Étienne, you awake?

(Keep in mind, these are from my Lao notebook)

Every time I start a day with Ken asking me through the bamboo door: "Étienne, you wanna go somewhere with me today?" I know it's going to be a good day.

Today we went to the neighbor island of Don Son to bring 8 bags of rice to the rice mill.

I had never been there and was amazed at it's difference from Don Det, being a short swim away from one another. Simpler (even more) living, smaller trails (no roads), no guesthouses or western-style restaurants. It was also much cleaner.

Our first stop was to eat some "feuh" (delicious noodle soup, also usually the cheapest food available) and we then watched the mill work a little bit. We were there at 1 pm so it was already a very hot day... time for a swim!

Me and Arron jumped in the river and started playing with 3 kids under the watchful eye of their mother (you never know what kind of foreigner you'll get). After 20 minutes of that I decided to walk up to the mother to introduce myself, show her I was the respectful kind of tourist (I realised on the spot that I was not wearing a shirt, which is usually kind of impolite).

As I was buying myself a snack in a tiny store installed in front of the woman's house, a Lao man in his 20s walked past me. I had learned "Kim Beer Bo?" a few days ago (loosely translated to "Want to eat beer?" so I asked him and he said yes with a smile.

As I am grabbing 2 cans of Angkor beer (finally a change from Beerlao!) in the mini-fridge, about 6 kids arrived. I guess the word got out that a farang was in town. I bought them all a little bag of chips and had my beers with the Lao man and the mother.

After this there was no more getting away from the kids. Me and Arron proceeded to spin them around for about 40 minutes. We got hot again so we went back in the river and started throwing the kids around. One of them was a little dare-devil so I threw him as high and far as I possibly could and in mid-air he looked back at me and gave me two thumbs up, smiling wide!

An hour or so of this later, me and Arron are pretty much exhausted. We got out of the water to get dry when the ice cream man drove by with his scooter. You can recognise them because they have a metal coolbox built on top of their motorbike! Me and the kids all ran up to him yelling the word for ice cream (that I since forgot) and I bought about 15 pop sicles for all the little guys and gals - not sure if it cost me over 2 dollars.

By that time the mill had done it's work. We waved everyone goodbye, woke up Ken and got back on our boat towards Don Det.

It's one of my favourite memories of my 6 months of travels.

       The Don Son Kids (click for video)

Dédié à Jessica, c'était cool de finalement rencontrer ta fille! 

Don Det Notes, Continued

With my last post, Bière de Route (Road Beer) blog just went past 7,000 views! I would celebrate with a Lao-Lao shot...

I was supposed to call Ken today at 8pm (8am one day in the future for him) but Skype wouldn't open... Bo pa nyan.

Without wasting further time:

Friendship Bracelets

When you do something nice for someone here in Laos, they tie a little colourful string bracelet to your wrist as a way to say thank you. I noticed that trend in Cambodia too, to a lesser degree. I really like the concept.

I got my first bracelet (pink) in Angkor Wat after praying to a Buddha statue and making a donation. A Cambodian woman, all smiles, grabbed my arm before I could leave and tied skillfully the string while chanting softly.

I got a head rush from the sheer spirituality.

During my Bolivan plateau loop I stayed in a bungalow by the side of a small, quiet river. The place was very clean and calm and left a nice impression on me.

When I checked out at reception (a desk under a bamboo roof) the next morning I took the time to thank the staff for their welcome and told them how nice their place was.

The lady seemed very happy with my remark: she let out a very american "awwwww", grabbed a small straw pot hanging from the ceiling, reached inside and produced 3 bracelets, 2 bright yellow and 1 half yellow and half brown, which she tied softly to my wrist. She then joined her hands together to her chin and said a cheerful "Kup Chaï Laï Laï" (Thank you very much) to which I replied by joining my hands together up to my nose - the respectful height for a salute to someone older than you - and repeating my best Kup Chaï... they apparently don't have a word for "You're welcome".

I think the mother of the family actually makes them herself and to me it makes them even more significant and symbolic.

I received a lot of those bracelets while attending Don Det parties and weddings (there seemed to be one every week) and sometimes had to take them off because they were tied too loosely. At some point Ken remarked that I was starting to have a lot of them and compared me to Manni, a man from England that had been on the island for 2 years and was pretty much running Happy Bar.

"Have you seen Manni's arms? He has so many friends! So much time for so much friends".

On my last day on Don Det I was eating at the neighbors' restaurant (which had become tradition since I was feeling guilty at making Ban cook for me during her ever-rare time off) when I announced to them that I was leaving. The mother of the family seemed very sad and gave me another 3 bracelets and we took family pictures. The eldest daughter came to me and talked very softly in Lao for a minute - the grandma seemed intent on us getting wed one day - and the kids all laughed.

4 days ago I cut loose my bracelets. I was still carrying most of them to the point where I have a paler spot on my wrist where they were. I had to cut them because I got a new job dishwashing at a friend's bar and I didn't want them to get ruined by the constant water.

They had been a constant reminder of my good times now past and the ones to come as I sometimes struggle to get up in the morning.

Don Det life: Soulith and a visit to the druid

When I moved out of my parents' place a month ago I forgot to bring my little Laos schoolbook with me.

I was with my dad today so I got to grab it.

So, as is tradition:

More on Soulith, the massage master

It is now clear to me that Soulith is completely deaf.

In the first month of my Don Det life I was afflicted with a crippling leg cramp. I was like I had a baseball lodged inside my left shin and it hurt like fuck, to the point where I couldn't walk anymore.

I had taken muscle relaxants, minerals, I even paid a visit to the village druid and applied a potion on my leg made of grinded roots, bark, rocks and seashells - to no avail.

That visit is worth its own footnote: Ken grabbed his neighbor's scooterbike and I hopped on as we drove accross the island to the next one, Don Khon. We drove through the monastery lands and parked under a house that was built behind the actual temple. We climbed wooden stairs to the 2nd floor where directly in front of us was a bed frame with no mattress. Sleeping on it was a Lao man that must have been about 80 years old. I mean, 80-years-of-working-rice-fields-old. We woke him up and Ken explained the ordeal with my leg, which he touched and felt and squeezed for a minute, not once caring about my tattoos. He then turned around and looked through a few bedsheet bundles that were laying under his bed and pulled one out, opened it. Inside were hundreds of pieces of plants and rocks and animals. He handed a pot and a grinding stone to Ken and instructed him on how much to grind of each ingredient, which he then mixed with water and poured down a plastic bottle that he ended over to me. His payment: 2 Beerlao. One for me and Ken, and one for him. As we were leaving one of his 80-years-of-hard-hard-living-old friends showed up with home-made Lao-Lao which we had to stay and take a few shots of. Best. Druid. Ever.

Back to the bar, as I was taking a 1-meter-an-hour trip to the bathroom Soulith happened by. His first reaction was to laugh - Laos Classic, more on that in another text - but then he looked worried and pointed at my leg.

I grabbed my shin, made my hand into a fist and then knocked on a tree. Soulith understood, pointed at his wrist where a watch would be, and showed me 5 o'clock by spreading his hand open.

I smiled and thanked him by joining my hands together.

He returned at 5 with a pot to make a fire which he used to warm up some banana leaves. He then proceeded to massage the cramp out of my leg with the hot leaves and worked the cramp out of my muscles with his iron-hard fingers, forcing me to endure one of the worst pains I have ever felt, if not THE worst pain.

After the session - which took place right on the floor of the bar with clients looking on - I had to sit back and concentrate on staying calm while my teeth were actually shaking.

The next he day he returned for session #2, this time adding chants and rituals, one of them involving dropping hot candle wax on specific parts of my legs, and spitting water on me in a fine mist.

After THAT session which got me an amazing headache, I thanked him by giving him a 100,000 kip note (his regular massage fee was 35,000 kip but I had been getting them for free for a while) and went to bed.

The next morning Ken said that I should stop the treatments as he doesn't like to see me feeling pain like that and so when Soulith showed up at 5 o'clock on the dot I declined with a smile.

He laughed and left, returning a minute later with a Beerlao that he insisted we'd share.

He did this for 10 days straight. I would be serving tables or talking with someone when I would notice him sitting silently at a table with a Beerlao open and he wouldn't touch it until I joined him.

The price locals pay for a Beerlao is 10,000 kips. I gave him a 100,000. So, he spent the whole thing buying beer that he would share with me.

I was walking 3 days after the second massage.

Sandy and A Little Break

Don Det: The Lost Chronicles Double Header



Sandy

Sandy is a female dog the color of sand who is currently pregnant with what looks like 6 or 7 puppies. She's huge.

She smiles.

You call her name and she actually smiles. She lowers her ears horizontally and squints her eyes manga-style, and her tail wags so hard her whole body swings from side to side.

In the morning we get on our little boat to go to Nagasan (the mainland) where the market is. Sandy always willingly comes along. She hopes on the boat and sits at the front, sniffing the air.

Only, we don't take her back. She makes her own way to Don Det. Sometimes it takes a day, sometimes a few hours. Sometimes she's all happy, sometimes she's dead tired and covered in mud.

I really want to write a children's book about her adventures.

With dimensional travelling and left-wing propaganda.

Awesome Picture by Anthony Toussaint 

A Little Break

I've been fortunate enough to meet two really cool Argentinas (Florencia and Melissa) while "working" at One More Bar and after 10 days of hangouts they invited me to join them on their Bolivan Plateau motorbike tour (a little area in southern Laos sprinkled with waterfalls. You rent a motorbike and do a loop of the villages in 2-3 days and it's awesome).

This required us to stay one night in Pakse, a little town north of my new lieu de residence, Don Det.

I'm telling you this detail because as I arrived there I had to cross a street during very very light traffic and I literally froze. There was one car driving very slowly on the street and I waited until it was completely gone before I stepped on the pavement.

It then occurred to me that I did not have to do watch for cars for a month and a half. In fact I can count on my hands the number of times I've seen a car in the last six weeks.

I was then assaulted by thoughts of me having a mental breakdown in the middle of downtown Montréal a week after I came back (for the record, it did not happen, but then again, I've avoided downtown so far).

The next day we reached Paksong and it was so cold, we had to stop and buy warmer clothes. Florencia was always speeding ahead on her little scooter so we lost her but me and Melissa thought we should stop for the night and wait for her to realise we were not following her any more.

We stopped at a little store installed in the front room of someone's house, what would pass as a thrift store back home. The owner was trying to sell me a girl's hoodie. I was outside trying it on outside when the group of 6 young Laos men drinking on the terasse next door stared laughing at me really hard. I started laughing too and went back inside when I realised it was not for my sex.

I instead bough an army jacket I found lying under a pile of pyjama pants. The dudes showed their approval for it by laughing again while shooting me the thumbs up and then invited me over for a glass of Beerlao. I drank a few down with them as Melissa was finishing her shopping. I pretended to leave but instead I went to get Melissa and bought a bottle of beer sneakily. 

When I returned with a woman and a bottle of beer they all started laughing and cheering and suddenly we had 6 new friends.

Genuine laughter ensued despite the language barrier.

Single women traveling, Beerlao, Random Conversations

Don Det, The Lost Chronicles

It's pretty cool to work in a bar, let alone a bar in a communist country on an island standing in the middle of the Mekong.

We only serve one kind of beer: Beerlao. I am also only aware of 3 types of beer from Laos, so it's not like you're missing out. The other two are Dark Beerlao, and Namkhong Beer.

This lack of alcoholic diversity is offset by the fact that the bar is situated in the middle of the fucking Mekong, close to the Cambodian border.

Don Det is the place to go if you want to relax from all the moving around that comes with travelling (local buses, VIP buses, city buses, trains, skytrains, taxis, tuk-tuks, the list goes on) and for some of you, the hard drugs abuse. Consequently, I meet a lot of people who stay for a week instead of a day.

No drugs besides natural marijuana on Don Det. A curfew at 11pm makes sure the night doesn't last for ever everywhere on the island, so if you're not sleeping close to the beach, chances are you'll have a quiet day and a good night of sleep.

Since most of the people that stop by are back-packers (older or calmer travellers go to Don Khon instead), these individuals are also quite different from each other and my evenings are usually entertaining.

From a successful 33-year old Argentinian businesswoman in a mid-life crisis exploring life and the world, to a heroin addict running from the Cambodian police, to a traumatized German dude confused about what to do with his friend who is turning skyzo in front of his eyes because of drugs from Cambodia, to a Swedish drinking-machine (people petrol!) obsessed with tubing, to a sexy Dominican stuck in a love triangle, to a 50-year old Breton man enjoying his beer with a broad smile every night at 8pm, to a Japanese woman with the cleanest dreads I have ever seen who has watched every single anime ever who ended up staying on the island for 4 months...

That was just in one week.

I miss you all, you lunatics, goofballs, misfits and soldiers of awesomeness...

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