November 29, 2014
Looking for the real Laos: And finding the Beer Lao
The next morning our quartet of intrepid explorers cycled away from Nong Khiaw in the direction of the former royal capital Luang Prabang with a surprising level of enthusiasm. Lazy days would blight our progress no more. No longer were we to be held captive by tourist treats. Now we were out to further our investigations of the real Laos, far away from all that tourist claptrap. Well, at least until we got to Luang Prabang.
There were a great many Buddhist temples along the road, always intricately and imaginatively decorated with gold and other bright colours, and sometimes with monks wandering around in neon orange robes. The similarity in coloration between these traditional cloths and my own cheap Barcelona shirt had Dea making the inspired suggestion that in Luang Prabang, a place we imagined there to be a cornucopia of monks, we should invent a game called 'Spot the Chris!' whereby I would hide myself in amongst a crowd of the little Buddha-bashers and the resulting photograph would be akin to a very orange version of 'Where's the wally?' I thought it was a fantastic idea, naturally.
Our next finding on our quest for the 'real Laos' involved a crowd of men with large cocks. As usual I was trailing behind the others and I arrived to see Suzy and Dea very intrigued by the sight of this, and Dino of course had his camera out and was busy snapping photos of them. They were really going at it too! It was too much for me, I didn't like to see such acts taking place in public like that. There was even a small boy there, he shouldn't have to witness such things should he, and I watched sympathetically as he turned his head away from the disgusting cock-based entertainment.
A short while after cycling on from the fighting cocks and having accomplished a very impressive twenty kilometres we were all worn out and decided that the thing to do was to stop for a long lunch and regain our strength. As we looked out for a restaurant we saw a big building that had some beer advertising on it and, believing that it might be some sort of food and drink establishment, we stopped to make inquiries. A man outside told us that it was no such thing but he was so friendly and spoke with such excellent English that when he invited us in, saying that he could offer us beer and fish, we found it quite impossible to refuse.
We left our bikes outside and ducked into a dimly lit breeze block building that, though sparsely decorated, was evidently the home of many people. A crowd of men and women sat around a long wooden table and the four of us were encouraged to take our place around the end of this table. It appeared that the others had just eaten, but more food was soon prepared for us by a couple of women in the kitchen. The kitchen, in this case, being the dusty floor just next to the dining table. Soon fried eggs appeared and a big communal basket of sticky rice and the man that had invited us in, who went by the name of Nuan, showed us the correct way to eat such food - by rolling the sticky rice into a ball and dipping it into the egg, collecting more food with your free thumb as you do so. "But remember," he said, "no double-dipping and no finger-licking!"
A rather worrying and at the same time not entirely unwelcome addition to the food was the alcohol. It started with the Beer Lao, the national beer which appeared to have a complete monopoly over the Laos beer market, which was poured into glasses of ice for us. Every few minutes a toast would be made and we would all have to clink our glasses together and take a drink. Nuan and an old man opposite him, referred to as 'The Chief' were the protagonists of all of these toasts. The chief certainly liked his alcohol and soon started to look a little the worse for wear, but that didn't stop him from upping the ante and calling for us to all finish our drinks every now and then, at which point we would all take it in turns to down whatever remained in our glass. It was all very reminiscent of my student days.
In the midst of all this eating and drinking and musical entertainment we succeeded in talking with Nuan, a man that used to work in a 600-dollar-a-night hotel in Luang Prabang (hence his good English skills) and where he was paid 150-dollars-a-month. Now, like the monk that Dea and I had met a few days ago, he had moved home to look after his aging mother. He didn't seem to presently be doing a very good job of that though, because we soon found out that the building we were in now was not actually where Nuan lived, and we began to wonder how welcome we really were when we noticed that, aside from Nuan and The Chief, we were the only ones drinking. The other end of the table remained quite sober, even when the Lao-Lao appeared, Lao-Lao being a strong type of homemade rice wine of unknown but considerable alcohol content. Nuan encouraged us to take a shot and we obliged. "Now you have one eye," he told us, "you must drink another shot and then you have two eyes!" It was two o'clock in the afternoon.
Suzy, Dino, Dea and I consulted as to whether we should stay or go. If we were going to do anymore cycling we were certainly going to need to leave soon, the point of no return was fast approaching. Needless to say we went nowhere. I was having too much fun now. By the time I had myself two eyes, two legs and an arm we moved outside where I think we were all surprised to see it was still broad daylight. There was a big pond behind the house where the family bred fish for eating and selling and the fish that we were promised was soon grilled and served to us. Of course I abstained, and took the opportunity to learn more of the Lao language from Nuan, scribbling everything he told me furiously onto a piece of paper. With The Chief having gone to lie down somewhere I attempted to build some bridges with the rest of the family, and they seemed to appreciate my albeit quite slurred attempts to communicate with them in their own language.
What they may have appreciated less was my interfering with their baby chickens. The story goes like this: a dozen or more baby chicks had been placed beneath an overturned woven basket to keep them all in one place, but one of the chicks had been left outside in the garden by mistake. It appeared to us that this little chick was feeling quite lonely and wanted to return to the companionship of its siblings, because it kept running up and down the sides of the basket, looking for a way in. With Nuan's permission I took it upon myself to help this little chick by grabbing it, lifting up the basket, and throwing it in with the others. What my simple and perhaps mildly intoxicated mind had failed to anticipate was that when I lifted up the basket some of the other chicks might make a run for it, which of course they did. Suddenly there were two or three little chicks running away across the garden. I clumsily dashed after them and scooped them up at which point I was told that there was a hole in the top of the basket for putting the chicks in. I used this correct chick returning method, but there was still one chick on the loose, that I ran desperately after as it tried to hide beneath tables and chairs, until finally I got a hold of this one too and threw it back into captivity. Then I sat down, momentarily satisfied with myself, until I realised what I'd actually just done. No animal lover am I.
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Although Nuan had earlier suggested to us that we could sleep at this house, that invitation appeared to have been rescinded at some point during the course of the afternoon, for reasons not entirely clear to me. It didn't matter, he told us, for there was a guesthouse 500 metres up the road. Well that guesthouse turned out to be a bit further than that, and the 900 metres it took us to actually get there I could only define as some of the most difficult of the whole journey. Unlike the previous 34,000 kilometres I found during these 900 metres it was very tricky simply to keep my balance without the bicycle falling over and for some reason everything was much more blurry than it had ever been before. But we all made it and after checking in we followed Nuan to a restaurant for yet more food and, yes, alcohol. After we had indulged further and were thoroughly satisfied we said goodbye to a departing Nuan, thanked him for his great company and gave him some money to cover the costs of our extravagances. It had been a fun day, for sure, a long and eventful day in which we had certainly got to know the real Laos, the happy contentment in our souls a testament to that. It was dark, it was late, the stars twinkled overhead and we were all ready to head for our beds. "What time is it?" I asked. "Seven-thirty."
Today's ride: 21 km (13 miles)
Total: 34,313 km (21,308 miles)
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