So today Goe, Maan and Pedro brought the log for the center-pillar of the new house. It looks quite impressive now and they are looking forward to build the roof. The last days I just prepared paint for the renovation of the house we built before, so the work was relaxed, but not very dramatic.
Goe, Gunnar (sorry Runar) and me are very proud to present the new bottle-straw-design, we made in the last two days. It is now the new eye-catcher after you open the front-door. Three meters high and two meters wide.
Pedro’s house is growing pretty fast! Goe from the Phoudindaeng village joined the building team. I am very happy with that. He was helping about two month, building our house last year. I think he is now the most skilled lao Mudhouse-constructor. Even if he has no idea about that!
Enjoy your weekends you lucky westeners!!
So we are back in the mud-pit! I arrived on the farm a week ago and everything is going on very well. The house is in a good shape. No severe damages and it will take about two weeks to finish it. After that, we will start to make the interior nice. I was thinking about an information point on mud-house-buildings downstairs, were it is still nice to hang out during the days. We will also build a place to cook on the terrace and even a herbal sauna is in discussion. Upstairs we moved in with five volunteers and we are enjoying the evenings on the balcony. Big sorry to Eddy the Railer. They had to enlarge the balcony and the roof to protect the walls from rain.
The house from the front right now with the huge new balcony. They had to remove the balcony-door because they needed to build another pillar. Soon I will plant banana-trees in front of that ugly wall. For sure.
The bath-room is about to be finished. It just needs a now coat of paint.
The interior upstairs:
We also started to build another mud-house. This one will be much smaller and round. The project is managed by Pedro from Spain and I help him everyday to get things started. After ten days we could could start yesterday with the brick-lane.
Sabaydee
So Eddy “the Plainer” also booked his flight for autumn. Great feeling. What exactly will be going on at the farm is in the discussion right now. Please join. Definately we will continue with working on the house, but I will do some research for my thesis too, what actually means that I want to spend a lot of time with the people in Phoudindaeng. I want to get an idea what it means to be young in Phoudindaeng right now. There are so many futures, expectations, constraints…
So whenever you have an idea about new building-hybrids or whatever, please let me know. There are many new ideas in my head. Something between these two examples from Marocco where I took these pictures last year:
5-Star-Hotel in Zagora pretending to be something like “traditional” or “authentic”. Fake-Mud seems to be cool.
DIY-Mudhut. One of the millions.
28th of september until 21st of december. What a strange feeling…….so please feel welcome everybody. We already have a home-base-house were we could starting building on new dreams. Hope to see you all.
I don’t really know what exactly is going on with the house, but I saw on some pictures from the last weeks that they are definately working on extending the balcony (for whatever reason).
Right now I am thinking about going back to Laos and probably to the farm. This time my focus would be on my thesis, but living in the house and working together on some smaller and shorter projects would be great. I’m thinking about october, november, december. Anybody interested to join? Any suggestions or wishes for a project?
What I will do there will probably have some connection to (action/grassroot/anarchist) anthropology in Lao PDR and development and/or tourism. Sounds funny yeah?
Greetings Peter
On the 16.12.07 I started to clean the place where Mr. Thi, his wife Peng Oan and me had decided where we want to build the new house. The only picture I have from the site what it looked like before we came. As you can see on the size of the picture, in these days I planed a much smaller house!
Sarah sent me a new picture that was taken about a month ago from about the same position:
The latest news say that after the first rainy season the house is abolutely alright. No severe damages approached, even after a heavy hurricane that damaged lots of houses in the village of Phoudindaeng. Still the house is not inhabitable for many different reasons. Probably I will go back the next year. Whoever would like to join, is more than welcome.
I know, I know, where are the pictures, videos and scandalous stories from the Mudhousehelpersreunionparty at the Oktoberfest. My plan is to work on that today. Also I got the latest news about the mud-house and farm. But please be kind. We are still recovering as you can see in Stefan’s case.
Today I found a video between some pictures Luland made last year in november. It shows how we made mud-bricks. When I uploaded it to Youtube I found another video.
Let’s see how we made the bricks:
And now please compare that to that unbelievable video called:
“LAOS – making bricks out of mud and clay”
Now I feel like an idiot! We definetely need developement aid from these guys. I have no idea were that video could be taken or when. Would be so interesting. I will try to get in touch with the guy who uploaded that video. Please no comments!!
Slowly we are getting serious! Wherever you are on that planet: Book your flights, start walking, swimming or tubing! A few days ago I got that picture from Gee. He said that he and Onkeo get packed to survive the tubing-trip to Munich.
Mojito-Girl commented a long time ago:
CRAZY HOUSE HELPERS 3-DAY-PARTY OKTOBERFEST 2008
WHEN: 29. SEPT TO 1. OCT
WHERE: MUNICH, BAVARIA-GERMANY
PLACES TO STAY: PETER AND ALEX
Everybody who wants to join please let me know…..you can send a email to me, aniedersteiner[at]web.de
HOPE TO SEE YOU IN MUNICH AND HAVE A BIG MASS BEER WITH YOU!!
Greetings from Alex ( Peters sister )
