Living Laos

I was looking through some old emails and came across this one from my very first trip to Laos, back in early 2007. I was on a visa run by myself and knew almost nothing about the place.  I had been in Vientiane for only a few days and had spent the the entire time in my hotel room because of a stomach bug. I was finally feeling ok and decided to hit the town.

I’m in Vientiane, Laos right now. It’s a neat city but the thing that sucks about it is that bars and clubs are required to close at 11:30 and in general, the entire city is shut down by 9:00. I read about a venue called the Chess Club, which is supposedly the venue for live music, playing an eclectic blend of Thai, Lao, and Western rock. One review I read of it says it doesn’t get busy until 9:00, so I left my hotel at around 8:15 figuring I could catch a taxi and get there in time to chill and have a beer before it gets packed.

I go to the taxi (actually tuk-tuk) stand where I’m told the Chess club is no longer open. These guys are all hustlers so who knows if they were telling the truth. “You want go nightclub discotheque?” At this point I say “sure” because I don’t feel like going back to my hotel and watching CNN International for 6 hours. Besides, I haven’t talked to any other foreigners for a while and I’m looking forward to some socializing. I negotiate the standard taxi fare of $1 and for some reason I get the driver who speaks no English. We drive for about five minutes to a spot on one of the main roads next to the Mekong. There are plenty of people and building around so I’m not scared, but I don’t see any clubs. The driver turns around and says “lay-dee.”

“Where’s the club?”

“Lay-dee”

“Where is the disco?”

At this point he motions for the taxi driver across the street to come over. “You want lady? Very beautiful, I have room.” WTF, does anyone actually agree to bang a chick without even seeing her? Maybe if I had just been released from prison or had been at sea for six months.

“No thanks. This guy was supposed to take me to a discotheque.”

“I can take you to disco.”

“Ok, 10,000 kip ($1)?”

“Ok.”

“You want marijuana? I have good stuff.”

“No thanks, it makes me nervous.”

“He wants 10,000 kip.”

“What? He didn’t take me where he was supposed to”

“He says he will take you for 20,000 kip.”

At this point I just say fuck it and go with the original driver. I didn’t want to have this guy pissed off at me, especially since he spends most of his day 50 feet from my hotel. We drive for five minutes to some kind of club. There are a bunch of signs for it so I assume it’s legit.

I go to the entrance, pay the cover of $1.50, get a ticket and show it to the bouncer. I walk through the door and there’s no one inside except for a few employees. The place is dark and fairly large with lots of tables and a few TVs. It looks like a cross between the clubs in “Blade” and “From Dusk Till Dawn” so at this point I’m 99% sure I’m going to be attacked by SE Asian vampires. I try to order a beer and after a lot of confusion I find out that my ticket is actually a drink voucher. I get a large bottle of Beerlao which is quite tasty and has a 99% market share in Laos.

I sit down at a table and start watching the karaoke videos on the TV screens. I’d be lying if I said I was enjoying the solitude and SE Asian pop music. Eventually people start filtering in, mostly girls. Everyone looks to be in their late teens and everyone drinks Beerlao despite other drinks being available. I’m the only one drinking from the bottle; everyone else pours theirs into glasses of ice. Soon the karaoke starts and I can’t help noticing that every video seems to be Western-themed. In between songs the DJ plays snippets of house music or US hiphop but this is unfortunately followed by more local pop.

The place starts filling up and I’m the only non-Lao person. A number of girls are staring at me and giggling. I smile back but I have no idea how to approach them in this situation. Every group is sitting at their own table and there doesn’t seem to be much mingling. I assume picking up a girl would be almost impossible because my hotel doesn’t allow visitors and I assume all these kids live with their parents.

Mercifully the karaoke ends and normal club music starts. Everyone seems to loosen up and starts dancing and mingling. One girl smiles and waves and I wave back. What to do next would be a no-brainer in the US, but I have no idea how to approach this here. I don’t even know if she understands English and unlike Thailand, I can’t get by by speaking basic Lao. It’s also illegal to sleep with a Lao woman who isn’t your wife ($500 fine). Five minutes later her and her friend come over to my table. We talk (actually yell) a bit. She asks me to dance, but once again my total incompetence in that area bites me in the ass and I have to turn her down. She soon excuses herself to join her friend.

I’m kind of bored so I go to the edge of the dance floor. Almost immediately a guy grabs me and tells him to come join his group of friends. He speaks good English and seems excited to be hanging out with an American. One of his cute friends who seems a little drunk immediately starts grinding on me. It’s times like this that I realize how lucky I am to be a white American male. The other girls in the group are eyeing me as well. One guy keeps yelling engrish into my ear and I have no idea what he’s saying. I keep saying things like “Sorry I do not understand. Too loud” to which he replies “usouths you sotauh oaeulchi America cpeu-rtuo.” The DJ keeps playing songs I would least expect to be popular in SE Asia. WTF? They know Lil John?

Soon it gets to be around 11:30 and these guys are leaving. I ask them if they’re hanging out or just going home but they don’t seem to understand what I’m asking. One guy is nice enough to give me a motorbike ride to my hotel. It’s now about 11:45 but there’s nothing else to do so I watch some TV for a while and go to bed.

I’ve spent the last six months in Thailand which is one of the main reasons I haven’t been updating this site as much as I’d like to. In the next few weeks I’ll be writing about contrasts between the two countries (short answer: Laos is better.)  Don’t worry, I’ll soon be returning to Vientiane.

As someone who likes to indulge in occasional chemical recreation, I thought this might be useful to similarly-minded people traveling to Thailand. Most of the gaps in my knowledge were filled in by a Bangkok-based expat I met here in Vientiane.

Non-fun drugs

This includes things like antibiotics, birth control pills, and insulin.

Just walk inside and ask for what you want. This is really nice because if you know you have strep throat or pink eye, you can buy some antibiotics or eye drops without the hassle of seeing a doctor first. If you ever have any stomach pains or diarrhea, immediately go to the pharmacist and take whatever they give you. There’s no reason to feel miserable for a few days when you can just spend $4 on some medicine.

Stimulants

Not gonna happen. No amphetamines, no Adderall, no Ritalin. I’m not sure about modafinil, not even the big pharmacies I went to had heard of it. Red Bull is really cheap, though.

Opiates

Also not gonna happen. I think you can get tablets with small amounts of codeine since the dose that suppresses coughs is far less than the recreational/pain relief dose. Taking 20 or 30 pills is way too degenerate for me and I’m also not a big fan of pain killers. All of my attempts at getting codeine cough syrup were unsuccessful.  You can get a prescription for morphine tablets but you have to be seriously, seriously fucked in order to qualify. My buddy’s  gf badly dislocated her arm and was in quite a lot of pain but the doctors would only give her Tylenol.  Tramadol though is completely legal and available over the counter with no hassle in any pharmacy.  It is quite pleasant and a bargain at 30-45 baht for a blister pack of 10.

Benzodiazapines (Benzos)

This includes drugs like Xanax and Valium. I don’t think they’re technically supposed to give them to you, but I’ve rarely had a problem.  No chain pharmacy will sell them to you though. I’m not really a fan, but they’re nice to occasionally chill out with on nights you don’t feel like drinking. I find xanax a useful occasional sleep aid. Addiction is possible with these and withdrawal is really nasty, so take it easy.

Steroids

If you meet me, you’ll realize this is obviously not my thing. From what I’ve read, they are completely legal but there are a lot of fakes.  If you really want some ‘roids, find somebody familiar with the bodybuilding scene (they should be easy enough to spot) and ask them to suggest a reputable pharmacy.

Possibly useful fact: all pharmacists speak good English. I assume this is because they often need to read information on dosage, side effects, interactions, etc that my only be available in English. If you need to directions or need to know where the nearest ATM is or something, stop into a pharmacy.

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Dave’s Travel Corner

Valium and Xanax are your friends for long journeys–Valium and Xanax are sedative-hypnotics in the benzodiazapine family. I didn’t even have to look that up. When you take them you will either fall asleep or drift into a pleasant daze. Either of these makes a long plane, bus, or rail trip infinitely more bearable. Most countries require a doctor’s prescription (or good connection) so don’t be an idiot and try to bring them across borders.

No one cares about your travel blog–By travel blog I mean a blog or series of emails where you provide pictures and long written descriptions of places you’ve been. It might hurt to hear this, but your family and friends will either be apathetic or bitterly jealous of your travels. Sure, there will be one person on the outer periphery of your circle of friends who seems really enthused, but let’s face it, there’s a reason you don’t hang out with her very much.

Here are some general travel tips I’ve picked up over the years. I’ve tried to avoid things that are well-known or just common sense.

Get the special meal–Have you ever been on a flight and wished you could get your food before everyone else? Well, you can either fly first class or request one of the special meal options when buying your ticket. If you select kosher, halal, low-sodium, etc., you get your food before they start passing out regular meals. I can’t understand why more people are not aware of this. My favorite is low-sodium because it comes with a packet of salt. I generally avoid kosher because I figure I’d have a hard time explaining that I’m not Jewish if the plane gets hijacked.

Get the more expensive bus–If there are two buses you can take from point A to point B, go with the more expensive option. The air-con, comfortable seats, on board bathroom, and lack of livestock are more than worth the extra $5.

Backpackers, leave the gadgets at home– I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a mistake many people seem to make. If you’re staying in a hostel (or anywhere else where security is a concern), don’t travel with a laptop, ipod, $700 camera, etc. You either have to haul all this shit wherever you go or worry about the very real prospect of it getting stolen. A good compromise would be bringing an iphone or ipod touch–it can play video and music as well as connect to the internet for email and other applications. The device is small enough to keep on you without any inconvenience. Internet cafes are everywhere in case you need to do any significant typing or upload pictures.

Digital cameras should be small and cheap–If photography is your hobby, by all means get a nice digital SLR. Otherwise, you want a camera that is compact so you can shove it in your pocket and relatively inexpensive so you won’t be heartbroken if you lose or break it. A small drop in image quality is a small price to pay for the pictures you’ll be getting from bars/clubs/boats/whatever. Besides, you can easily find pictures of landmarks that are 100x better than anything you could do.

I’m sure there will be additional travel tips as I think of them.