Check it out at www.bse-laos.com !!!

This is our website for Bokeo Social Enterprise (BsE), an innovative local business for promoting sustainable community development in Houay Xay, Laos. The reason why you are reading about it here and now is because I am the business partner and one of the founders. So show me a bit of ‘Jipei-love’ and support our initiative! ^o^

The website is still under ongoing construction, and our main focus at the moment is running our still less-than-one-month-old shop—Café Mooooo, a lovely neighborhood café that specializes in healthy herbal drinks, Lao coffee, local organic fruit juices and fusion breakfast. Besides the shop, we’ve also done preliminary mapping of the site that we obtained to establish our ethnobotanic garden—we hope to provide more information on that on the website soon—you can already see some of its pictures on our homepage.

And of course—you should COME and check it out if you can! (now have a Happy Hour menu…. ^_~)

蛰伏了一个月，忙得又高兴又烦（包括我作为合伙人之一的一个social enterprise正式注册成立以及我们的店面试运营开张——详情将有后续），结果跟德国机构这边工作合同得到延续，于是告别呆了一年位于老泰边境的山城会晒，坐了一天的车到了老挝北部距最近的云南边境据说只有10公里的小城勐新（Muang Sing）， 在这里即将开始两个月的工作（之后再转移到首都万象）。在唯一铺了柏油的小城主干道上一晃悠，便是铺面而来的又朴实却又似复杂的边境氛围，让人悠悠地幻想一部电影或是一本小说，里面是一个江湖和历史的错综。跟一个老挝朋友往一家‘四川饭店’里头一坐，里面各种口音的中国话混杂，人们也时不时好奇地看看我们两个用老挝话夹着英文的嬉笑。这里往来着中国的商人、劳工还有跨境通婚文化同源的多种少数民族（哈尼族、叻族等），想一想这许许多多各色人物和语言的交融混合，连这一家四川饭店也似乎开始幻化成那大漠驿道上的龙门客栈，只差没有那个张曼玉的老板娘金镶玉在捧着酒碗妖娆地风尘一笑。

Let’s admit it: most people I know (maybe you) are still not clear where the hell I am these days—Laos? Yes, northern Laos, in a border town called Houay Xay. Okay, you don’t have to Google Map it right away, and you probably have an (rough) idea of where the country is and have heard of or read about the Mekong. So what about I tell you I practically live around the Golden Triangle, once the opium hub of the world? Geographically speaking, there is Thailand on the other side of the Mekong, which becomes Burma 30 some km further upstream (note: this is not like a Sarah Palin statement about Alaska’s proximity to Russia).

If this still doesn’t impress you, consider the following: I carry two cell phones on a daily basis for my Lao and Thai number: apparently the Mekong is not enough of an obstacle for those lovely invisible Thai phone signals to rain down on us. Friends have reached me from abroad on both numbers, and here are some facts: 1. calling Thailand is cheaper than calling Laos, and 2. Lao telecommunication is not to be trusted. Sometimes Lao signals simply disappear for hours (or days) for no reason. And at other times, they disappear ‘for a reason’ such as way-too-thick clouds or rain (during the rainy season which lasts about 6 months). Lots of people in this town have two numbers too, and we’d call each others’ Thai number whenever the whole town is muted by a dysfunction Lao network. We live on borrowed terms, sometimes.

Finally fed up with the unreliable Lao telecom service and especially the resulting shaky internet connection, I upgraded one of my two minimum-function phones to a ‘brand new’ second-hand Nokia N72 (while purchasing, also made sure it was from Thailand and not a Chinese copy—yes, lots of those around too, and very sadly in poor quality). The only extra feature I used to have on the old phone was a flashlight (which I am still so impressed by), and this new baby’s got Bluetooth and internet! What’s more, I can now pair it with my iBook using Bluetooth and GET ON THE INTERNET even when going to the toilet in my house on top of a green mountain in Laos! What’s more, this commercial wonderland across the river called Thailand always offers promotional deals for phone and internet usage. So a phone call away with nice English speaking Thai operators, I activated a package of 40 hours/month internet access for 100 Baht (about 3 USD)!!!!

Okay, many of you reading this might be Blackberry carriers or iPhone generation with Facebook and NASDAQ quotes on 24/7 and think this is nothing, but let me be Thomas Friedman for once and let my mind and body shaken by the almighty wireless technology in Globalization 4.0, 5.0, or whatever.0 considered now. I would not go as far as claiming ‘leveling the playing ground’ (oh please), but as I am trying to make sense of this new found digital existence free from my limited local physical conditions, all I have to say is that living ‘in-between’ worlds is just, in every sense, awesome!

A year ago this time I was teaching English to Lao adults and teenagers. In the textbook for my intermediate class, there was the word ‘stock broker’ in the list of ‘jobs’. I scratched my head while preparing lessons, how could I possibly explain that? I decided to simply put out its Lao translation so to save energy on trying to explain it in English (which I tried to do for all our new vocab). But dictionaries here were often disappointing, so I simply turned to Mr. Sakda in my office, the accountant and my ‘go-to’ person for almost everything.

Me: Mr. Sakda, do you know how to say ‘stock broker’ in Lao?

Sakda: What’s that?

Me: A person who works for the stock market and trades stocks.

Sakda: At a market?

Me: Yeah…but, not just any market, a stock market.

Sakda: Stock?

Me: Yeah…like um…you know ‘capital’?

Sakda: …Yes…(but looking puzzled)…but stock, like what you have in the room?

Me: Well, that’s stock, but that’s like storage. I mean, you know capital market?

Sakda: But stock...like livestock?

Me: ummm…no, definitely not livestock, but say I have a company and I put in money, and I want to make a bigger business so I have to borrow money from other people, so I sell stocks …

Sakda: (looking more confused)…mmm….

Me: (trying something else) Like you see on TV that people try to buy and sell, and they watch the price go up and down everyday. They try to buy when the price is low and sell when the price is high. And it’s ‘stocks’ that they try to buy and sell, stocks of companies, and you can make money. My parents buy and sell stocks too, in China.

Sakda: Anyone can buy?

Me: Yes! And make money…well, only if you do it right.

Sakda: Ahh…okay, I think I know what you mean now, but they have it in Thailand, yeah? I think. But not in Laos.

Me: Yeah, that’s right. I don’t think there is stock market in Laos either. So what’s that in Lao?

Sakda: Nuun, I think. Dalat Nuun…

But I decided to skip introducing this word in class—too difficult to explain.

A year later, still here and sharing the same office with Mr. Sakda, I found myself glued to the computer and the internet, quietly shocked by the headlines all over the press and there goes the names: Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG… the world out there seem to be a total mess. I mean, the world.

Then I thought: at least there is no ‘investment banker’ in the textbook, and I wonder if the new teacher would skip ‘stock broker’ like I did.

But in the classroom here, in this small town in Laos, can you really make sense of a market that buy and sell figures? Figures that you can’t feel, smell or weigh like you do with Mekong fish everyday in the market down the hill?

Then my cell phone beeped, a new message from Lao Telecom read: “Today’s currency (buy/sell): Kip/USD=8,635/8,672, THB (Thai Baht)=251.08/253.06”… damn lousy Thai Baht and cheap dollar! So there, no escape, no one, no where on this planet, and no matter how ‘difficult’ it is to explain this huge mystery called market.

 

毫无疑问，中秋节是要聚的，虽然我这里的朋友们老挝人美国人韩国人日本人德国人法国人就是没有一个中国人。回来一个月多一点，在新的住处安顿，趁此机会作东，邀朋友小聚，也算是应时应景。虽然本小姐不是贤良主妇型做不出一大桌山珍海味招待四方来客，但是在这种有限的条件下如何粗中取细，创造氛围却是能花心思的。于是邀约之时已经说好是晚上八点的酒水加点心，不是惯常老挝式的饭菜加啤酒。

住地乃半山之上一处浓荫花园，叶间可看一城灯火。白日有些闷热，但日头一落便是优加加的清凉空气。雨季将近尾声，已经是好久的好天气，早早开始构思这个聚会时便打定主意，一定要在举头无碍的月光之下才不辜负如此的天时地利。

于是把桌子抬出来在屋子前小小一方水泥地，还算是有七八张椅子，也便随意安放，从浓荫密庇的小径拾级而上，到得房子跟前便是这一处天空的豁然开朗。六点半七点渐渐暗下来的天色中，巨大一轮圆月已然低低升起，但是藏在东边的树后头，还不真切。点上几支蜡烛，一盏在清迈买的纸灯笼发出沉着而温暖的光，音乐从借来的音箱里开始悠悠升起。免税商店里提回来的红酒在冰镇，月饼作为主角已经摆上正中，这样的夜色，分享，才最美味。

一些客人来了又走了，最后留下的是让你真正体会什么叫酒逢知己千杯少的，醉了也不醉。有旧友，新朋，讲英文，讲老文，笑，是一样的。什么时候蜡烛已经燃尽，然而明月高高，索性把起先当背景的屋子里的灯统统关掉，于是从那一刻开始便是完完全全无杂质的月光，通明透亮，从万里夜空倾泻，无遮无拦。无疑，这样的夜色是有魔力的，处处虫鸣，远远犬吠，也许就是那魔咒吧。

 在会晒两度中秋，中间隔了一年的成长和成熟，有一些思念和情绪却也只见长不见消，人总是越来越放不下了么?那些年少和洒脱原来只是因为没有背负没有经历，不见得是真的随性，为赋新词强说愁，没有人可以免俗。但此时举头望明月，仍是满头问号，希望答案的，但还是想到什么说什么，暗暗希望‘却道天凉好个秋’的心境纵使流年偷换也莫要真真兑现哦!

 

I’ve got a TV next door, which is something new in my life and it’s for the best. It’s faraway enough to not get unnecessarily addicted, and it’s also close enough for me to pop in at any time and enjoy my healthy dose of the outside world through this peepbox.

  My top two channels are BBC World News on Channel 5 and MTV Asia on Channel 22, and for obvious reasons: one is in English and the other in Chinese. Also consider that I somewhat care about the content, it’s all good. So I basically switch between the two whenever I am bored of what has been going on and on on either screen: overly analyzed news or terrifyingly dry tunes. But when my Lao housemates are around, our choices are wider: Lao news, Thai news (full of Bangkok protesters these days), old Hong Kong drama with Chinese subtitles but dubbed in Thai, or movies on HBO dubbed in Thai. However, after switching through all of those, we usually settle for the timeless Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network or Animal Planet (again in Thai, but I won’t oppose that!)—I mean, you don’t really language for that, do you?

And then there are channels that we almost never spend more than 5 seconds on: TV5Monde which speaks elegant Française, a German channel that my previous German housemate was thrilled about, a Vietnamese channel with endless game shows on a poorly designed stage, Australia Network which is in English but always manages to have uninteresting contents and History Channel, which again is all dubbed in overly dramatic Thai and disappointedly has all its extremely intriguing show previews in English…so here, this is what a cable TV in a Lao-Thai border town like Houay Xay can offer its audience. Consider how international it is, I must say it’s not bad at all—imagine you don’t speak a word of Swahili and that’s all you’ve got on TV. 

Since I’m back in Laos in August, I’ve taken advantage of this new Jipei-TV relationship, and the nature of this relationship has been, let’s say, nurturing. I watched all the Olympics I could no matter what the Thai network chose to air; I watched the flood down in Vientiane, hurricane in a deserted New Orleans and most recently watched (in horror) Sarah Palin’s hockey-mom celebrity on BBC, and man, how I am dying to watch the debate now!

After living TV-less-ly for ages, this new sudden exposure is not anything less of a personal world big-bang—because Man (or Woman!), this world looks so incredibly funny through my peepbox next door!--But wait, what’s the line I’ve heard somewhere sometime ago? “If all this life turns out to be a big joke, it is not funny, at all!”

余光中曾经写过一篇文章叫《从母亲到外遇》，有点‘骇人听闻’的名字，里头却是那枚小小思乡邮票的人间爱恨：他说于他这样的游子，大陆是母亲，台湾是妻子，美国是外遇。尚没有诗人那份中年的断肠，但这次又从‘现任’的老挝围城里突围到一年前匆匆一面就已一见钟情的泰国清迈，一杯Leo，跟一个相识不久现居清迈的同仁谈起这份从老挝隔河向望定期发作的‘出走情结’，才发觉其实清迈就好比一个温厚含蓄的情人，爱慕他的牢靠，他的多才，多彩，还有他对我各种脾性和欲望的包容或者纵容，甚至还可以触摸着他满身文化和宗教符号想入非非，以为可以就这样简单地让自己拥有信仰，然而他的软语轻言我只能勉强听懂，因为自己操的仍是另一口方言，他的过去和未来也似乎从来不是我们之间的话题，因为我因解忧而来，何必再添尘杂？然而那一见钟情却是真，这来来往往之间每次愈加熟络愈加亲昵也是真，而每次离开却是心境平和面带微笑，然后在无数后来的日子里油烟酱醋苦辣酸甜，有时候悠悠想他，知道他在那里不紧不慢地呼吸也已经满足，直到哪个机缘再次巧合，便有了下一次情牵。