Like every beautiful, alcoholic and verdant landlocked
country, Laos is a strange and delightful place. All the more so since it’s still
half-heartedly Communist while supplying every aspiring French café with
bootleg, week-old editions of Le Figaro.
In Southeast Asia one must take paradoxes (or merely oddities) with more than a
dash of salt. Preferably an espresso or lukewarm beer – something to give
another portly morning that extra oomph.
I came to Laos expecting (to see) what many foreigners do: a
gaggle of lazy-eyed prostitutes fending off gap-year Brits with opium-laced
rafters stitched to their pasty bottoms. Being low season, I was pleasantly
surprised when this was not the case. Of course, a multitude of other
stock-made images immediately come to mind: Tony Poe, Colonel Kurtz and a
dashing Catherine Deneuve all trading horses amidst a backdrop of (now) scooter-donning
Hmong chieftains. Again our hopes were dashed. Rather, we’d stumbled upon a
disjointed, mountainous kingdom of fog, buttered corn on the cob, colonial
nostalgia, fresh-baked croissants and creaking retrograde fans. A land where
shivers of a selectively forgotten past stoke the embers of an uncertain
future.
Entering the country is not dissimilar to entering El
Salvador from Guatemala – or so I’m guessing. After a rocky and sleepless 11-hour
ride in which you’ve exhausted both Elliot Smith and Chopin, at sunrise you arrive
at a roadside diner overlooking a mighty, murky, mirthless river to fill out
immigration forms in order to cross to the other side. As Apollo snorts into the haze, the elements bumble
a jig somewhere between fog and drizzle, that curious state you reach on a
humid hike at around 2,500 ft. anywhere north of the 50th parallel.
Short squat men in faded camo sit around sipping Lipton, sporting arms of
questionable efficacy and eyeing the cutish Belgian girl in the corner. A knockoff
Red and two flaming cups of instant coffee later and the viscous air verges
upon refreshing.
The river, of course, is the mighty Mekong, fabled giant of
every colonial imagination from Burmese and Han to Frog, Yank and beyond. On
the receding side, the delightfully placid, slow walking, curry-munching Thais,
content to scream Tuk-Tuk at random intervals between bouts of staring at the sun.
On the other side, mystical Laotians, mountain recluse and hilltop folk of
Fabien fantasy, calm and welcoming, chipper and cherub-like – as evidenced in
their currency if nothing else. Depending on the hour, they may subscribe to your creed or simply chuckle and
light another Qionghua.
As you may have surmised, they are by and large a delightful people.
Beyond the border our first port of entry was Vientiane, the
country’s disproportionately underwhelming capital (a jaunt to Bangkok, Yangon
or even Jefferson City will attest to this). While I wasn’t necessarily expecting expansive slums
and Stalinist stadiums of post-1970s sultanic standards, the 2-3 mildly
templish government blocks that line the main boulevard were hardly enough to
conjure the feel of éminence
bureaucratique, much less justify the 50-odd UNDP-plated SUVs permanently
stationed out front – but that, I suppose, is a matter for the American
taxpayer, not I.
A quick 10-minute walk around town reveals an odd
combination of cheaply built but freshly painted temples, newly constructed if
poorly designed guesthouses, crumbling souvenir shops and a generous smattering
of chic French cafés. Indeed, Vientiane has a higher per capita of
establishments pushing La vache qui rit
than anywhere south of 14th street – or west of the English Channel for
that matter. (Even the street carts stock it).
Though the mildly cosmopolitan bent is impressive, it is
also bizarre; whereas in Hong Kong – or Tokyo, Peoria or Sacramento – we
usually socially (self) segregate the profitable from the charitable, the civil
servant from the banker, the preacher from the lawyer, the bougie expat from
the moderately privileged backpacker/sex tourist/average-Joe-I’m-45-and-teach-in-a-Thai-village
pervert – but we do not in Vientiane. Whether you’re there to irrigate rivers,
convert the hill tribes, find gold or simply fool around with 15-year olds,
chances are you’re having your pain au
chocolat in the same establishment as the a) well-meaning NGO girl from
Maine b) less well-meaning if not malicious lonely older drunk from Texas and
c) aspiring Greco-French restaurateur Skype-dictating in the corner. Which I
suppose says more about size than moral quality of a city, but still.
My first night in town I was accosted both to and from
dinner. It was drizzling again so I swiped the collapsing green umbrella from
the guesthouse and stole off toward the village center, a 5-7 minute walk from
the crumbling corner mansion I was staying in north of town. Chancing upon the
first boulevard, I hear the screeching of tires and a rapidly advancing jeer: “Ahhhhh!
Meeeesta! You wann dees? I know you wann dees! Don’t play me fool!” An
admittedly not unattractive – if still intimidating – creature of the night had
pulled up alongside me in a souped-up scooter, wearing nothing but jean shorts
and a black bra. Though creeping along at 5mph, she managed to rev the engine
every 10 feet or so. It was 8:15pm and raining on a Tuesday night. “What you
way-ding for?! Get on the bike, stoopid boy!” I nervously chuckled and ran
across the street, dashing between a Tuk-Tuk and a 4x4 for cover. I turned back
to see if she was still there, as Moses might the Egyptians (…I could think of
no better analogy): there she was, circling in her scooter, screaming epithets
and feigning anger.
When I left the restaurant 45 minutes later she was waiting
around the corner. She kicked the engine into full gear as I made for the
boulevard. I took the first alleyway and jogged toward my guesthouse. A number
of other gangly adolescent girls now emerged from several doorways, stilettos
and skirt to boot. The scooter dame lost interest when reached the doorway and
made my way inside.
In the lobby I met a friendly older Texan with a very strong
lisp. He was drunk and very affectionate toward his local companion, a short,
squat maiden no more than a decade younger; it was refreshing to see a
Westerner with someone more than half his age. Though he’d been negotiating the
cost of what wasn’t meant to be a ‘love-chamber’ for several minutes, he was
still of a cheery disposition (and still would have been without the spirits from
what I could tell). Chancing upon him upstairs an hour later, I rhetorically
asked him how he was doing. “Living the dream!” he beamed, without an ounce of
irony. Whatever the circumstances, there was something simple and sweet about
his candor.
Upstairs I grabbed a bottle of beer settled down to read
Hobsbawn. The alcoholic Frenchmen I’d met earlier that day reemerged to ask the
time. Or the year, I cannot recall. If he had reeked of booze at 3 in the
afternoon, the odor had crystallized into a sad, hard stench by 9pm. Having
given him the hour, he asked about the internet connection – or perhaps it was
the baseball score; he was clearly keen on making a new companion at whatever
the cost. Since he could barely muster a sentence in English, I poured him a glass
of beer and asked about his curious ‘Vancouver’ accent, his acclaimed place of
residency.
He too had now been wandering Thailand for the past ten
years, living off the proceeds of a healthy inheritance and popping over to
Laos when it suited him. In another life he’d been a polytechnicien tax attorney – or so the story goes – but had bought
out the firm he worked for the moment the hereditament came in the post. After transferring
to the firm’s PR wing for a few years – bright lights, big guts and boozy
dinners – he threw in the towel and made for the East. A mostly friendly
character, by this point he could barely put a sentence together in English or in
French. When I asked if he wanted another cup of beer, he disappeared into his
room and came back with a clear unmarked bottle of something much stronger.
We stayed up late smoking too many cigarettes. I should have
escaped with my book, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to savor the cliché:
the second floor veranda of a crumbling colonial mansion on a rainy night with
a weather-beaten, washed-up frog from a storied French family; the
prodigal son who at least appeared to
have reached middle age – though in all likelihood couldn’t be older than 35.
When I came back with another bottle of Laos beer, a creature of the night
emerged from around the corner, smiled, and disappeared around the bend as
quickly as she had appeared. Caught off guard, we each began to wonder if our
hotel had more secrets than the ‘book’ – that dastardly Lonely Planet! – had advertised.
My retired companion chuckled and began to reminisce about his own new momentary friend from
the previous evening.
Ten minutes later another whore came around the bend. This
time we couldn’t contain our bemusement: just what was happening a matter of feet from our bedroom door? The old
house, a labyrinth of sinking corridors and fading portraits, was clearly home
to more than croissant- and café-seeking goons. I looked up and confusedly smiled as
the second lady of the night sauntered past. She smiled, kissed her two fingers
and pressed them to my forehead before disappearing, like the other, around the
corner and into the night.
