The Best Part of Chinese New Year?

I have scored! Like, the huge-est bigtime scored EVER!!! A miraculous score! It's like that time I found that HK$75,000.00 Chanel dress in a sample shop on Johnston Road, in my size too, for HK$300.00. Yup, you'd have thought that was a hand-of-god, once-in-a-lifetime score but, indeed, we've just had another one of those!

But to understand how much of a score I've just had, you need background: When we were setting up this flat, six years ago, I found a set of 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton bedsheets at Wing On Department Store, on sale for HK$500.00. Since I'd only previously read about 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton bedsheets, this seemed like a good opportunity to find out if they were worth all the hype, so I got a set.

And yes, they are everything they are meant to be, only, unfortunately, they raised the bar and set a new standard. From that very first sigh, as I slipped in between those sheets and life felt so good, I had to have these and no other so all my other sheets got the toss!

I tried to buy more sets but Wing On had no more and the only place in Hong Kong that sells them is Lane Crawford (think Hong Kong's Harrods) and there they cost over HK$5000. a set and I can't justify spending that amount on something so essentially - let's admit it - trivial!

So, it's six years later and those sheets have been the only ones used, washed every week at the Chinese laundry down the street, dropped off in the morning and picked up, dry and ironed in the afternoon, and just getting better and better, softer and more luxuriant with every wash. Amazing! Gorgeous! Wonderful! Worth every superlative! I cannot recommend them enough.

But six years! We asked a lot of those sheets and even though they delivered I thought it was time to give them a break and so, for the past month I've been trying to find another set for a reasonable price. No luck. I even wrote to Ex-Pat Online asking if anyone could help, and got lots of replies, all of which said I'd have to go up to China because I could only find them in a certain store (not all the same stores, I should mention) in Shenzhen. So I planned a trip up there next week, after the Chinese New Year rush is over.

And to this end, I asked Keith to ask one of his colleagues to write out the Chinese calligraphy for 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton bedsheet set, so I'd have something to flash around (N.B. my best tip for shopping in China, by the way: get someone to write down what you're after!)

And that's when this miracle started: he asked and she said "But you don't have to go to China to get them. Tell Denise they have them on sale right now at XXXXXX (you have to beg me for the name!)", so that's where I dragged Keith off to yesterday!

Well, it was amazing! Better than anything I could've expected.

First off, check this out:

If you're not impressed,
double-click to see properly!

As you can see, they're not 600 thread-count Egyptian cotton bedsheet sets. They are thousand thread-count Egyptian cotton bedsheet sets! The Platonic Ideal for bedsheets! And it isn't one set, it's four! And they're all mine. Life simply doesn't get better than this.

You think? But it does! They were only HK$300.00 a set. Shocking, huh! I said to the saleswoman "What's wrong with them?" and she said "Nothing. The Australian who owns this store is a foolish person!" OK, HAD to hear that story and it turns out that the store is run from Australia and the woman doesn't trust the Chinese so prices everything before it's sent over, and - can you believe it??? - she doesn't understand that the HK dollar is different from the Aussie dollar. The saleswoman said "We try many times to explain that HK dollar is worth 1/7th less than Australian money but she doesn't believe us and just thinks we're trying to cheat her."

I said "Someone that stupid doesn't deserve to stay in business." and she nodded and shrugged and said "We don't care anymore. We're on wages." Can you believe it? I mean, fancy not trusting the Cantonese, the world's best entrepreneurs, to know how to sell! And that a major part of being the world's best entrepreneurs is knowing that you aren't going to stay in business for long if you're anything less than scrupulously honest!

I said "You need to find out where she sources her stock so when she goes out of business, you can set up your own store!" and the lovely saleswoman looked at me with a real "Duh!" face, like I was waayyy behind her on that count!

Anyway, with such foolishness before me, how could I not take advantage of it, and so I got four sets thinking that would see me through the rest of my life ...

... but then, can you believe it, when I got to the counter to pay, thinking "This is such a score!" another saleswoman says "The New Year sales are on. All stock is discounted!"

I could scarcely breathe. "How much?" ...

"70%" off everything!" Boy, it was like ... no, I don't have the words to describe what I felt!

But immediately outside the store, a drummer started banging on the dragon drums and it felt so right!

And when the drummer, who was so good, turned out to be a tiny little boy, it felt like, indeed, it was a day for miracles!

The little drummer boy!
Already as good as any other I've heard!

Ahhh, life is good!

What Kills Us This Week!

As you know, Hong Kong is fond of bouts of mad panic! And every week it is over something new. Usually, yes, it's over something stupid, but every now and then they have something real to panic over.

This week? Well, get prepared to gasp in shock and horror!

This week, Hong Kong is in a mad panic because the Red Cap Sifu at Sik Yueng Sin Temple, at the stroke of midnight, in an ancient and revered New Year tradition, drew the fortune stick for the year 2009! Or, indeed, Year 2551 as it is in the Chinese calender ...

... and that stick was ... #27!

Yes, #27!

Do I hear sounds of horrified gasps?

Yes, folks, this is terrible, terrible news. Red Cap Sifu put the sacred windmill on his head and drew Hong Kong's fortune for 2009, and it was #27.

This is bad because the #27 fortune stick means "enormous financial crisis resulting in a clash between people and government".

Actually, I shouldn't be joking about this because, well, I already see it on the cards. Stuff is happening and people are grumbling because Our Donald is currently reneging on his promise to give us Democracy by 2017. He's already cancelled out on his promise for 2012 and we took it in fairly good spirit, but this time he's gone too far, and I feel, yes, there's a big clash coming on.

Of course, if it means a clash between The People and Hong Kong Legco, that's all good. Love Our Legco. We have Long Hair Leung in there representing us, The People, and he's forever throwing bananas at Beijing types, and yelling through his bullhorn and being all madcap and trouble-making and doing just the sort of things he should be doing since he's the only one in there speaking up for The People.

However, if it means a clash with Beijing!!! Mmmmhhhh! That's an entirely different kettle of sturgeons! In fact, it's so unpleasant, I don't even want to think about it!

So that's my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

Sticking windmills on your head!

Celebrating Chinese New Year.

Before I came to live in China, I always thought Chinese New Year was celebrated with fire crackers and hanging red lanterns.

Firecrackers and red lanterns.

And I wasn't entirely incorrect because they do indeed do those things ...

Festive decorations!

... but there's also a lot more I never knew about, so I thought you'd be interested in all the other stuff about how they do The Festive Season up in China:

Guangzhou Shopping District,
family gift-buying
two days before Golden Week.

Although they exchange gifts, China doesn't have a Santa Claus as such ...

This guy soooo doesn't get it!

... but lately they've chosen one of their own gods who vaguely fits the bill ...

Don't know his name!

... and adapted him to fill the function ...

Chinese Santa!

... and they now dress someone up to hand around the gifts.

Chinese New Year is also known as Spring Festival or Golden Week and the celebration lasts a full week and everything shuts down so folk can return home to their families. Yup, it's all about families, exchanging gifts, eating enormous meals and having Grandma tell you repeatedly the thousand ways you've disappointed her in the last twelve months.

Yes folks, the Chinese too have relatives who traditionally spoil every festive occasion, and so if the answer is "Jewish mothers, Irish fathers and Chinese grandmothers!", the question must be "Who ruins every family gathering with their endless carping, moaning, belittling and pestering?!

Golden Week hasn't yet started
and already he's looking slightly exasperated.

The gifts exchanged are usually gold, to represent the wealth you want to have in the upcoming year ... In this case, it's chocolate ...

But mandarins and oranges are also good.

Golden tokens.
It's a feng shui thing.

(Love this shot of "harried mum"
trying to get it all organised in time.)

... although this is now changing and they are becoming more Christmas Present-y.

Chinese also have a tree. In this case, it's a cherry blossom and you buy it with buds intact and decorate it with lai see - little red envelopes - that contain your wishes for the upcoming year, and then, over the course of the Golden Week, you watch flowers unfurl, representing the flowering of all your hopes and dreams. Nice, huh!

Cherry-blossom wish tree.

Like with Christmas trees, you usually buy wish trees from street vendors ...

Wish trees for sale.

... all trussed and furled, and you cart them home ...

Not as bulky as a fir tree!

... and decorate them there. Everyone in your household gets to write wishes and place them into the lai see, and sticking them onto the tree is a big festive moment in itself.

At hotels, guests can also do it.

You also spend the Golden Week dressed like Emperors, Empresses, Princesses and Princes, representing how you'd like to be treated the entire year. I have a lot of gorgeous photos of various families on outings dressed like this, but I can only find this one.

A celebrating family.

I must say I really didn't like seeing all these American multi-nationals trying to cash in on this tradition by introducing their own versions of "Princess" ...

American Princess!

... because China, with it's looonnnggg dynastic history has more than enough styles of "Princess" to be going along with ...

... but I did adore the spin on the tradition that this girl put onto it ...

Yo! You go, Girl!

It's also a tradition to usher in the New Year with healthy growing plants to represent what you want to see growing in your life. Mostly, these plants are gold, representing wealth.

This one has also become a wish-tree.

... and there's a huge rush for gold plants, particularly oranges and mandarin trees, in the days leading up to Golden Week.

You get these from street vendors too.

However, if you want to also grow your "prestige" the colour is purple, and therein lies the problem. Do you know how difficult it is to find gold plants and purple plants that actually look good together?

This combo sooo doesn't work!

I spent hours hiking the streets of Guangzhou looking at all the different potplant combos and all the ways folk had attempted to put the two colours together, trying to find a combination that actually worked. I should do a post on all the ways they got it wrong! (Yup, will do that tomorrow!)

However, this one is the closest anyone got to getting it right:

Doesn't this pop!

So let's hope that whoever has this good an eye for colour has a great deal of growing wealth and prestige in the upcoming Nui Year!

Chinese Border Crossing, Chinese New Year.

Well, well, well, who'da thunk it! You know how Hong Kong was in a wild panic about me going up to China during Chinese New Year, and it was all wild predictions of 6 million folk in the queue and other forms of death and doom?

Let me show you how it went:

THE FEARFUL CROSSING!!!!!

Getting There!

Hong Kong Side!

China Side!


Getting Back!

China Side!


Waiting Room!


Hong Kong Side!

And absolutely the worst thing that happened to me in the whole of the visit was this truly disgusting cup of tea:

Tea stewed for days,
served in a styrofoam cup with
melamine-on-the-side.

Vientiane, Laos. Again!

Finally got around to inserting my photographs into my blog on Vientiane. If you're interested in seeing them at last, here's the link:

Vientiane

And if that doesn't work, try a cut-and-paste of this:

http://travels-with-denise.blogspot.com/2008/12/vientiane-laos.html

Naturally, there are a zillion more snaps that aren't in there, and some of those are truly gorgeous, but, gosh, inserting photos is painful. It took about four hours to put in the ones I did, and now I have a sore and stiff neck and desperately need a massage, so am off.

Will be up in China over the rest of the week, so "Hung Hei Fat Choi" to all of you ... oh, and if you want to be all cross-cultural and witty, write "Happy Nui Year." to your Chinese friends. "Nui" is Cantonese for "Ox" and since 2009 is The Year of The Ox you'll be wishing them a great time for the entire twelve months.

Oh, and one more thing: if you read my post on Tung Chung Fort I talk about how it's disputed as to who built is, and how I needed to find a Chinese calender to solve the mystery. You'll recall how the date "1832" is carved into the fabric of the fort in calligraphy, but since that was before the British took over, it made no sense for it for the year 1832 to be the same as our 1832AD.

Well, I have since found it: according to the Chinese calender, 2009 is the year 2551AB, which means Tung Chung Fort was built in ... lordy, lordy, lordy, this means doing Maths! ... 1290??? Is that right? And since Northern China claims they built it in 1130 (from memory) that rules out that one out of contention.

But enough of this! Again, Hung Hei Fat Choi.

What Kills Us This Week!

I have to go up to China this week.

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "who would be so stupid as to go up to China during Chinese New Year, when over 100,000,000 folk are in transit, and 20 million cross over the borders!" Well, it's for work and I didn't realise the significance of the date when I agreed. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

This time last year, you'll recall, China had that sudden cold snap and all 100 million travellers were stranded and trapped someplace ... 3 million at Guangzhou Railway Station.

Guangzhou Station.

And here's the space they were all in:

3 million people trapped in this really quite small space. And you'll recall the various stampedes there that killed dozens in there?


And that's where I'll be passing through in just a few days.

And even if there isn't another cold snap, this lets you know how many people will be in front of me in the queue for Immigration. Let's just hope that there aren't any other Foreign Devils who will be so stupid as to go up there, and so Foreign Devil Queue will be empty. But then there'll be the taxi queue. OMG!!!

Anyway, the whole prospect is looming so grim it is starting to look like An Adventure.

I will definitely be blogging on the subject, so watch this space.

So that is my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

Chinese Borders during Chinese New Year.

Even if they are pretty!

And, although in an entirely different country, passing mention should be made of this:

It's the front page of Mackay newspaper; Mackay being a small town in North Queensland, in Australia:

THREATDOWN

OMG Headlines!

Scaffolding! For Richard!

Richard, honeybunny, to acknowledge - despite neither understanding nor appreciating - your strange and worrying interest in international methods of scaffolding, just for you I took photos of how they do it in Laos.

Not nearly as clever or careful
as our Hong Kong fellows, are they?

Just call me an Enabler! And, yes, I know because you told me, that there are a bunch of you who are interested and who share photographs, but ... isn't that what pornography is for?

And maybe you'd like to expand your interests a little. Ceilings are also good! Here are a few ceilings in Laos:

See how they stack those cement tiles?

And here's the same done in thatch:

Interesting?

Or what about seaweed drying in the sun:

Fascinating?
Maybe these could become swopcards!

No? Doesn't do it for you?

And when you send around these photos of Laos scaffolding, maybe you'd also like to pass around this link to Simon Baron Cohen's Asperger's Test:

http://www.piepalace.ca/blog/asperger-test-aq-test

And, by the way, I just did it myself and, well, I'm NOT Aspergic although ... 25 points ... mmmm! It does explain why I too get so deeply and profoundly fascinated with strange things ...

... although SCAFFOLDING!!! PUL-EASE!!!

Sacred Caves, however!!! Now those - THOSE! - are a worthy subject for a border-line Aspergic fascination!

Suzhou, China.

The Aitkensen's say they didn't go to Datong, so they didn't see Cloud Ridge Grotto with the 50,000+ Buddhas carved into the limestone, but they did visit a gorgeous temple in Suzhou built around the same period that they say was most interesting.

It's called Tiger Temple and here it is:

This is precisely why you
should always have photogenic
children with you when you travel.

Actually, I hate to say this and please don't tell the Aitkenson's but ... I'm a little over temples! Yes, I know I've been over Wats for years now, but I feel that temples are going that way too.

These days, it's CAVES!!! Sacred Caves!!! I want to see lots and lots of Sacred Caves. I want to go into deep, dark, secret places with booming echoes and ancient resonances and see giant carved golden statues looming out of the pitch blackness:

Pak Ou again!

I want to see mighty giant gold statutes flashing against pitch black of deep within the ground. I want to see sacred mixed with profane mixed with natural mixed with artifice, all done in a space that booms an ancient and primal echo.


But, you know, temples are good too. And Tiger Temple seems lovely, and I'm most grateful to the Aitkensons for sending me these and letting me blog them, and I'm sure you'd like to see more, so I'll show you more.

Especially this one, because it is seriously cool:

The Leaning Tower of Suzhou.

Endlessly cool place, China!
They have everything there.

In fact, that's something I find endlessly astonishing about China. Anything you talk about in the world that's amazing, someone always says "Oh, there's one of those in China, only ..."

Like when I was raving about Pak Ou Caves, right?, and I'm going "It's these amazing limestone caves with 6000 carved Buddhas." and the Chinese folk go "Oh, if you like that sort of thing, you need to see Datong Caves. They've got 51,000 Buddha's carved into the limestone."

OK, back to Caves again. Cheap shot! Sorry!

But temples, mmmm! Can't do it! Can't do it to you either. So no more shots of temples! Here's one of a horse in Suzhou instead:


And bridges! Those are different. Bridges I still find cool, so here are some splendid 1000 year old Chinese bridges the Aitkensons saw on their travels, also in Suzhou:



So thank you, Aitkensons, for letting me blog your gorgeous photos of Suzhou.

Have any more places you'd like me to blog about? What do you mean, you don't trust me anymore!

Datong, China.

Raving about Pak Ou Caves to everyone, people are now telling me about Datong Caves, up in Northern China near the Tibet border, where, so I'm told, there are over 51,000 Buddhas carved into the limestone.

This is obviously a place I have to know more about.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the place:

The Yungang Grottoes, or Cloud Ridge Caves (云岗石窟 yún gǎng shí kù）are a collection of shallow caves located 16 km west of Datong. There are over 50,000 carved images and statues of Buddhas and Boddhisatvas within these caves, ranging from 4 centimeters to 7 meters tall. Most of these icons are around 1000 years old.

OK, I'm sold. This is now on my travel agenda.

The Aitkensen's have just come back from a jaunt around Mainland China ...

The Aitkensens on The Great Wall.

... and I know Datong Caves were on their radar, although I don't know if they were also on their agenda. They are now in Paris - ahhh, what a life! - but the moment they get back I intend to find out all I can about their travels.

I may even blog about them, so watch this space.

You can take Kai Viti anyplace, sure,
but you can't expect them to
behave themselves.
The Aitkensens dancing on The Great Wall.

Laos Red Cross, Luang Prabang, Laos.

When Keith finally arrived at Luang Prabang, he insisted we have a massage at the Laos Red Cross. He'd been reading about them and knew this was their only source of income and that they desperately needed money to run their entire list of services ... but then we had the worst time ever trying to find the Red Cross Head Quarters.

There was a reason for that. Stupidly, for nearly two hours we wandered the length and breadth of Ban Wisunalat, getting sunburned and blistered and increasingly cross, looking for the Red Cross sign, not realising that the strange history of Laos meant it didn't have one.

To save you similar trouble,
here's the Laos Red Cross Head Quarters,
right opposite Wat Wisunalat.

Laos Red Cross doesn't use the Red Cross symbol because it isn't actually part of the International Red Cross Organisation. The Peoples Democratic Republic of Laos does not allow international aid agencies into the country because they strongly object to foreign interference, although other nations are allowed to send money. And, yes, only the Government itself is allowed to handle any international aid funding because only they, so they say, know what needs to be done in their country, and the less said about that the better.

The Laos Red Cross is actually a grassroots organisation, put together by good local people as an umbrella for the good works they do around the country. Needless to say, they get no funding from the government and so raise the money they need by giving massages and detoxes at their Head Quarters above. They charge more than elsewhere - Massage = US$30.00, Sauna and Detox = US$10.00 - but can you blame them; they have no other source of income and there is soooo much they have to do.

And they do it too. Although the International Red Cross isn't the same thing as the Laos Red Cross, the international body keeps a watchful eye on their activities and the upshot is that it endorses the Laos Red Cross totally, allowing it to continue to use its name and helping whenever and where ever it can.

The Laos Red Cross is also the only medical service in Laos - again an opportunity to castigate the French for not setting up a hospital system - despite or maybe because of the fact they have no "doctors". What they have is "Native Practitioners", and the name is such a blast from the past, I totally had to meet one.

You may already know this but I'll tell you again anyway: When Dr D.W. Hoodless took over the Fiji School of Medicine in Suva back in the 1920s, the commonly held view was that "natives lacked the fixity of purpose to become doctors" and even though, at FSM, Pacific Islanders did a full medical degree, as they had been since 1885, they were not permitted to call themselves doctors. Instead they were called "Native Practitioners".

Dr Hoodless rightfully found this outrageous and finally got rid of that stupid and petty-minded restriction by sending the best of his students (our late President Ratu Sir Kamesese Mara being one such) off to prestigious overseas universities (Canterbury University in New Zealand being the main, although Oxford University was also helpful in this regard.) to do further studies. And these "Native Practitioners", I'm proud to say, more than held their own, earning very prestigious second degrees, and thus, by sheer force of "the obvious", were finally permitted to call themselves Doctors.

So you can see why I was shocked to discover that, in this day and age, the world still had "Native Practitioners" and I really wanted to meet one in person and indeed I did and here's the very charming fellow himself:

Mr Sahi

Although Mr Sahi and I had no language in common, I decided to consult him: for six months I'd had a strange triangular patch of numbness on my left foot and no western doctor I'd seen about it either understood it or could do a thing about it, so I asked Mr Sahi, sitting right there as you can see him, explaining, mainly in mime, what and where the problem was. Without warning he stuck a finger into my leg, right beside the left kneecap, and an almost electrical volt shot through my body. Naturally I jumped. He then smiled and stuck an impossibly strong thumb into that same spot. The pain was unbearable, but when he lifted his thumb off, I felt tingling in the numb spot and then, for the first time in months, I got full feeling back.

And then he demonstrated a way of sitting that I must immediately give up and I thought "He's wrong. I don't sit like that." but I've since noticed that, whenever I watch TV, that's precisely how I sit. Mr Sahi nailed it precisely! I'd been hooking my heel around my knee for balance - our sofa is very narrow - and cut off the "chi" right down that meridian with the resulting numbness at the base of my big toe. Very clever fellow, Mr Sahi!

Mr Sahi is retired from his medical practice but volunteers his time to train locals in massage and detox, the two traditional Laos healing methods. And the Laos massage done here isn't at all like the Thai massage offered at the LP massage places; it's more like their own version of traditional Chinese acupressure, wherein they trace the meridians with their thumbs and stick a thumb deep into any spot where they feel a blockage.

I also consulted Mr Sahi when I came down with that strange malarial illness and this is precisely what he did; after giving me a herbal tissane to drink, he traced meridians to move around my chi, then made me drink lots of water and told me to go home and sleep, which I did, for fourteen hours straight. And, yes, I woke up the next morning feeling really, really good. He also told me, I think, that I should come back the next day for a herbal detox, but ... well, Keith was going on about how he didn't think a third world sauna was a place you wanted to be, what with heat and wet undoubtedly incubating huge cultures of truly hideous diseases. I listened to him, and, although Gerald would probably have agreed with Keith, I probably shouldn't have. I'd have liked to try a traditional Laos detox cure.

But what does Laos Red Cross do? Well, in addition to the usual, providing the full range of medical services, they have interesting projects, often taking up the most seemingly bizarre and idiosyncratic causes with rather startling results.

One example I particularly liked is their work among the Hmong hill-tribes. See, they all thought the Hmong were cretinously stupid and so, not hampered by even a smidgen of political correctness, got to wondering why that would be. On a hunch, they tested a group of hill-farmers and discovered they were seriously iodine deficient. Since iodine deficiency in the mother causes cretinism in the child, they then chose a sample group of pregnant Hmong women, feeding them varying amounts of iodine, and then monitoring the intelligence of their subsequent offspring ...

... and it turns out that they were right and all those "iodine kiddies" are bright as buttons; like, really, really, really smart. So now they give iodine tablets to all the pregnant Hmong and the kids are all wayyyy smart. Like my little friend here ...

My friend the souvenir seller.

... who saw me doing Killer Sudeko and asked me to teach her. It was astonishing how quickly she grasped the concept, but then she immediately wanted to properly figure out the answers (killer sudeko is the most difficult kind), so wanted to take my puzzle book away with her to work on it. I understood the need - my brain too desperately wants to solve puzzles - so, rather than surrendering the entire book, I ripped out several pages ... and for the rest of the day I kept coming across clusters of little Hmong kiddies, totally engrossed, trying to figure out what to put in each square.

These Hmong street-kids all speak great English, are literate and numerate despite very little education, and also are great fun, really enjoying getting to know the tourists and finding out as much as they can about the outside world. To this end they befriend everyone, using their souvenir-selling merely as a front. However, gorgeous as they are, they all have that strange and not quite pleasant air of knowing they are cleverer than everyone around them. They also have nothing real to do with all those "smarts", so I think this is something the Laos Red Cross didn't think through: why make kids so much smarter than their parents when there isn't a real education system in place for them to take advantage of nor anyone to encourage them to aspire to anything?

However, that's not really the fault of the Laos Red Cross who have, in fact, worked a miracle here and are not responsible for the rest of it. I guess it gives me just another chance to castigate the French for their lack of endeavour in setting up a proper infrastructures for the locals in their former colonies. And their current colonies too, by the way, as you can see in places like New Caledonia where there is still no education system for the locals and everyone who complains winds up dead!

Yes, I know I've said all this before, but it's something that can't be said enough! Neither can "Shame on you, France. Shame on you!" so please feel free to say that kind of thing yourself at every available opportunity! And if they say something like "Natives lack the fixity of purpose for education" feel free to throw Dr Hoodless's name into any resulting argument. Perhaps, if we all do it enough, the Colonial French will be shamed enough to finally put this right!

Mmmm, there's a dream!

But let's stop this pleasant and needful French-bashing and return to the Laos Red Cross:

It's a fabulous organisation doing amazing and needful things, so, whenever you're in Luang Prabang, make sure you go in there for a traditional Laos healing massage (US$30.00) and don't listen to Keith and try a herbal detox sauna (US$10.00) as well, and do this as often as you can, every day you're there, and then, later, when you're sitting in one of Luang Prabang's gorgeous little streetside cafes and get swarmed by friendly and clever little Hmong street-kids who quiz you about your life, home and country, smile to yourself and think "That's what I just paid for".

Laos Red Cross Head Quarters: opposite Wat Wisunalat, Ban Wisunalat.