Vientiane: I ate goat meat
It’s true.
I was walking down the street in Vang Vieng, and went into this local sundry shop. There was a family outside, eating a communal dinner. I couldn’t find what I was looking for (shower soap), and said “khop jai (thank you)” on my way out. But they motioned me over — about six people. The owner of the shop, Vong, could speak a little English, but the others… not so much. Anyway, they start thrusting some beer in my hand — filling a small glass, and motioning me to drink. And what am I going to do, refuse?
Apparently the custom in Laos for communal drinking is to fill the glass for everyone else around the table, one at a time. The bottles of Beerlao are pretty big, but if you divide it into small cups and then slug those cups down, you can get through each bottle pretty durned quick. So that’s what we did — there were a bunch of beer bottles, and one person would fill a glass, pass it to me, I’d drain it, they’d refill, pass it on to the next person, and so on, around the table. Then the next person fills for everyone else, etc. Good times.
And pretty soon, good drunk times.
Meanwhile, there was a platter of meat and noodles and mint leaves and lime leaves all spread out on the table. It smelled yummy. Vong and Vong’s wife kept motioning for me to have some. And everyone just kept digging into this one big plate with their hands, sooooo… when in Laos, right? I dive in and start grubbing on a few handfuls. And it’s quite good — a little boney, but moist and flavorful. So I ask what it is. Vong seems at a loss, and the rest of the table can’t find the word their looking for. Finally, they make the hand-motion, putting up their two forefingers and holding it up vertical next to their temples, like horns. “Ohhh,” I say, thinking they mean like a bull. “Cow? Like beef?”
“No no no…” says Vong. “Baaaa-aa-a-a-a.” And then they all echo his bleating. “Baaaa-aa-a-a-a.”
Right. Like a goat. But hey, it was good!
Vang Vieng is pretty ridiculously rad regardless. It is set in this river plain, with these huge limestone mountain karsts that provide a stark and scenic backdrop for great sunsets. The drive down from the mountains into the flatlands is so pretty —like Yosemite-level pretty. Just so scenic and grand.
The main thing to do in Vang Vieng is to go tubing down the Nam Song river — you rent a tube, then float for awhile till you reach the first bar. You stop, drink some Beerlao, jump off a giant zipline they have set up over the water, then float on down to the next bar, where they have an even bigger ropeswing set up… and so on. All day.
Yeah, it was so tough I did it twice.
Before that I was up at the Plain of Jars, which is, like, this plain, and it’s full of, like, jars. Right? Yeah, it’s actually the site of some mysterious stone jugs, or jars (if you will), that were created by nobody-knows-who, nobody-knows-how-long-ago for nobody-knows-what-reason. But they’re huge, and they’re carved out of large pieces of solid stone, and there are lots of them. After awhile, you’re like, “Okay, jars, got it.” But it’s still neat to see.
The Plain of Jars also turned out to be a strategic site during the Secret War waged in Laos during the Second Indochina War (or, as we Yanks like to call it, The Vietnam War). North Vietnam used it as a supply area, and the U.S. didn’t like that — hence, a “Secret” War. So you go to this mysterious archaeological site, and you see these strange 2,000-year-old (plus or minus) artifacts, spread out over this large area — and you also see gigantic craters where American bombs were dropped. Lots and lots of bombs. Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history. From 1964 until 1973, the U.S. dropped more than a half a ton of bombs for every man, woman and child living in Laos at the time. Or, the equivalent of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes around the clock for nine years.
This was thirty years ago. And now, you see a restaurant in Phonsavan — the town next to the Plain of Jars — called Craters, decorated with emptied-out bombshells. And now, you aren’t even allowed to go to whole areas of the country, because they haven’t been swept yet for UXO (unexploded ordinance).
And now, when I’m invited by a Lao family to join them for dinner, and I tell them I’m American, and Vong looks at me, looks me in the eye and says, “You American, and me Laos. No problem. No problem. Friends,” he says, and shakes my hand. Man, you know that’s something.
That’s really something.
Tags: goat, Laos, Plain of Jars, tube, Vang Vieng
ismateo
Matt,
You are a goat-eating diplomat. Keep giving us a better name.
They call it the “American War” in Vietnam.
So I would just tell people you are Canadian from know on. Especially if you head East from Laos. Cause my people no like your people – you are white devil goat eater man!