Lao airlines new website

I am seriously impressed with Lao Airlines' new website. They have a schedule of prices that represent the maximum price- why don't all the other airlines do this? I want to go to Laos next year and think I will be looking up the flights here and contacting my travel agent in Vientiane to make the booking.

http://www.laos-airlines.com/index.asp

Don't get Lao airlines mixed up with Lao Air as I nearly did. I tried to add Lao Air to Wikipedia last year, but couldn't work out how. Hopefully someone has put it on there already. Lao Air flies to the more remote provincial capitals only, ie Sam Neua, Phongsali and Sainyabouli. Their their only booking office is at the domestic airport and this airlines is not very well known. I did fly with them and are a bit unreliable because they rely on sight to fly and when it gets foggy, which it often does in the mountains, they can't fly. I showed up and the airport for the flight and it was closed and instead took at 24 hour bus trip home from Sam Neua to Vientiane.

Aria

October is good food month in Sydney. I always try to go out to one of the rated restaurants offering a lunch special in October and have never been disappointed. This year I chose to go to Aria by the Opera House and I really enjoyed the food, service and atmosphere there- a totally worthwhile experience.

We ate:

roast barramundi fillet with gamberetti and a pea and zucchini risotto

with a glass of 2007 Brown Brothers' Vermentino, Coopers' Pale Ale or San Pellegrino and tea or coffee at $35.00 per person.

The fish was very moist and the cheese flavoured, green risotto too. I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to one of the fancy hotels for the dessert specials this year, but there will always be next year!

Friends visiting from Laos

My Lao friends came to visit! A couple of people from my office in Laos came for a conference and leadership development training over four weeks for people with disabilities in the Asia Pacific region. I took my friends on the train because one of them had never been on a train before. I was pleased when a shiny new millenium train pulled up and not some old dirty one. We caught the train over the bridge to Chatswood where the hideous discount stores near the station are still 'closing down'. Sydney is not beautiful here. I took them out to have pho for the first time during their trip. While they eat this nearly everyday, they were missing rice- based dishes. They were complaining about the quantity of bread and sandwiches they had over the past week. The first thing my friend did was dump a huge quantity of chillis on top of his pho for flavour and energy.

They missed papapya salad so we went to a Thai restaurant, Saap Thai, that has north- eastern Thai dishes. They got a fix of sticky rice too. That's the thing I love about Sydney- the variety. My friends ordered in Thai language, and I agreed with them that we could have been in Thailand. The next night we managed to have kangaroo larp, Thai/ Lao spicy salad with a distinctly Australian touch. Crocodile Senior Thai on George St completely aced this. The chilli and snake beans went really well with the roo meat. I came up with this idea independently also, cooking kangaroo larp when I came home. My Lao friend said that when he read the email that I had cooked this roo larp he laughed out really loud! I reminded him there is one kangaroo in Laos in the zoo...

The next weekend I took my Lao friends to the beach. One of my friends had never seen the ocean or the beach in his 25 years. It was funny that his shoes got wet when the wave came in! Then we had a beer at Bondi Icebergs- what a beautiful spot! I had never been there before, but I liked it because of the unobstructed views, it's casual and you can watch people do ocean swims and surf.

It was great to see them and they promised they wouldn't forget me.

Triathlon Pink- my first triathlon

I participated in a triathlon for the first time in my life! I had lots of fun. Triathlon Pink was a women's only triathlon that raised money for breast cancer. It was held at Sydney's Olympic park. I liked the emphasis on being fun and participating. I did the longest event which was 300m swim, 9km bike ride, 3km run. There were about 1000 people that participated on the day over 4 events. They were great to give you a bit of coaching beforehand. It took a bit to get myself organised- I had to have my swim gear, biking gear and running gear.

The swim- I expected this to be my worst event but I ended up being ranked lower for the bike ride. I swam breast stroke for pretty much all the way- I wish I could've swam freestyle but I haven't been able to do that since I was an 11 year old kid. That's something to work on. It was fun getting to swim in that Olympic pool- I've never had the chance to do it before! I ran 250m to my bike and very quickly put on my clothes.

The bike ride- I had my bike seat really low- I had forgotton to adjust it after a mountain bike ride the week before. Something to remember for next time! I liked the bike ride, and didn't really go out too hard at all. I was so cruisy about it my ranking for this leg was the worst! I parked my bike and changed hats for the run.

The run- I felt hot and sticky in my swimmers- not a pleasant feeling! I ran all the way, but didn't really push myself too much. This ended up being my best event, even though I felt like I didn't do it very well.

Bring on the next triathlon!

Lao words

I've tried to make a list of Lao words that I came across which I thought were interesting because of their literal meanings. Some are just so logical which made it easy to learn the language.

Literal meaning translated to English- what the word means

Vicks tree- Gum tree
Clean plastic bag- condom
Chewing gum- foreigner's fruit
Understand- touch heart
Sour water- vinegar
Sour milk- yogurt
Flying boat- plane
Mother of water- river

The Kitchen play

I went to see this play which was a 2nd year NIDA production at the Parade Theatre. It is a play by Sir Arnold Wesker. I thought the play was ok but my friends didn't really like it but it would have helped if we had read the brochure and understood what it was about before we saw it. It is a play set in a kitchen of a big restaurant and looks into the lives and relationships of the workers. According to the director 'The Kitchen is a satiric portrait of the world which has its own unique hierarch and limitations... orignally the play reflected the social and racial tensions in London int he late 1950s...'

The set looked great, the acting was pretty good but my friends agreed that the actors needed to work on their foreign accents. I do recommend watching plays at NIDA. They're around $25 and it's good to see the upcoming talent. I saw the play 'Closer' a few years back and it was the best play I have ever seen.

Q&A- participating in democracy

I was in the studio audience of Q&A, a show on the ABC where you can question politicians and other public sector figures. I wasn't brave enough to ask the a question this time! The show is designed to demonstrate democracy in action. It's easy to be part of the studio audience. All you have to do is sign up on www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda . This is who I saw on the night:

• Waleed Aly, author, lawyer, academic and star of Salam Café on SBS
• Tony Abbott,Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services, Indigenous Affairs & the Voluntary Sector
• Maxine McKew, former broadcaster and nowParliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Child Care
• Margaret Fitzherbert,former adviser to the Howard Government, and author of a book on Liberal women
• Robert Manne, academic, author and former editor of Quadrant magazine.

Sydney running festival half- marathon

I decided to run this half- marathon (21.1km!) after doing the 14km City to Surf without too much of a problem. It was good that it got me getting fit and running- I don't think I've been for a run since! I also discovered there are good running tracks people have mapped on www.mapmyrun.com and www.sydneystriders.org.au. The race started at Milson's Point at 6:20am. It was good because there wasn't that many people, well, compared to City 2 Surf and I could park near the area and walk to the start. There was no drinking water that I could see at the start line, but it only took 15 minutes to wait in the line for the toilet.

I aimed to keep a constant pace to finish in 2hrs 15 minutes.

Start- 5km I crossed the start line about 3 minutes after the gun went off. I started running across the bridge. I could see a guy from Sydney Striders with a flag that said 2 hours that you can follow if you want, which I thought was a good idea. I wouldn't be able to keep up though. Pretty comfortable for the first 4km, enjoying the views.

5-10km- kept running and realised it would be a challenging pace to keep up the pace. I was generally 30 seconds within my split times for each kilometre. I could see the race leaders had turned around and were running back and it was good to see them and cheer them on.

10- 15km- I was okay until about km 15 when I touched the psychological barrier of running further than I had before in a race! I had thoughts of 'when will this end' and where I stopped running for a few of steps a couple of times, that is other than my drink breaks which I walked through. I started getting a bit behind on my split times around km 14-15 which got me down a bit.

15- 21km- I felt a bit of pain in the knees at km 15- 16 but I managed to ignore it after that. I wasted a bit of time having an energy gel and drinking a lot of water with it. At least I didn't fell so hungry after I ate it. I felt like ran the last 4 kilometres pretty hard but I don't think I actually went much faster. My heart rate sure went up. I was pretty happy when I got to the wharfs around the Rocks and happier when I saw the Opera house. Running on the planks of wood outside the Park Hyatt hurt my legs. I wasn't sure whether I would finish on my targeted time. I did eventually finish within the time I aimed for 2:14:12 which I was pleased with.

Then I got home and thankfully made it on time to my grandma's 91st birthday lunch at 11:30!