Week 18, Laos
JUST DON'T: shit on the train. That's the main lesson I'm taking away from southeast Asia. See, we can debate all day about whether or not squat toilets are good (I'll win: they're not) but they're generally a pretty minor part of the day. Unless we've just eaten a burning-hot papaya salad followed by something warm and squishy and milky and are stuck in snarling traffic in Bangkok, in which case the squat toilet may become the most important thing in our day - it may even become our makeshift home for the next few nights.
Edie likes them, for some obscure reason which I haven't yet determined (when she tries to tell me I stick my fingers in my ears and shout 'Lalala! Lalala! Not listening! Not listening!'). For me, the whole having-to-exercise-while-shitting rubs me the wrong way, as does the never-being-entirely-sure-whether-you've-got-yourself-aimed-over-the-bowl-rather-than,-say,-the-floor,-or-your-leg factor. But I deal with it.
But catching the train back from beautiful Vientiane, flush with our new visas ensuring us another three months of stressed-out bliss in Bangkok, I found myself running with exquisite fervour to the squats at the back of the carriage, where the hole opens directly on the tracks below. I lowered myself tactfully. Remember when I first described Thai trains several months ago as 'jangly'? Well, let's replace that with Beijing-earthquake-esque. The train tossed and turned like an insomniac, bouncing over each piece of track and jerking dramatically in wide zigzags. It was impossible to keep my ass still and I quickly became a garden sprinkler, a poo helicopter spreading the fruits of my labour in all directions.
I repeat: don't shit on the trains.
But we've got our visas. Like I said: nothing stands in the way of Destiny. Not only did we get the visas and keep our jobs, but a delay at the Thai Embassy dealt us five tough days of chilling out by the Mekong with a Beerlao in hand. Vientiane is a beautiful city - it perches on the Mekong, hugs right up to its banks. The buildings are low and spacious and from a third-storey bar you can see out across the rooftops of the entire city. And everything's so French: is it wrong to talk about colonialism like it was a good thing? Who cares: French food and culture mixes so well with the south-east Asian mindset that it's a match made in heaven. Waking up to fresh baguettes with poached eggs and wine and going to bed with a spicy-hot curry washed down with beer: surely this is the Universal Dream.
It's getting chock-full of tourists now, little Laos, but the people are still wonderful. And naive. In the centre of town is a massive monument based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris - it looks just like it, from a distance, though up close it's basically just blank concrete. The Laos call it 'the Vertical Runway' because the government used all the concrete that was supposed to go towards a runway for the airport, in its construction. The best thing about it, though, is the marketing: on the biggest and most tourist drawcard-y attraction in their town, the Laos have erected a plaque which says, among other things, 'From a closer distance it is even less impressive, like a monster of concrete'. Genius.
So, times were tough. We hired a motorbike ('that'll be $7, please), got a hotel room on the Mekong ('that'll be $6, please'), went for a herbal sauna ('that'll be $1, please') and massage ('that'll be $3, please') at the forest temple on the outskirts of town, and generally just toughed it out eating French food and drinking the Lao moonshine (called lao-lao) mixed with lemon juice and warm honey.
Vientiane's odd in the fact that there are almost zero beggars, absolutely zero child beggars, no touts, no mahouts walking their poor mistreated elephants about the town, few yaa baa addicts, and few prostitutes (in fact, it is illegal for a foreigner to sleep with a Lao without marriage or special dispensation from the police). Odd because it is by far the poorest country in the region, and odd because it's been a fact of life in Thailand, Cambodia, even (to a far, far, lesser extent) in Malaysia. Odd, also, because Laos has just the kind of burgeoning tourism scene that attracts alot of those people to the city. Maybe it happens up in Vang Vieng, where backpackers tube down the river from beer stall to beer stall. We'll wait and find out.
Everything's working out, now. We have visas; we have jobs. As of Tuesday, we've been paid our monthly wage and gotten our first new money into the bank accounts since March. So now we can look ahead. By the end of September, we will have left Bangkok to hit the long road north; by mid-October, we should have left Thailand altogether. And then? Laos, Vietnam, China perhaps? We haven't decided. But right now, everything's good. Hope everything's good with you.
Lachie
