Having been in Cambodia with Sulky at the Europe-Asia Development Seminar, we flew together to Vientiane. Arriving at the airport was slightly surreal as it was about as busy as a rural English train station. We were picked up immediately by a friendly lady who I was later to learn was my ‘grandmother’ and we went for dinner.
The first night was uneventful but I felt an instant attraction to the city and its people. I had never been somewhere with so much, well, laziness. I loved it.
I started work straightaway at the office and was introduced to Shara and Irek, the Lao volunteers we would be working with. They were both national champions in Taekwondo, but you would never have guessed it from their placid natures.
A couple of slow days in the office were livened up by my finding out I lived right next door to the Lao-Korean College. I had an inkling there was a sizeable Korean presence in the city from the development projects and restaurants in the town centre. In the evening I dropped in for a chat.
Of course, none of the receptionists spoke Korean and the professors were busy. I took a number and went away slightly disappointed. Learning Korean would provide the perfect hobby while in Vientiane.
The next morning Shara answered the office phone and I was surprised to hear it was for me. Greeted with ‘yoboseyo’, I began a conversation with the Korean professor from the college. After 15 minutes the professor reverted to Lao and it was then I realised he thought I was a Laotian.
‘Odi-e-seo wasseoyo?’, he asked. I replied I was English and working here in Vientiane. Once his initial amusement had worn off – Koreans only need the slightest encouragement to laugh at foreigners – his brain went into hagwon mode:
‘Yeongeo-leul ka-leu-ch’i-go ship-eo?’
Although I’d already told Sulky I wouldn’t be doing any volunteer English teaching, I was all for the paid kind. And with that I became both a student and a teacher at Logos Academy. I then looked at the Professor’s business card I’d procured earlier and was disappointed to read ‘God is Love’.
Saucy Weavers
Back at the NGO, we were due for a visit to a local women’s weaver group based in a village for veterans of the Indochina War. My NGO was funding a microfinance project which was supposedly enabling these women to market their traditional skills.
The regional head of the UNDP from Zimbabwe via Bangkok was in attendance and the villagers did their best to display their skills. It was an impressive show, using all traditional weaving equipment and techniques. To see the blue dye made from fresh leaves in a matter of minutes was fascinating for industrialised eyes.
After taking us through their wares, the women invited us into their home for some dinner. It was a veritable feast of Lao sticky rice and fish. No one was left unsatisfied.
Towards the end of the dinner the conversation took an interesting turn as the women spoke of their use of Sulky’s herbal energy concoction. At first I wasn’t sure I was catching the translation right, but sure enough the women were sharing last night’s bedroom antics with one and all.
‘My husband took one sip and he was going all night. Ask any of the women here, we all experienced the same. Our husbands usually have no energy, but last night they couldn’t stop,’ the head weaver said with a beaming smile.
Luckily I was at the end of the feast and so no one could notice my childish giggling. Seemingly not to be outdone on the knicker action, Sulky then began to regale us with innuendo involving the UNDP economist beside her.
“George and I shared a hotel room, but I had to refuse him on the second night. Do you remember when we both went down to the meeting in the morning?’She asked
It wasn’t altogether clear why she had sought to outdo the weaver husbands’ sex drive, but Sulky was getting into her stride and even the weavers seemed uncomfortable now. Luckily, just as she began to share the lurid secrets of a Shanghai hotel room, the dessert was brought out.
After dinner there was still room left for some ant larvae on the ride home, to add to the frogs, baby birds and duck foetus I’d had so far on the trip. They weren’t too unpleasant, but once you’ve eaten live octopus everything is relative.
Breakfast, monks and torture
In the morning I went for a little jog and found a nice little restaurant that I thought might serve as a base for breakfasts and dinners. This feeling grew when the family greeted me in English and the brother came to sit down for a chat.
His name was Scot and he now lived in California. He was an estate agent there, but from tomorrow he would be a monk. He would live in the monastery for a week in memory of his father who had just passed away. He began to share some of his story.
At 16 years old, during US bombardment, he had grabbed an empty oil barrel and swam the Mekong to Thailand. He was swept downstream, but was saved by a Laotian jumping in to save him.
‘I didn’t know anything of politics at the time. I didn’t even know what the US was. I just knew we were being bombed and I needed to get to safety,’ he shared.
His time in Thailand was tough. 4 years were spent in prison, often under torture. When his freedom came he escaped to The Philippines for 6 months, before finally reaching California. After his ordeal it was not a surprise to learn he had nothing but praise for the US and its treatment of him.
He was now a successful estate agent in California, living amongst the many other Lao ex-pats. Meeting people like Scot always makes me thankful for the freedoms I am able to enjoy. I tried to draw analogies with my own life, but the nearest I could come to 4 years of teenage torture were the Spice Girls and acne.
I was invited to come and stay at the temple when I had some free time. Although I guessed the food there would be meagre compared to the feast enjoyed the day before, I was sure the conversation would be slightly more nutritious. I bade him farewell, never to meet him again. Yet.
