There's something about this picture that catches the eye more and more. It was taken at Songkran as the festivities started for the Laos New Year behind Dtock's parents' home. There are much more from the same day on my flickr site that (in my opinion) convey happiness and ease of human friendship without barrier or division, for no other reason, that was what was being celebrated that day. The ties around Bamboo's wrist are all symbolic of wishes of good luck for the coming year from family and friends. Bamboo has plenty of friends in Laos as he does in England, the only difference is that here they make him more of a star than they would anywhere else. My parents will concur.
The man is one of the many friendly neighbours living by Dtock's family home in Vientiane. He comes to get his hair straightened Malcolm X conk style by Dtock's sister Dtick. Can you imagine the emotion in this picture if it were one of my Mum's random neighbours on Ward Street in Hindley? It just wouldn't work.
It's obfuscating to fully comprehend what it means to have Dtock and Dylan Bamboo. This last week they have been away in Laos organising their passports, I've missed them, much more than I did when we lived in Bangkok (or so it feels now) and it seems to me that the older he gets the more I miss them. Apprehension grants the true and actual realisation of how much your parents must miss you when you decide to live on the opposite side of the world. I wonder if as you get older you become less needy as a parent, as a child does vice versa.
The fact that they are on their way back from Laos at all is nothing short of a miracle, apart from Bamboo's life threatening back flip off the bed the other week, how has Dtock managed to get Bamboo a passport from a country where it is illegal for natives to have sexual intercourse with foreigners (how did he manage not to land on his head?)? Albeit a draconian law and one there for the breaking, the fact that they have given him a passport contradicts the need to obtain governmental permission (and give them loads of dollars) to officially start a family. Asian bureaucracy is so senseless.
I was riding Dtock's bicycle after dark, looking at the surroundings thinking that here is so much more like Laos, it may as well be Laos but for a border imposed by the French and British. The way they talk, live, eat, shop, everything is laid back, easy, soft... apart from work that is, but that's another story that is just brewing and brewing and much the difference because the operation is riddled with Westerners who are so much different in every way... Anyway more of that subject will come later.
This is the first time I've blogged off the cuff for a long time, I hope it makes sense, I'm off to greet my family at the bus station on a very small LA Bicycle (made for a small one, but can fit two and a small growing child).
As an afternote, our neighbour's baby girl (a little older than Bamboo) is called Blueberry, so it's not just us who choose really cool names for our children, I can see it on a Ford Capri windscreen now, Bamboo & Blueberry 4EVA...
Take it East
