DAY 412: Perhaps the most popular Laotian, at least in American pop culture, is the animated character Khan from the animated series King of the Hill, created by Mike Judge of Beavis and Butthead and Office Space fame. Khan and his family live in Texas surrounded by a quirky group of stereotypical Texans, and don't often see eye to eye. Laotian immigrant + Texas redneck = hilarity. In one of the first episodes, when Khan is introduced to main character Hank Hill and his beer-drinking friends, the dialogue goes like this:

Hank: So, are you Chinese or Japanese?
Khan (in thick Laotian accent): I live in California last twenty year, but first come from Laos.
Hank: Huh?
Khan: Laos. We Laotian.
Bill (Hank's friend): The ocean? What ocean?
Khan: We are Laotian. From Laos, stupid. It's a landlocked country in southeast Asia. It's between Vietnam and Thailand, okay? Population 4.7 million.
(Blank stares from Hank and company.)
Hank: So... are you Chinese or Japanese?
(Khan screams in a fit of anger and frustration.)

I suppose to the uninformed person, all Asians look the same and blend in with each other, and I suspected that with my Filipino skin and face I'd be able to blend into Laos when I arrived.

A ROOSTER CROWED, as one did almost every morning in northern Thailand signaling that it was still way to early for roosters to be awake crowing their heads off. In fiction, roosters always seem to be nature's alarm clock at the coming of sunrise, but in reality, they start hours ahead of schedule.

Day break finally came and I packed up my bags and joined Huyb, Markus and the rest, most of which were Dutch for some reason, for the complimentary breakfast and transport to the border post down the road. Exit formalities were a snap and soon we passed under the arch that read "Gateway to Indochina," and down to the riverbank where small slim ferryboats took us over the Mekong River into Laos. Entry formalities into Laos couldn't have been easier -- it was almost like checking into a hotel. Nearby the Lao flag waved proudly next to an old Soviet hammer and sickle; Lao is still Communist like neighboring China in the north.

A "slow boat" (picture above) was the preferred (and cheaper) option of cruising down the Mekong to the town of Luang Prabang, even though it would take two days to get there. The other option was the "speed boat," which would zip you there in a day in a small, and deafeningly loud boat with no legroom.

We arrived on time for our scheduled 10 a.m. departure on the slow boat, but nothing happened as we waited patiently on board for close to an hour. "This is really the slow boat," Huyb said. We waited and waited some more, so long that people just got off to stretch their legs and take pictures.

"What time are we supposed to arrive [at Pak Beng, the midway point]?" I asked Huyb. He pulled out his notes where he wrote down the intended schedule: 10h00 departure. Boat ride 6h. Arrive 17h00.

"That includes the one hour break."

"Did we take that break in the beginning?"

At 11:30 the captain got on board after registering his vessel with the river authorities, or just waking up, we weren't sure which. Finally the 80 or so of us were cruising downstream of the mighty Mekong. It was a long ride that was part relaxation (reading and writing), part discomfort (sitting or lying on wood for seven hours), part boredom (staring into space), part inspiration (staring into the beautiful scenery of rolling green hills and crazy river rock formations). We stopped for about twenty minutes at a fishing village with vendors who sold sodas, Pringles and Lay's along side village children calling out "Pineapple! Pineapple!" One boy spoke to me in Lao(?) and my suspicious of me blending in were solidifying into truth.

MORE SCENERY, MORE BOATS FLOATING BY. Right after dusk we arrived in the small town of Pak Beng, a village that strived on the nightly groups of people taking slow boats to Luang Prabang. There were just enough guesthouses in town to accommodate two boatloads. Huyb, Markus and I ended up in the Phonethip Guesthouse, run by a friendly woman named Sue who thought I was not Lao, but Thai. Wait, don't all southeast Asians look the same?

After settling in I ended up starting off my first night in Laos with Markus over the beer of Laos, named "Beerlao" for obvious reasons.

"Are you Thai?" the Laotian waiter asked me.

"No, American. But my parents are from the Philippines."

"Oh, Filipino," he said. "You look Thai."

"Thai? Not Lao?" I took off my glasses so he could get a better look.

"No, you look Thai. Not Lao," he said with confidence.

"I can see the difference in the Lao people," Markus said. "The darker skin and the nose is different."

"Really?"

He told me he read somewhere that there was an underlying conflict between Laotians and their neighboring Thai and Vietnamese and that if you befriended a Laotian, it was in fashion to get on his good side by poking fun at the Thais or Vietnamese. Khan of King of the Hill was right; Laos is its own thing, not to be confused with other Asian countries. If I was in the cartoon he'd probably get all pissed at me too.

Markus told me that he originally thought I might be Malay, but with my glasses he assumed I was European. Wow, European from Malay simply by putting on my big thick-framed glasses. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised; I mean, it worked for Superman's secret identity.

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