Laos – The Land of Smiles pt.1
// February 25th, 2008 // Uncategorized
Let me welcome you to “Laos, the Land of Smiles”. Not always the nicest smiles, not an abundance of teeth here in Laos it seems, but earnest enthusiastic smiles none the less. You have to laugh when you see farangs (their word for foreigners) handing out sweets to children on the bus, delivering a final sugary deathblow to whatever rotting teeth they did have.
Laos people are the most friendly of any country I’ve been too, I’m going to guess ever as I don’t have a good enough memory to compare them with the other 21 countries I’ve been too (I counted for a who’s traveled the most contest with Annett the other day).
I guess many of you will have never heard of Laos, thats okay I hadn’t either before stumbling upon it on a map before the trip, there nestled snuggly between Thailand and Vietnam. Here’s the basics:
1. It borders Cambodia at the bottom, Thailand to the left and Vietnam to the right. Its been open for Tourism for approx 10 years. Its seperated from Thailand by the huge Maekong river. Here you can see Annett sitting on the banks of Thailand looking across the river at Laos.
So close you could throw a stone across. Wouldn’t reach. But you could still throw it.
2. There are no Mcdonalds here (woohoo)!
3. The Capital is Vientaine. Its the capital because it has more fat, bald ex-pats on mopeds per capita than any other city (I think a measurement criteria borrowed from Thailand). Once the other cities here (of which there are only 5 or 6, and I use city liberally as they are in fact, towns) become more developed they too will have a thriving fat western on moped population making you fearful to cross the road (hurry capitalism hurry).
4. Its famous for absolutely nothing. This provides it pleasant shelter from stereotyping, pigeonholing, prejudice and more fat western men on mopeds. Its a little gem of a country. I think eventually when it comes out of beta it will be famous for its people, who are incredibly hospitable. They’re also unaware or unwilling to view westerners as walking atms which makes it a pleasure to travel here.
Right now as I write this I’m sitting at a wooden bar, behind a wooden table, on a wooden chair (smelling a theme yet?), with a sleeping (non-wooden) cat on my lap who won’t leave me alone no matter how much disinterest I show him. I’m looking out across overflowing greenery towards the corner of the wooden bungalow that Annett is sleeping in. All of these things were built by a mental but entertaining, rambling Irishman called Jo. Jo in a former life before settling here and marrying a Laos woman was (you might not be surprised to hear) a Ozzy Osbourne Impersonator Carpenter. Now he’s a mental former carpenter with an entirely wooden hostel, which I guess is a good sort of mental. Checkout one of his story gems:
Well we had this dog “Bobby Dog”, which was our other dog “Bobbys” son, we don’t really go in for naming dogs here like. So, well there was two dogs Bobby and Bobby Dog. Bobby Dog started fucking wandering around in the daytime away from this place [the hostel]. Well anyway I knew where she was hanging around and she used to come back in the evenings. Then one day he didn’t come back so I went over the fucking Sunset Tree restaurant where I knew she was hanging about and begging for food and I’ve said to them yeah
Wheres Bobby dog?
And they’ve said well we started hanging round and begging more and more, a bit more boisterously, you know nose in crotch and all that fucking business. So, they killed and ate him.
I tell you this story firstly because I found his deadpan delivery of it pretty hilarious, secondly because I know it will stop my dog samaritan sister sleeping at night and thats the sort of nasty brother I am. But the main reason I’m repeating that stories from amongst the other mountain of story gems we’ve heard in Laos is because it nicely highlights one thing Laos doesn’t have – rules.
More on that in pt.2 tomorrow.
Possibly related, hopefully entertaining other posts:
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samakomlao
