Sandy Does Southeast Asia

After enduring one last unexpected goodbye to Mr. Man (which made three heartbreaking farewell hugs in as many days), I did what any self-respecting, red-blooded American female would do – I went shopping.

It started with a practical matter. I need an electric kettle if I’m going to shut myself up in my house and write for the next two months. I cannot write without coffee. I can barely write my own name without coffee let alone the brilliance I fully expect to produce in the coming months. Leave booze to other scribes, I personally believe the answer lies at the bottom of a coffee mug.

There are kettles at the main covered market in town but I had an accompanying list of things to get that defied my time or patience with Tassadej market stalls: mugs, plates, Western-style broom, dust pan, underwear, and socks. It could have taken years to find all these things at the market.

So I caught a tuk-tuk out to Tesco-Lotus. It’s basically like Wal-Mart and every time I go there I get a sharp slap upside the head that I actually live in Asia. It happens when I am doing something much like today – pushing my cart slowly up and down the aisles humming along to Christmas carols and spacing out on brightly colored packaging in a totally familiar consumerist environment – and then suddenly I look around and notice that everyone is Asian…and there is a strange language being spoken…and all the writing is in an unfamiliar script. I have lost the plot for a brief moment before it all comes rushing back and shocks me. This rather upsetting disconnect happens every single time I go to Tesco. I usually recover with a chili cheese dog from Dairy Queen (so. not. joking.). Thank god for multi-national fast-food corporations.

So anyway, there I am strolling slowly along the aisles, pondering the absurdity of the Christmas show I saw on the way in – with the cast grooving around on an outside stage in the blazing afternoon sun, wearing Joseph and Mary costumes and foot-long smiles, while singing traditional carols in Thai accompanied by electric guitar to a suspiciously enthusiastic audience. I have no idea what was going on but it was weird.

I’m thinking about this while looking at underwear. I already know, before I even enter the ladies department, that this part of the shopping expedition is going to be a problem. I blindly grab at a packet of extra-large panties, throw them in the cart, and try to pretend that didn’t just happen. Moving right along…

The clever bit of cross-cultural understanding I came to today is that dressing rooms are universally appalling. What sort of sadistic asshole invented those lights, anyway? I am going to spare you the details and leave it at this: not even the dazzling engineering feats of Thai bras can compensate for seeing oneself naked under dressing room lights when one has recently quit smoking and gained a teensy bit of weight and, due to certain ethnic variations in body type, has extra-fucking-large underwear beating like a tell-tale heart just outside the door in their shopping cart. Ah-hem.

As I busily – and a bit desperately – distracted myself with brooms, dust pans, and coffee mugs, I kept noticing a tall, foxy hipster Thai boy. Then I noticed his foxy hipster Thai girlfriend. We kept running into each other. He kept overtly checking me out. He smiled at me. I smiled back. I wondered if maybe…could this…ooh…could this work both ways?

I may have extra-large Thai underwear lurking in my (oh what’s the English word?) dresser but my relatively exotic cultural status and my fair skin must have some cache, right? If it works for my male compatriots, maybe it can work for me.

But I let the opportunity pass. I don’t mean to be a complete jerk here but what the hell would I do with a Thai boyfriend? Am I the sort of person who could be happy sharing my bed, let alone my life, with someone who doesn’t know who Steve Martin is? Simply put: No.

It’s important to accept these things about oneself. I will wear ‘extra-large’ underwear, I will drink instant coffee, I will eat chili cheese dogs with white processed cheese and watery chili, but I will not date someone who just looks at me blankly when I come out of the blue with one of my frequent non-sequiturs like, “Oh man, Toonces, the cat who could drive a car – how funny was that?”

Drawing this line in the sand may result in spending the rest of my life alone, wandering the aisles of international Wal-Marts and snickering at my own cultural in-jokes. But honestly, as long as it doesn’t involve dressing rooms, I’m fine with that.

It is impossible to be hungry or sober in Vientiane. In fact, I double-triple dare you to even try. I haven’t been anywhere near either state in the past 24 hours.

Last night Ben and I had a plan to meet in our lobby for dinner at 5:15pm. I was there at 5:14 and he arrived at 5:14 and 30 seconds. We were obviously equally eager for our evening feeding time. I like that.

We went to Nazim’s for an Indian dinner with some enjoyable dishes complimented by garlic nan and saffron rice, and washed down with a couple of Beerlaos that soon became about 10 Beerlaos. Oh you know how it is. You keep ordering 22 ounce bottles of beer that cost about 40 cents each, as you talk and reveal too much and tell each other your best stories and secrets and help each other decide what to do with the rest of your lives, and before you know it the table is so full of bottles that you have to take your show on the road, which may or may not involve throwing darts at balloons, peering into the murky central fountain and contemplating its midnight swimming potential, and drunkenly pontificating on life and literature and the relative merits of various national holidays, until you’re outlasted even the local layabouts.

I woke up this morning relatively unscathed. That was a surprise. On second thought, I was probably still drunk but anyway, I had an egg, ham and egg bagel at JoMa before setting out to the Thai embassy to apply for the visa. The process went smoothly but if you’re planning on doing it, don’t forget to bring along a photocopy of your passport because if you have to get it there, you’ll get fleeced.

I walked back from the embassy so I could get a look at a little bit of Vientiane outside the traveller’s ghetto by the river. I stopped at the morning market and got lost for a while. While it was good to get out and explore, I was also happy to land at my new favorite cafe – Vista – where I sat in the small courtyard that is shaded by a striped awning and protected from the street by a lush row of potted palms, and had a hot chocolate and a pastry.

Embarassingly, I went straight from the cafe to lunch at La Cave des Chateaux (aka French Awesome Snotty French Guy Restaurant on the map my friend Justin drew for me of places to eat in Vientiane). It was a great splurge. Althought this being Southeast Asia, a splurge means a huge three-course meal including a gorgeous steak and enough wine to ward off any looming threat of hangover, for under $10.

I had to stop eating temporarily to meet Ben at 4:05pm back at our hotel so we could make the trek to the Monument (an imposingly squat concrete Arc de Triumph-like structure that takes up a lot of space but doesn’t really work on any level).

The plan was to have a leisurely walk out there, climb to the top, and be there just in time to watch the sunset. We got to the top with plenty of time to spare but unfortunately a man came around just before 5pm announcing, “Closing.” So we more saw the sun get quite close to the horizon rather than watching an actual sunset. Whatev. That just meant I could start eating and drinking sooner. Which we did at a fourth story bar overlooking the Mekong. On the walk back, we decided that gin and tonics were just the thing after the long hot day and the long hot walk, and Ben had just the place in mind. So in the end, we did get to watch the sunset but it was even better, since it involved a) sitting down, b) cocktails, and c) papaya salad.

And that brings you up to date with everything that I’ve been eating and drinking over the past 24 hours. It’s probably a good thing we’re leaving Vientiane tomorrow or else this could get ugly. It is possible, so I’ve heard, to actually get too much of a good thing.

There are many ways to judge a city: how many good restaurants it has, what type of architecture dominates, the quality of its art and culture. But for me there's only one real criteria and that's how comforting it ... [Continue reading this entry]