What's New
- Wednesday, October 27, 2004. On this day: BBC, Wikipedia, HowTo
- No news is good news
Okay, I've definitely been a bit slack lately in keeping the blog up to date. Mostly this is just because getting internet access is a bit tough since I don't have any access at work or at home. Hasn't been a whole lot going on. I got a bicycle from work that I'm riding pretty much every day. It's an old japanese bike that's pretty beat up and only has 1 speed. But, it's pretty sturdy and I don't have to worry about anyone stealing it so that's good. It's a lot better than most of the local bikes (usually chinese) which aren't really made to carry a foreigner's weight.
Other than that, not much to report. It's the end of Budist Lent which includes a big boat racing festival which has made the downtown pretty busy each night. I went to a co-worker's house on Saturday to watch some of the races but it wasn't too exciting. I think this weekend is the more serious races though.
The city is also really working to prepare for the ASEAN summit at the end of November. The latest news from work is that the roads around my ofice will be closed because it's on the route the officials will take to the meetings so we're going to have a holiday from November 22 to November 30. December 2 is Lao National day so that's a holiday too so it means I have 1 week off and then the next week I only have to work Dec 1 and Dec 3. The downside is that we have to have classes for another week in December. I wouldn't get time off during the term break but I wanted to go to Salavan for a week to visit the CUSO office there and I might not be able to now.
# Posted 2:02 AM (0) comments
- Friday, October 08, 2004. On this day: BBC, Wikipedia, HowTo
- Kip Rules Everything Around Me, K.R.E.A.M.
It's kind of hard to not feel like a total gangsta living in Vientiane. The biggest bill you can get in Lao Kip is 20,000 Kip and that's worth about $2.50 canadian. The 20,000 bill has been a pretty recent addition so it's still a bit harder to come by. I changed money this week and decided to change 2000 Thai Baht (which is roughly $70 canadian). That gave me 528,000 Kip and the biggest bill they had was a 5,000 so I got a huge stack of 5,000 Kip bills (a bundle of 100 bills and then some loose ones).
A bag of pop (yes, they keep the bottle so they can get the deposit back) costs 2,000 kip, a Tuk-Tuk ride to just about anywhere in the city will maybe cost 10,000-20,000 depending on the driver and how well you negotiate (although some try to rip off foreigners and charge 30,000 to go anywhere). A good meal at an "expensive" restaurant is around 30,000 kip (unless you go to a really upscale foreign place). Cheaper local places are a lot less. I had an amazing Phat Thai yesterday for 10,000 kip.
My stipend from cuso is pretty low (maybe $500 canadian a month) but is a lot more than most local Lao salaries so it's really easy to live well. The really nice 3 bedroom house that I'm sharing has air conditioning, 2 bathrooms and satellite TV and costs $250 US a month (which is paid for by CUSO seperately from my stipend).
# Posted 8:09 AM (1) comments
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