Walking out of the Wattay airport was a little surprising. The airport has been renovated and updated since the last time I been there. One thing that does not change is the "stares" my sister and I got. As we're driving to Ban Kheun (outside of Vientiane) through Vientiane I notice that Vientiane has a lot more shops, more cars, more traffic and oh yes I noticed they have traffic lights (they didn't have that the last time). One thing I noticed which stayed the same was the way people drove there. It's like the lanes are invisible and people just go everywhere, motorcycles weaving through traffic like it's no big deal and cutting it so close to the bigger cars. It's about a half hour drive from Vientiane to Ban Kheun and we're exhausted but excited to see the rest of the family. Since the last time we were there people have gotten married, had kids and passed.
The house isn't as I remembered it, well maybe because it's a brand new house from when Grandma was still alive. Ok so when we walked into the house we saw all these people sitting there waiting for us to arrive, but one problem here folks...we didn't recognize anyone there. They all come surround us but not expecting us to be able to understand or speak any Laotian at all so they were doing hand signals and talking very slowly to us. Well to their surprise we're able to understand and speak very fluently. The one person we were excited about seeing was our Grandfather, who was in the bathroom when we got there and took forever (it's alright though). When he finally comes out of the bathroom he was yelling at everyone because there were too many people in his house and he finally realized that we had gotten there and he begins to cry. It got me choked up as well seeing him cry and hug us. Come on now you would get choked up too.
Ok so things are going well at this point with catching up with family members and seeing new ones as well. We're telling stories and people are asking us questions about ourselves and our family but there's only one thing that can spoil this little family reunion. What's that one thing? Well it's neighboring people that we've never met or have not seen in forever asking for money. Don't get me wrong we're not greedy people, we donate to charity (money & time for that fact), we sympathize with people who are less fortunate than us and we're giving people. The only thing is that it was our first day there, no sleep for about 3 days due to school, work & time change, and we were hungry. They could've let us eaten something first or taken a nap before bombarding us with their problems and asking for money. Anyone would be kinda cranky right about this point too, so we kinda blew some people off and acted like we didn't hear them. We're not MILLIONAIRES people!!!!
The village has changed a tremendous amount. Where there were little huts, now houses sit. It's like going back in time actually. The only thing that was a drastic change is the new road leading up to the Dan Savanh Casino. It seems like everyone there works at the casino in the mountains. There were brand new shops and it seems like every shop we stopped by someone knew one of our parents or were related to us one way or another. Jeez do we have that many people in our family that we spawned so many?
Waking up in the mornings is probably the most peaceful I've ever known. It's the kind of quiet calm that you know the day will go well. The air seems so much better than the air in the US, maybe because it's not as polluted. I walk to this little snack shop in the village every morning to get a Cafe Oleng, for those who don't know its equivalent to an ice coffee. It's probably the best ice coffee I've tasted...makes my mouth water just thinking about it. After having morning coffee you sit on the porch and watch the children get ready to go to school and take in the nice weather before the heat comes beaming down and people stop by to greet you as they're off. Mornings in Laos are the best memories.
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