I’m sitting in my sister’s new apartment using an Internet connection stolen from the Aether. I’m eating winegums. The past three mornings we ran around Wertheimpark. In the park are sheets of broken glass housed in more glass; shattered and transparent, the Auschwitz monument is covered in leaves. It is fall. They have fallen.
We are glad to be back in this city of brick and water. Our flight ‘home’ took 11.5 hours. We arrived at 9:00AM. To fight the jetLag I took a walk. The city felt empty and calm.
I walked by a office building. Duct-taped to a 3rd floor window was a painted canvas; the city is a gallery.
After wandering through a second-hand/nick-nack market, I stumbled upon Nijhof & Lee, a bookstore focusing on Design (with a capital ‘D’). The typography section was particularly impressive.
Finally, I came across Droog Design [Image].
Droog is a brand and a mentality: design of products that do what they should and think about why they’re doing it in the first place: function? fun? wit? criticism? All of the above?
Their website is a “100% hypertext environment”:
This means that every word on this site is a link, which when clicked will generate associated information displayed on the right. A click on a sentence in this ‘concordance’ will open the associated text[.]
Droog is currently hosting a show by the Swedish design group Front. If Design turns you on, and you’re in (or near) Amsterdam, I urge you to head over to Staalstraat 7a/b for a shot of inspiration.
The show features such items as: vases that (through mysterious photographic means) take on the reflections of their surroundings, hence displaying a visual history of where they have been; chairs created through explosions; metal lampshades perforated by bullet holes; tables that move (slowly) and collapse with time; a lamp that lies on the ground until needed; and wallpaper, hooks, and lamps, designed by dogs, rats, snakes, and rabbits.
Most interesting was their use of the video game Unreal Tournament. The game engine was exploited as a non-material design tool. (What can be designed when the constraints of the real world are abandoned? Can a designed object exist without being materialized?) Most of the physical designs from the show were present within the gameSpace, along with many others that could not exist in meatSpace.
I am going to miss Amsterdam.
We have returned to Vientiane after six days in the village of Vang Viang. There, we chilled on the banks of the Nam Song, kayaked, explored caves, and ate delicious organic food. In the evenings we ran through the villages along the hi-way. (The roads in this country would make even the most jaded Winnipegger think twice about their local pothole complaints.) While we ran the locals would give us thumbs-up signs, and the children would wave and shout enthusiastic hellos: SA-BA-DI!
Kayaking along the Nam Song river we were surrounded by limestone giants and jungles of Bamboo. Later we swam through an underground river and trekked deep into the heart of one of these giants. The cave was a massive labyrinth of waterways, and tunnels full of bats and spiders. One of the girls we were with slipped and fell down a hole. We had just been joking that it was bottomless, or that it lead to another underground river. When I heard her scream, and watched (in slo-motion) her body disappear, I thought she was a goner. But the hole had a bottom, and the top of her head was still to be seen. Dirty and shaken, she was pulled out.
Before we finished our trip we kayaked to a river-side bar, drank some BeerLaos, and swung on a crazy rope swing into the river. (Imagine standing on a swing attached to small mountain-side tree. You are hanging in the middle of a river. A long rope leads back to the shore. Strong boys grab the rope tug-of-war style and run until you are almost parallel with the river. And then you drop, swing, swear, jump, splash, laugh, swim, return.)
This afternoon we will begin our 16 hour journey to Bangkok.
And now for something completely different.
Stories written by a computer:
John became very lazy at work
John lost his job
John decided to get drunk
He started to commit crimes
John went to prison
He experienced bruises
John cried
He looked at himself differently
Mary went to the zoo
Mary learned about animals
Mary experienced enlightenment
Mary felt superior
Mary became a snob
Mary was disliked
Mary felt ashamed of who she was
From: MAKEBELIEVE - Using Commonsense Knowledge to Generate Stories [PDF]
At the border we changed 5 thousand Baht (Thai currency equivalent to 100 Euros) into Kip (Lao currency). The result was shocking. I was handed a stack of bills that did not fit in my wallet. The exchange form stated that I now had over 1 million Kip. Money, it is said, is power; however, I felt more uneasy than powerful. The bulge in my money-belt was daunting.
I’ve since warmed up to the Kip. A coffee shake, for example, costs 3 to 5 thousand Kip. A large grilled fish, served with plates of fresh herbs and vegetables —like the one I ate last night— cost around 30,000 kip. A pitcher of Beer Lao cost 10,000 kip, (that’s under 80 cents). The stack has been decreasing in size.
It’s standard in Thailand and Laos to bargain in the markets. If you are a foreigner, this bargaining is usually done via a calculator; the seller types in a cost, you smile, shake your head and type in a counter offer. The game continues until both sides are happy. I’ve discovered that the best deals are made when I joke around, laugh, or even do little jigs.
Yesterday, I thought I had scored big when the calculating finally stopped at 60 for a “Rolex”. Like earlier bargaining that day, I assumed we were dropping the final ‘000’ due to lazy fingers. Actually, we were both making assumptions; the watch seller thought I knew that watch purchases were made in US dollars. When I handed her 60,000 kip (around 4.70 Euros) she stared in disbelief. It was a very nice watch.
This is how we discovered the three-tire currency system. Although the Kip is the only true legal tender, Thai baht and US dollars are used for expensive items.
Final story on the money front:
We had a bit of panic today when we read in our Lonely Planet that there were no ATMs in Laos. How were we going to get more money? My first thought was my Mastercard, but on closer inspection we saw that it expired this month. My second idea was to wire money from my Dutch bank account. Luckily, when we arrived at the bank we were greeted by a sign announcing their newly installed ATM.
Oh technology, I am truly your grateful slave.
The beds on the train were comfortable. The A/C was chilly. The food was expensive and of low quality. We arrived at the Laos-Thai friendship bridge around 9:00AM. After buying our visas at the border we took a Tuk-Tuk into Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
This is a capital city like none I have ever seen. It has the look and feel of a small town. After lunch we went for a walk. After wandering around a few Buddhist Wats, we were invited out of the hot sun by a Tuk-Tuk driver sitting with a group of neighborhood kids. We sat with them on wooden benches under a tin roof, watching the Mekong river, laughing and practicing each others language.
One of the girls spoke English very well. Her English teacher is from Edmonton. She explained that everyday, all around Laos, neighbors young and old sit together in the afternoons and evenings, to talk, joke, and relax. She also told us that the Tuk-Tuk driver was a great joker, and that he was sad he couldn’t speak with us. We spoke to him using the universal language of smiles.
Most Lao are Buddhist. They believe that Karma, more than hard work, sets the course of their lives. Our guide book mentions that a commonly held Lao belief is that ‘too much work is bad for your brain.’
A French saying (from their colonial days):
‘The Vietnamese plant rice; the Cambodians watch it grow; the Lao listen to it grow.’
Tonight (around 16:30) we’ve been invited back to the shaded hut to watch (and listen to?) the sun set.
Shannon’s makeup bag was stolen during our overnight bus trip from Koh Samui to Bangkok. Silly thieves, used makeup is for losers.
Yesterday I felt homesick, or maybe just Amsterdam-sick; possibly, I was just craving stability, and angry at the makeup snatchers. The feeling has passed, pushed away by thoughts of our next adventure, and the knowledge that we will be back in Canada in one month. (Have we really been gone for one year?)
Tonight we board our night train to Laos.
p.s. Last night we witnessed our first monsoon rainstorm. It was short but intense. The streets flooded. We wore ponchos and splashed our way to dinner.
p.s.s. For those who haven’t heard, my friend Jeff proposed to his long time gf Maureen. She said yes. In similar life-changing news, my friend Matt and his wife Casie are expecting a baby. Congrats all around!
