Red wine, local transport, and spatial awareness (oh, and Geoff too).

God I love red wine. I'm in the capital of Lao (Vientiane) where it is plentiful and have just realised how much I have missed it over the past month and a half. Okay, I had my suspicions but they have now been confirmed. That's one thing you can say about the French. Get colonised by the British and you may end up with a decent infrastucture, telecommunication service and a reasonably competent police force but get colonised by the French and you get some nice red wine...oh, and some stylish villas too.

So...local transport is fun. A lot cheaper than the so called VIP coaches that run between all the main towns/cities/sights and usually less crowded. Though that wasn't the case when I went out top Buddha Park. On the way back some people were just getting it to get back into town but others were using it to transport goods there too. One woman got on and started loading up any available space with crates of Lao Beer, boxes of dried squid and sacks of chili powder and all I could think was, Wow, this would be an interesting crash should the bus go off the road...painful, but at least we wouldn't starve.

I have to say that thus far Thais and Laos have demonstrated a breathtaking lack of even the vaguest sense of spatial awareness that puts the admittedly spatially unaware folk of Britain to shame. You know how when you're walking around the streets of Brighton or wherever and someone just stops dead in the middle of the pavement without any thought to the people around them or stands and has a conversation while blocking a walkway or strolls along so slowly they start going backwards in time seemingly unaware of the fact that there might conceivably be people behind them and you get so frustrated you just want to crack them round the head with a cricket bat and keep beating them relentlessly while they are lying defenceless on the ground until they die from massive external injuries or drown internally in their own blood?
Well multiply that by a thousand and you will known what the situation is like in Southeast Asia. These people are naturally small. Do they therefore feel compelled to overcompensate by taking up more room? I haven't beaten anyone to death yet though. I'm waiting until I get Cambodia. I understand there are places you can go and pay to do that sort of thing.

I've got some great stuff for Geoff..A Half-Shark-Half-Octopus in Asia. Looking forward to starting work on that. I've already started planning out a few strips.