Where has the time gone?
We spent our last 2 weeks in Paris (for 1 week), Kuala Lumpur (for 3 days) and Vientiane (for 5 days).
We finally visited the Pompidou Centre. It is a great collection of modern art, but not really our “tasse du the”. They had a temporary exhibition covering surrealist photography & cinematography that was excellent, including a darkened room showing naughty adult films. It was just nice to finally be inside the building and riding the exterior escalators, taking in yet more wonderful views of the Parisienne skyline. We were also very taken with a collection of photographs by US artist Diane Arbus.
We visited the Musee Carnavalet which is also known as the Museum of Paris. It is housed in a lovely Hotel Particulier and contains wonderful period furniture, objects d’art and paintings of historical interest. One room had a fresco that covered not only the ceiling but all 4 walls. A magnificent art nouveau style “jewellery ” shop has also been installed inside the building as an example of this style of architecture.
We also went out to La Defense to walk around Paris’s modern commercial centre. It wasn’t especially interesting but it was good to see it to round out our knowledge of Paris.
We spent a Sunday afternoon with one of my AXA work colleagues, Candida, and her family. We met them in the Jardin des Plantes where we ate a picnic lunch, had a wander around, and Dale played 4 square with James and the boys. After lunch we walked across to a Moroccan tea room to have afternoon tea. While the adults enjoyed tea, hot chocolate and coffee, the boys enjoyed indulging their passion for Orangina.
David, James and Candida (f), Hugo and Oscar (r)
Mosque near Le Jardin des Plantes
The rest of our time was devoted to eating and to a lot of last minute shopping. Although we mostly cooked dinner for ourselves, we did eat out a couple of times. We had a wonderful night out at Chez Allard, just around the corner from our small studio apartment in the St Germain Quarter. It was on the expensive side (we each had 2 courses and shared a delicious bottle of red wine for just under 100 Euros). The meals were superb. Dale had beef bourginon and he thought it was the best he’d ever tasted. I tasted some of the beef and it was certainly the most tender I’d ever tasted. We cook a pretty descent BB ourselves so we now have a new standard to aspire to.
The restaurant was small and tables were jam packed into the space. We were seated side by side against a wall behind a table looking out at the rest of the room. Just in front of us there was a couple that we chatted to. It was extremely interesting because the lady turned out to be a playwright who has had one of her plays produced on Broadway. She is a Romanian born Swiss citizen who lives in Paris. Her husband is French and works in re-insurance, so we had a giggle about the fact that Dale and the lady work in the same industry and that her husband and I did as well.
We had been somewhat bemused by the large bottle of rum sitting on their table. However it turned out to be the accompaniment to the Rhum au Baba that I had also ordered for dessert. The Rhum au Baba was huge, and became even more delicious with extra rum splashed all over it, although it ultimately defeated me.
Just before our lovely meals were delivered we had a visit from Pierre the Paris sewer mouse who appeared on the bar immediately to Dale’s left. We decided to alert the waiting staff as quietly as possible. They showed no response to this manifestation and never attempted to provide an apology. Over about 10 minutes they talked to one another about the mouse (which kept disappearing and then reappearing) and made a couple of futile attempts to catch it. In the end they decided to build a barrier of wine bottles along the front of the bar. This at least had the effect of making it more difficult for Pierre to leap on to our table and it also meant that we didn’t have to look at him.
Our other culinary experience was eating falafels from Restaurant L’As in the Marais. Despite having stayed in Paris in the Marais 3 times previously we had never before tuned into the falafel thing which - I’m reliably told – everyone does. So thank you to Penny and Paul for recommending the falafel thing and in particular this restaurant. Paul will be pleased to know that we had our lunch there 3 out of the 6 full days we had in Paris. As instructed we ordered takeaway and found a nearby park to sit in. Unlike Paul we didn’t walk around the block eating our first falafel and then hop in the queue again for a second – one was enough. We also didn’t spill our falafels everywhere as Penny had apparently managed to do – over her beautiful blue scarf. We also had the vegetarian falafels with sauce ‘piquant’ as instructed. Yum! Falafels will never taste the same again.
Dale in falafel queueOur apartment in St Germain was located just behind the beautiful Institute de France (of which the infamous language nazis, the Academie Francais, is one department).
From the bridge opposite the Institute you got a good view of the Tour Eifel light show
And just to frustrate Dale's sister Simone, we finally found a piece of grass you
are allowed to sit on in Paris
On Wednesday 30th Sept we flew out of Paris to Kuala Lumpur. We decided to fly via KL because we have a friend there (Karen), who Dale went to Uni with, and because we could fly to Laos from KL to visit my brother and his family.
We like KL and, in particular the food and shopping, but neither were quite so enjoyable this time. In terms of the food, we think this is because we have normally had friends taking us to the best restaurants. Karen and her husband Sharin have 3 kids ages 4,6& 8, and we have visited them previously in KL in 2002 and 2004. In 2004 our friends Barbara and Rob were also living in KL. So on previous visits we’ve had plenty of people to show us around.
This time we met Karen for a great afternoon tea in Bangsah, but otherwise we tried to select restaurants ourselves and we weren’t very successful. We picked a crap Indian restaurant the first night. On the second night we walked away from a restaurant because in addition to the food we had ordered they insisted on bringing us a huge serving of raita, eggplant and other assorted vegetables served on a banana leaf. We asked them to take it away, and when they wouldn’t, we got up and left. We returned to the hotel restaurant and had their buffet, which was more successful, if much more expensive. We finally got our fabulous Malaysian meal when we returned to KL on the 8th of October for the last night of our break. We had dinner at Karen’s mother’s place and she served up a feast of Malaysian curries, both meat and vegetarian.
On Saturday the 2nd of October we headed off to Vientiane to visit my brother Colin, sister in law Petrece, niece Ardin (12) and nephew Tiaan (9). Colin works at the county’s biggest gold and copper mine some distance away from Vientiane. The mine used to be owned by Oz Minerals but has recently been bought by Minmetals, a Chinese company.
Vientiane is a small town by Asian capital standards, but has all the usual features (heat, smells and rubbish). That said, we did enjoy the shopping and a brief glimpse into the advantages of the expat life. Colin and Petrece have a rather large house that was able to accommodate 12 people while we were there (they also had family friends staying with them with 4 children). There is also the growing staff of maids (who cleaned up after our drinks and dinners), day and night watchmen and the driver who ferried us around everywhere and patiently waited outside shops for us.
We were really lucky to arrive right in the middle of the river festival and Petrece was competing in dragon boat racing in a women’s team of expats and locals. We went out to a little village about half an hour outside Vientiane to watch her practice. Everyone was very excited because they thought they would be able to practice in their new boat. Unfortunately this wasn’t to be and they had to do another training session in their old leaky boat that was half sunk and had to be bailed out before even starting.
Bailing out the old boat (Petrece first on left)
We did however get to see the new boat and it was beautiful.
The new boat in drydock
Dale went out onto the river in another boat and tooks some photos of the practice session. The race is a 1.2km sprint (very hard work).
There was some controversy towards the end of the day when it was revealed that the men’s team would also use the new boat on race day. Apparently the men had refused to let the women use their boat last year. Also the women’s boat was paid for by the fundraising efforts of the expat women, although the whole village is responsible for building it.
That night we had a great meal at home and were entertained by Tiaan performing a variety of his favourite scenes from movies. Lucky his mother didn’t see him performing the scenes from Goldmember. But I think the less said about that subject the better.
On the Sunday, the 6 adults plus 16 year old Sophie and 12 year old Tania went out to the village building the new dragon boat to participate in a festival honouring the monks at the village temple. All the women in the dragon boat team went to extraordinary efforts to wear traditional Laos outfits and to bring along the appropriate offerings.
Peterce and Karen with offerings
Dale and I wore our scarves as well. It was extremely colourful although my culturally sensitive brother vetoed staying on for the ceremony to bind all our spirits together because he said that they go on forever and you only end up with pins and needles from sitting cross legged. There were 3 women monks dressed in white who had to sit below all the male monks, even the boy monks who have to spend a year as monks when they are 9 and 15. Petrece and I wanted some photos of the women monks but I didn’t think they looked all that happy about having their pictures taken.
Chanting monks
Female monks in white
Ardin and Tania went shopping in the Morning Markets after brunch (the Morning Markets actually stay open all day) and Ardin, who has the most magnificent curly red hair, arrived back wearing a blonde wig. It suited her anyway. I don’t want to think about where the wig hair comes from.
Hitchcock Blonde
Monday was festival day and dragon boat race day. The races take place on the Mekong River along side central Vientiane. They started at about 9.30 and went all day because there are only ever heats involving 2 boats at a time. The teams and boats are decked out in the most amazing lurid colours. Check out Petrece’s hot pink team.
David Ardin and Tiaan
In between the races some teams have ‘’entertainment’’ boats that float past with lots of women (and at least one lady man) in traditional dress singing and dancing. The funniest boat was one promoting awareness of swine flu which was blaring out loud music and was mostly full of men, including 3 with balloons shoved up their shirts pretending to be women. What did this have to do with swine flu? Who knows.
That's entertainment
At one point while Dale and I were standing in the baking heat in the mud we noticed that all these local kids were swimming in the river and were using condoms as balloons. Some of them had been manipulated into interesting shapes. Colin said that the most popular evenings in the canteen at the mine are when the lady boy troop of actors visits to promote safe sex messages. He says that they are hilarious and no one likes to miss out on being there.
Petrece’s team was unfortunately beaten in their first two races although the second one was against a team that was 85% male. The Laos women in the team were furious and they were allowed to go back out for 2 more heats. Regrettably the results didn’t change and the team members had to postpone getting stuck into the post race cocktails.
Dale and the kids entertained themselves with dodgem cars between races.
Ardin and Tania
Tiaan with Sophie and Meg in distance
Most of us went on to get a table at a restaurant to have lunch before Petrece’s last race. Tiaan refused to sit at the same table with us and when his school teacher came past and asked why he was sitting by himself he said that we’d abandoned him. Then he started showing off, waving around some chips that had been dipped in chilli sauce. Absoulte hilarity followed as he dropped them down the front of his t shirt.
On Tuesday Petrece took Dale and I shopping. Afterwards Mark, Dale and I took the 6 kids to the Water Park. I had worked Tiaan up about going to the Water Park because I enjoy a nice water slide, however Ardin started telling horror stories about broken noses and when we arrived the rides looked quite scary. Ardin very sensibly refused to go on them and I took her advice about what order to do the rides in. I survived although I swear that both times that I was on the twisty one I thought I was going to be thrown over the edge. Naturally Dale and Tiaan loved them and kept going back for more.
Family snap
Dale and I had the house to ourselves on Wednesday because the others all drove off to a Thai island (10, people, 10 hours in a 9 seater car!) for a few days. We did a little more sightseeing (one place) and shopping courtesy of Mr Buli (day watchman and relief tuk tuk driver) and flew out Thursday morning.
The Laotians apparently took a donation of cement intended to build a runway and instead made this hideous victory arch. Its about the only building of "Interest" in Vientiane outside of the plentiful Wats (buddhist temples)
Well I’m finishing this off on the flight from KL to Melbourne so the break is definitely at an end. Composing the blog has been a wonderful part of the break for us, so thanks very much for all your kind comments about it along the way and especially to Anthony, Dennis, Dom, Julia, Ann and Malcolm who posted their comments along the way .
We'd also like to thank Anthony and Dennis for all the technical advice in establishing the blog and help desk support along the way.
See you soon in person.
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