pakse: good for the heart, if not for the guts

It's been a dog's age since I've written. Apologies. I keep thinking of some cheesy notepaper I used to have back in grade six and on the top there was a terrifically ugly cartoon and it said, "Sorry I haven't written, I've been busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger!" That's sort of how I've felt here lately. Dang busy. Like, I haven't read a book or watched a movie in weeks unless it related to school and even then it was only to snatch a few excerpts to get ready for class the next day (shh! don't tell my students!). Phet was out of town for awhile, then he came back and school was nuts, and then we went to Laos for five days, and then I came back with Ji and Seung Yi, and then two days ago Mum and Emma arrived! Whizeee.

The trip to Laos was actually awesome and relaxing. The travel was stupid, though. On the way there we had the pleasure of taking one of the ridiculously timed New Delhi flights. All flights leave after 1 am for some dumb reason. So, for a three hour flight to Bankok we had to be up with the kids until 1 am, when we boarded the plane, then we sacked out and arrived absolutely ready to fall over. It was so bad that after we transferred over to the domestic airport we made the decision to go find a hotel to sleep at for a couple of hours instead of going to eat yummy food or buy great stuff. What a drag. We had a clueless cab driver so we ended up going to the very expensive Rama Gardens Hotel because the cabbie couldn't find the much-cheaper Airport Suites Hotel. We all fell into a deep sleep and then woke up a couple of hours later to get our flight to the border. In Ubon we hired a mini van to take us to the border and slept on that ride too. Phet's Dad met us at the border and then drove us to Pakse.

The family are all well. Ing has a gorgeous, beautiful baby girl nicknamed "Bee" or "Geen Geo". She's about five months old and just adorable. Looks like a porcelain Chinese princess doll. Big black eyes, pretty mouth, cute nose, and very very mellow personality. Ing's husband Song (hee hee, yes, wouldn't it be great to have him and Sing in the same room one day?) seems to be fitting in great with the family - he and Ing and the baby are living at Phet's Mum's place while their house is being constructed near the university. Here we are, standing on the road outside their new place:

Here's Ji playing in the grass neaby:

Suki, Yaki, and Fuji are all growing up rapidly. Suki's now nine, hard to believe but true. Ji had an awesome time with his cousins - except for the day when little Fuji kept whacking him in the head and Ji came out with fierce, mad tears in his eyes and demanded of us, "Don't you know I don't like getting hit in the head, again and again?" But, y'know, otherwise they had a great time running around and wrestlin and watching cartoons in a big passel. Phet's uncle across the way has a new money making scheme that was also a hit with Ji: he's set up 8 PS2 stations in his front room and charges kids fifty cents an hour to play. Ji and Phet spent some serious cash over there, lemme tell you.

Ling is working hard and she and Ming are also studying for advanced finance degrees at night. It sounds like Ming would like to one day go to work for his girlfriend's cousin in Savannakhet doing some kind of accounting work. Phet's Mum is tired of taking care of her grandkids all the time but she's in good spirits and is as busy as always, up at 4 am to start sweeping and cleaning the house and getting the kettle boiling, and then hitting the laundry and getting it out on the line practically before the sun comes up. Long and Kwan aren't doing so well; Long's in trouble again, but we didn't get all the details.

Pakse is really booming these days. There is a big casino / hotel complex going up on the banks of the Mekong and on the opposite side there's a 15 storey hotel being built as well. There are new market areas opening up, and there was even a big, air con supermarket just 5 min from Phet's Mum's place. The stadium next to Meh's house is being re-built, and there are many houses being renovated and fixed up. Seems like a big influx of people and money. But, um, still just 3 stoplights. One of which we ran on a motorbike - after which we were followed by the po-lice and had to pay a whopping five dollar fine.

The return trip was fine until Phet left us at the security check at the new Bangkok airport. It was a pain to drag Seung Yi around (she doesn't want to be held, doesn't want to hold hands, doesn't want to follow me, doesn't want to sit on baggage carts) and it took us 45 minutes to walk from the entrance to a spot near-ish to our gate. Ji was looking under the weather and a bit glum and I actually and very uncharacteristically offered to buy him a toy to cheer him up. He went in the toy store, picked up a key chain, put it down, walked outside and right in front of the Gucci shop he spewed vomit all over the well-polished marble floor. I managed to get him over a garbage can for the second round and then we was fine until mid-way through our flight when he woke up with an "Uh-oh" face and said he didn't feel so good. I went into crisis management mode. Toilets? Full. Could he make it to the back of the plane? Nope. Ok, got out big plastic bag specially saved for this purpose, stood him in the aisle, he spewed. Good, right? Well, yeah, except that the bag had a small hole in it and leaked puke onto the carpet and meanwhile Seung Yi was practically falling off my chair and I had a barfy bag and a barfy boy and NO ONE LIFTED A FINGER to help me. Bastards, all of 'em.

Anyhoo, I guess this is my karmic repayment of leaving Phet with Seung Yi that time she sicked up on him six times in one day, huh?

One last picture for you today, of Ji enjoying a chat on Skype with his aunts back in Canada:

[Laos-15-November-2007]