Good Health, Comrade! November 12th, 2010

Sabadee, Sahay!

Or, in translation, “Good Health, Comrade!”

The country is so laid-back and peaceful it is difficult to believe there used to be a war here. And it’s difficult to believe that the economic and political system is totally different from our own.

But now we are approaching the 450^th anniversary of the naming of Vientiane as the capital city of Laos, and with it comes an orgy of police activity, street cleaning and statues erected to honour Lao kings and other heroes.

Our own experience with the police, by the way, has been very positive. We needed to lodge a complaint against a Lao citizen and we found the local ney ban (village head) and the police force at his disposal to be friendly, professional and efficient. They made sure that an English-speaking officer was there for us and they invited me to lunch.

Our neighbours are having drunken parties. When I ask them to turn the volume down on the Thai pop music[1], they ignore me. But first, they are gracious enough to ask me to join them for a nice cool glass of BeerLao.

These are some pictures of the patriotic fervour gripping the city and other Party iconography. It is pretty low-key as fervour goes but this is, after all, the motherland of the Bo Pin Yang Attitude!

[1] Music for which I am inventing my own titles: “‘Cause Me She Fucks For Free”, or “For Two Thousand Bhat I’m Yours Forever”