved with a hangi before well knows, (especially with new steels and wood), the anxiety over whether or not it's actually cooked can drive you to madness. Perhaps this is why drinking has always been a co-existing event with a hangi. 4 hours of agony later and my reputation as a Kiwi was well and truly on the line. There were a bunch of people with drinks in hand and only a couple of packets of chips to keep them dry. The piles of empty waiting plates were just making the whole thing worse. I tried to sneak around the back of the new Arts building, (where I had hidden the whole event away from prying eyes), with just a couple of helpers to dig it up and see if we needed to make a mad dash up the road for a load of Khouvieng Fried Chicken. But there must have been a sense of things going on and suddenly there was a small group of spectators gathering around to witness the potential weeping and sobbing of a grown man. With a silver fern on my sleeve and a GoPro camera on my head, we launched into the unveiling.
As soon as that wonderfully nostalgic smell came wafting from the freshly uncovered pit my pride took a big breath and stood up to be counted. We bravely marched the basket straight into the outdoor cafeteria where everyone was waiting and unwrapped the sweet flavour of success. Everything unpacked onto the tables and it was very swiftly mauled by the pack of curious onlookers. The meat, (Lao certainly love their pork) was disappearing as quickly as I could cut it up. Fortunately Kim, (secondary principal), grabbed a plate and stacked it with goodies so that there would be some left for me at the end of it all. Thanks Kim. Otherwise I pretty much would've missed out. (note to self....must pick more) In the end it was a tremendous success and everyone seemed to be mightily impressed. Even had enough veges left over for the traditional hangi fry-up for breakfast on Saturday morning......Oh yeah!

I'm not sure how many times a hangi has been cooked in Laos, but now I know that it's at least once.
Big thanks to Mr Toh for making a fantastic basket, Nick and Pani for their help stacking the fire and joining me on vege peeling duty, Claire and Chris for a beautiful leg of lamb, Lara for providing two bags of great stuffing that got absolutely moolahed in the first minute of eating, Greg Smith for hunting down the steels, and all the rest of the crew for organising plates, bread and beer. It was a lot of stinking hot work...... and I sure can't wait to do it all again.

There and Back Again

Such a strange feeling. Having a holiday in Darwin, and then returning home to Laos. It is still exciting and feeling like an adventure, but at the same time....this is our home now and anywhere else is.....well.....somewhere else.
Being on a Northern Hemisphere, (is that actually a place that needs capitalization?), school timetable, our Christmas break is quite a short one when compared to the luxurious 6 weeks we are used to. 3 weeks just doesn't seem to say enough about itself to make it worth while. Nevertheless, the break was a welcome one and we didn't want to waste any of it. We flew to Darwin where we were met, (at 2am), by the patron saint of midnight taxis Norah Lewis. We were then dropped, (minus mine and Luther's luggage which had gone on a small holiday elsewhere for 4 days), at our home for the next 2 and a bit weeks in Moil at the house of wonderful Ramsays. Such a beautiful home, we were so lucky to be able look after it whilst they were on their own holiday in Melbourne, and the lovely pool was certainly well utilized. Merrilee's mum Bon arrived on Christmas eve and we spent Christmas day together as a small little family.
The obligatory catching up with friends took up most of our time in Darwin which was of course a wonderful time. As always in these situations there were some friends who we just didn't manage to see in our short stay which is sad, but on the whole we had a wonderful time with old friends.
With only a few days before the school term was about to start, we began our journey home to Laos. Our first leg was to Singapore. We arrived at our hotel on Sentosa late in the evening, found a noodle place for some late dinner and hit the sack ready for the next two days of adventure. The boys were about to turn 13, (OMG), and this little two day side trip to Singapore was essentially their birthday present. After a slightly late start in the morning, (what's a holiday without a sleep in?), we headed off to Universal Studios Singapore.
Neither Merrilee nor I have ever been the type who enjoys the crass commercialism of such overblown, Hollywood-worshipping money-grabbing ventures. The prospect of spending the next 7 hours locked in the belly of such a beast was not a pretty one, but we thought......"No....we'll swallow our sense of pride, taste and decency for the benefit of the boys"
That place is absolutely freakin' AMAZING!!
Sure, there were plenty of opportunities to waste even your more easily earnt pennies on tacky shirts, caps, drink bottles, and coffee mugs, but the effort gone in to this place was unbelievable. Castles, Egyptian tombs, theatres, a whole section of New York reconstructed, and a good part of a full sized ocean container-ship jutting onto the land for the Madagascar ride. Every area had it's own theme and was full of things either to look at or to do. 

Scattered in amongst it all were a bevy of characters doing their walk-around-and-get-their-photo-taken-with-the-public thing, but they seemed to enjoy themselves and were either very pleasant or extremely unpleasant.... as each character required. With neither Merrilee or I being joyride junkies and Zachary never being on any rides, it looked like we would have to sit and watch Luther for the day. The first ride we stopped at was a small Dragon roller coaster in Duloc. (Lord Farquhar from Shrek for those without kids) REALLY not wanting to go on the ride but also wanting to get the ball rolling I volunteered to take Luther on so he wouldn't be by himself. The ride was mercifully short and actually kind of fun....although I spent every moment thinking it may be my last. Luther thought it was the bees knees and was wrapped when we climbed off and told his brother all about it. Whether it was a fear of being left out or my claims that it wasn't actually THAT bad, (or probably a bit of both), Zachary decided he was going to give it a go. Knowing how frightened he was at these sort of things I was so proud of him for taking the leap and just giving it a go. How ever it was going to turn out I was a proud dad. As it turned out, he loved it and just wanted to go and do it again. This set the tone for our day. There wasn't much by the end of the day that we hadn't done. Zachary kept wanting to go back and ride the Mummy roller coaster which being inside a tomb spent a good deal of the time pitch black with ghosts and monsters jumping up at you while you were thrown left, right, up, down and at one stage backwards at a frightening rate of knots. The other massive favourite was the Transformers ride. WOW. This is a must see at the park, unless you are claustrophobic, get dizzy, or don't like heights. The crazy thing is that it doesn't actually move very much at all. You put on your 3D glasses and climb aboard and are basically just moved though something like 8 different giant screens. But the combination of the imagery, the judicious use of fans, heaters, spray and a little bit of movement has you believing you are speeding through a city, narrowly dodging missiles and at one point falling head first of the top of a skyscraper. We rode it 4 times and I still couldn't convince myself that we weren't actually about to die. Really really fun. 

Other events for the day: Madagascar - just like an old school Disney ride; Jurassic Park water ride and canopy coaster; Monster Rock - all singing and dancing stage performance; Shrek 4D theatre - get sneezed on by Donkey and then when a huge mob of spiders drops from the screen something brushes up against your ankles etc; dancing with the Rockafellas breakdancing crew on a NY street corner, (may have embarrassed my children somewhat, but if I'm gonna get picked out of the crowd then I'm gonna give it a damn good go. I think the old school back-spin might have put the icing on the embarrassment cake); the Waterworld live show with boats, jet skis, gunfire, fight choreo, explosions and lots of falling into the water from high places where we got completely soaked; Hurricane Studio - a replica of a NY dock that gets hit by a hurricane with more explosions, things falling from everywhere, water catching on fire and a ship bursting through the wall nearly mowing us all down. The only things left that we gazed at with confused emotions were the twin Battlestar Galactica roller coasters. There was no way we were going to put ourselves on those frightening looking things, but at the same time we didn't want to not do it. In the end Luther and I took the bull by the horns and dived in whilst there was no waiting time. (Nothing brings on a change of heart like waiting in line for something you're not really sure you want to do) We decided to tackle the red Human coaster, as although it was the faster of the two, it at least had you sitting on something rather than having your legs dangling into nowhere which was what the blue Cylon coaster had going on. One of the most terrifying things was the start. There was, as usual, a reasonably steep incline that, one would have thought, the coaster had to crawl it's way up before casually falling over the the edge into the throes of gravity. But no. The coaster gently began the climb before suddenly accelerating with face-pulling momentum up the slope, hurling you over the precipice into G-force oblivion. With my stomach lagging some metres behind and my bravado still trembling at the entrance all I could do was scream and laugh in the face of certain death. Meanwhile Luther was squeezing finger-shaped grooves into the steel frames of the seating while Zachary stood comfortably beneath it all laughing quietly at the commotion above. On completion of the ride, after checking all vital signs and pretending there was something that I had tripped on to cover the fact that my legs weren't quite ready to walk again, I surmised that our first ride on a full blown, ridgy-didge, trouser-scaring roller coaster perhaps should not have been in the very front row. Having said that, we casually wobbled our way out through the exit and straight into the entrance to the blue Cylon coaster. There was nothing that was going to stop us now. We thought the Human coaster was horrendously frightening...but then the Cylon coaster was something again. The most memorably forgettable moment, (because some thing are best forgotten....if you can), was doing an outside loop with legs flailing only to be heading straight for a giant groove cut into the ground so that you are below ground level. All very good except they fill the space with a dense mist so that it just looks like the surrounding concrete. I'm quite sure that someone at some stage has wet themselves as the impending slam into the solid 'concrete' approaches. Again, Zachary stood below shaking his head at our foolishness, but we had done it. And given another visit, I think Zachary will be right there with us next time as although we were frightened out of our wits, he could still see that there was something inside us that was absolutely buzzing. In the last 45 min before closing almost everyone had left so Zachary, Luther and I dashed around the park catching last minute rides on everything we could, (no waiting time on anything) before we headed out and back to the hotel for dinner and a much needed sleep. The following day we headed to the Maritime museum which was very interesting. Watched a kind of cinescope presentation that ended in the sinking of a ship we were 'on'. When the doors opened again, we had indeed sunk below and were now in the South East Asia Aquarium. With glass domes and tunnels everywhere and the large tank with 30+ metres of glass wall it was pretty impressive. When we finished there, Merrilee wandered across the boardwalk to look at some shops whilst the boys made their way around the corner to the Adventure Cove Waterpark. Slides, jumps, tunnels, a wave pool and probably the best attraction, a salt-water pool that you could snorkel in that was filled with 20,000 brightly coloured tropical reef fish. We spent the rest of the day splashing around before tiredness finally grabbed us and we made our way back to the hotel.

The following morning we flew into Bangkok for what turned out to be a 6 hour wait at the airport before finally arriving back to our comfy home in Vientiane, ready for another semester of school for the whole family.

The song on this video was one I recorded with some of my year 10 students. They wrote the music and lyrics and I played the instruments and put it together for them.