Road works

The road just up from our house.
You can see why road works are necessary.

This morning while Beni and I were eating breakfast I heard quite a lot of noise coming from out the front of the house, so I went half way up the stairs to look out the window that faces out the front to see what was going on. I'm pretty sure our landlord's family was out there filling in a big pothole right in front of our driveway!

Since we've been in Laos, we have seen what has seemed like almost constant road work on some of the smaller roads, like ours.  Our road is partially paved.  Maybe at one point it was fully paved.  Rain is a powerful thing though- and I'm fairly certain that over the years it's enough to simply wear away the pavement- especially when the earth around the pavement keeps moving too.  Also, when the roads do get paved, they aren't done as properly as they are back home- to hear Joel talk about it, the don't pack down the earth, they don't "box the road".  I don't know what these things mean... but I can get that it isn't done in a way that might last.  

So honestly, about once a week, we have seen huge trucks dumping loads of dirt and rocks in different places along the road.  Our road forks off of a larger road, and right at the fork, we've seen huge loads go down.  There are a few areas like this that were they at a steeper grade, are so full of deep potholes, that it could be a mogul run on a ski mountain! You can imagine, Little Blue doesn't have the easiest time of these potholes.  But, we make it.

The fixes in front of our house this morning... 

Another time we saw the men that live along our street, including the monks from the emerald Buddha temple, mixing cement in the street, and roughly patching up craters.  Some of the heartier women might have been involved there as well.

We've heard from BIL/SIL that their main road used to be in horrible shape, but that last year in November the whole road got paved.  It's a pretty good road now.  So, it will be interesting to see what happens when the rainy season ends.

The road in the other direction from
 our house... Not as bad, until just beyond
 the boy in orange where the groove across
 the road is deep enough to bottom out the car!

I've said this numerous times anyway... but, we arrived in the rainy season so for us, so far, this is what Laos is like.  Hot, frequent, hard rains, humid, and pretty rough road conditions with road repairs happening once a week. But, the rainy season is going to end in about a month... and then it won't be raining enough to wash away the road.  So maybe the road works will lessen?  Maybe they'll do a major repair (apparently the government isn't too bad about actually getting these things done....) and it'll last.  Who knows.  I guess we'll see.  It'll be interesting to see how our general impression of Laos changes as the rainy season comes to an end.