The Vang Vieng Veg Part 2: Lao Women and Falaang Men
After a day of kickin’ back, hiking and caving I headed off to dinner and then on the walk back to the guest house came across a bar with a pool table. Well, it was really too early to go to bed and one of the guys playing was an Israeli that I had met several times in Viet Nam; the other was a Croatian guy i had met on the bus.
Naturally, I stopped by for a beer and a game or two. All well and good.
The Canadian couple I tubed with the day before also came in. It seems that a nice and relaxed evening would unfold. Soon afterwards, the older Swede gentleman (see the previous post) and his young Lao girlfriend also came in. Naturally, I went over to chat with them.
The Lao girl told me that her girlfriend was my waitress the day before, and then informed me that this girl thought i was nice.
There’s no accounting for taste these days.
She proceeded to call her friend on the phone – who just so happened to be right across the street. Before i could excuse myself and go back to playing pool, the other girl came in.
She looked all of 19, but said she was 26. She was quite beautiful. Within 2 minutes, it was made clear to me that she was mine for the asking. I now felt really weird, after all, I am a middle aged guy. Thankfully there were other folks I knew at the bar and was able to escape and continue to play pool for the time being.
The other folks all decided to go to this rave bar across the street. Being curious, and figuring that the old Swede and his entourage wouldn’t be interested in the other pub, I tagged along. I was right for only 15 minutes. The swede and the 2 Lao girls showed up and they were on a mission. At this pub, there was a camp fire to sit around and keep warm while drinking. Techno/rave/hip-hop young-european sort of music blared from large speakers. It was too much for the old swede and I hoped that he and his friends were all going to leave. And leave they did.
All was good and right in the world.
But the girls apparently insisted on coming back. My other new western friends were all giving me a lot of shit for the attention I was getting. The rest of the youngsters around the fire were also amused by it all. What they saw through their eyes was a skinny old man (the swede) who was long in the tooth, and white and sparse in hair, with this stunning dark-haired Lao girl. They also saw this other guy (yours truly) and old enough to be their father, who had this other very attractive young Lao woman paying too much attention to him. And then the Lao girls started drinking shots of tiger whiskey…fear and laothing [sic] in Vang Vieng.
By law, bars close down fairly early here and come time to leave and it was made very, very obvious that I should take the girl back to the guesthouse with me..and that she would be willing to hang with me for as long as I wanted, do what ever I wanted – even travel with me…
…and I really did nothing to encourage this all night. Well, aside from buying a few drinks…
Yikes.
It was all actually kinda funny. I quickly went around to some of the single guys I had been playing pool with – but couldn’t find anyone interested in tag-teaming for me. I was surprised by that because the girl was very good looking. What’s the matter with 20-somethings these days?
It came to the moment of truth and I explained (for about the 5th time during the course of the evening) that I had a wonderful girlfriend back home and wasn’t interested in her company. She got fairly upset, said a few words that I am very sure were her very best bad ones and then hit me in the chest and stormed off.
Much to the amusement of my pool-playing friends.
And that’s the story I’m sticking with…
Tags: lao, Travel, women
jpb