Amy carefully colouring in Dorian's red shorts and pink shirt.

Amy and Dorian conspiring on which colours to use for colouring in...

Exhibit A: Amy- Amy comes to us through Dorian's originality with red chilli hair and a collection of awards on her "I am your nanny from the 80s" t-shirt, such as self-hair cutters guild, ORONO, Cottonwood Gulch, Vientiane Defiant Cyclists Assosiations, etc.

Exhibit B: Dorian - caught in the middle of a belly-dancing move, Dorian's posture leaves a little to be desired and Team Lao is currently working on improving it! Watch out for the hockey sticks! and Dorian's shirt, which is INDEED pink. Nice hooves Dozza...

Exhibit C: Elona - All the times I had asked for another degree finally paid off, as the University of Tam Mak Hung (papaya salad) headed by Dorian and Amy, awarded me a Ph.D. in Condomology. Not bad for only 10 months of talking about sex and condoms non-stop.

the three life-size drawings now adorn a wall inside our house, to our mehban's chagrin...

onward to a description of the photos. IUCN ran a cool project related to non-timber forest products/improving marketing systems for bitter bamboo a while ago, and the office has been revisiting the field sites this year to gather some lessons/feedback from the experience on what worked and what didn't. a few weeks ago, i received my very own bag of bitter bamboo from the field team - the folks who work at our favorite friday post-work watering hole were quite interested in what in the world was in that bag, and in fact, asked, "what you got in that bag?" (for you, chaim. let's see you throw that into regular conversation) because bitter bamboo is a delicacy in vientiane.

after boiling the bamboo for about 40 minutes, peeling all of the layers off, and attempting to eat the wrong parts, i think we got it right - and it was pretty good - but definitely bitter. here are some photos:

we spent international women's day (8 March) celebrating, as elona, keeley (who was visiting from chiang mai) and i are all clearly international women. dorian and nik did their best to honor us on our special day. we traveled twenty something km outside vientiane to the buddha park to explore the sculptures and toss around a disc.

amy struggling to escape through the mouth of hell

elona smooching buddha

tossing a disc near the mekong, much to the amusement of everyone else at the buddha park

elona, our yoga teacher, mid pose

that's all for now! happy st. patrick's day!

we're fine, and on the lookout for anyone wearing dorian's belt. identifying feature? a crease that dorian claims he can identify. interesting.

the robbery set the stage (literally) for the theatrical display that was the "investigation". photographs were taken, fingerprints were dusted for and elona and i were able to educate members of our fine nation's police force about the existence/location of albania, and about the exchange rate for canadian currency (which, though it was easily accessible, was not stolen). interesting.

throughout the whole ordeal, elona and i kept saying, "man, i wish i had my camera!"

fast forward to january...i took about 2 weeks off of work to "discover halong bay", eat catfish spring rolls, check out houaphanh province, lose to dorian at mastermind and make fun of various ways of saying the word "potato".

here are some pics from that adventure:

ames and dozza on the deck of our halong bay boat.

at the other side of cat ba island after several hours of exploring on a motorbike. (translation: dorian driving, amy talking.) this was one of the highlights of the whole trip- drive ten minutes out of the touristy port area and suddenly you're in the rice fields, winding up and down mountains, past marshes and through ecotones.

amy in the corner of our cramped, cozy boat quarters.

dad, this one's for you. i'm not so sure i'd want to visit the dentist in hanoi...

hanoi traffic = madness

the army cave, viengxay, houaphanh province, back in lao. more than 1000 soldiers lived in this room- a mostly natural cave- during some or all of 1964-74, protecting the leaders of the lao people's revolutionary party during heavy american bombing

view from among the pathet lao caves

bomb crater at the plain of jars, xieng khouang province, most heavily bombed part of lao

plain of jars, site 3, i believe. dorian took several gorgeous photos during our trip - this is one of my favorites.

so that's a look at a bit of our trip. apologies for the delay in posting...can't believe that was already 2 months ago! currently vientiane is getting HOT. yesterday i'm pretty sure it was at least 100 degrees fahrenheit - and i hear it snowed in new mexico yesterday- crazy.

from all of us in ban nongbone, a special thank you to ted james for the endless entertainment we derive from www.chucknorrisfacts.com - for example, chuck norris always knows the exact location of carmen sandiego. help me out guys, in lao: chuck norris tuk tuk meu hu carmen sandiego yu sai (?!)

lucky for all of you, this event was documented by IUCN Lao staff, and thus, i have these pictures to share. there are way too many easy jokes to make about the whole arrangement - i mean, when do you get to play the world bank at anything? seriously though, the match was a lot of fun, and i met lots of great people on both sides of the above binary (though i must say, conservation and development don't have to be on opposite sides all the time...) the pictures are evidence of that.

this is the only photo of anyone actually playing, though the match did occur. (final score: world bank 4, conservation 1)

all of the participants:

after the match...

and here's a great picture of me and latsamay!

great fun was had by all...and rumor has it that we'll be forming a "real" green team in the future!

When that was done, we headed down to the riverside to buy even more banana-leaf boats, light even more candles, and send our sins floating away with them down the river. The next day, after the boat races, we escaped the crowds and headed for Xieng Kuang (Buddha Park) 25 km away. Here's Matt sitting in the "mouth" of Hell (the entrance to a giant, three-storey pumpkin-shaped sculpture in which, among other things, you can see scuplted skeletons being flayed by sculpted not-so-skeletons, and a stunning view over the Mekong...).

Gotta love Laos.

sunset from the top of phou si (spiritual center of lao pdr)

farming on the banks of the nam khan

amy on the boat

captain of our vessel
one of the highlights of our trip on the mekong was the floating gas station we visited to fill up the tank.

ryan on the boat (with a baguette)

mekong ("mother of all rivers") from the boat

one of the many wats in luang prabang

fantastic tree at one of the oldest wats in LP

more farming on the banks of the nam khan

mekong river

translation: i caught you a delicious bass.

(really, I fished big fish very tasty for you.)

our lao teacher must have no idea what to do with us: we collapsed into giggles on wednesday when we learned tiger (seua) and elephant (sang), mostly because we were thinking about ligers. ("it's only like my favorite animal ever. bred for its skills in magic.")

mae jao bpai hong hien.

bananas in our banana tree

elona and dorian like bananas

we have so many bananas!

Say hello to Sam.

amy lives here.

so far we can make kao-pia, tam mak hueng, lao dessert, sticky rice, fried morning glory...the possibilities are endless.

Sunday, August 21: Amy, Elona and Dorian make papaya salad at home with Lom and Xuchai, friends from PSI (Elona's work). Yum!

thank you for writing to our blog!

amy