Ethical Dilemmas in Laos

We arrived in Luang Prabang at night, after a liver-bludgeoning bus ride that included four separate breakdowns. We were hungry, tired and not at all in the mood to bargain hunt in a new town, at night, hiking through dark alleys that funneled the cold mountain air into assaulting wind tunnels.

We found Chanthanome by accident, stumbling across a group discussion in the middle of a crowded intersection between a small crowd of tourists and a guesthouse employee. We had already been rejected from three places with no vacancy and agreed without hesitation to follow this guy through the twisting grid of brick alleys to the brightly lit but thoroughly barren looking mini-hotel.

Chan was waiting for us when we stepped through the threshold. At first glance I took him to be the owner’s son, working for the family during the off hours from school. He is short even by Laotian standards, topping off somewhere in the 4’10” range. He has a wispy little cat-hair moustache, like the smear of dirt my parents asked me to start shaving when I was thirteen. In high school we called them spic-staches, after the look favored by the large population of teenage Latin Americans we sat next to in class.

But Chan is the manager of the hotel. After he gives us our room key, he gives us The Speech before we can unload our packs. I’m barely listening, foggy thoughts about fish curry keep popping into my head as I stare at the tiny man with the huge smile. His eyes have a indefinite crinkled look, his facial muscles seem permanently flexed into a grin.

As manager, it’s Chan’s job to make sure the hotel makes money. The guy from the intersection who led us here seemed to do a fine job of recruiting, but I can see from how many pairs of shoes were piled up outside the doorway that there aren’t many people staying here this weekend. As of now there are two.

But Chan really wants to make more money, this much is obvious. The problem is that he is too sheepish and nice to ruthlessly go after it. His guesthouse is hidden in a tiny corner of the busiest, most commercial section of town – down a side street and through an easy-to-miss alley. To boost his presence he asks his guests to help. More than that, he simply tells everyone who steps through the door how awesome the establishment is. You can get anything here; it’s a great value. But we’ve already paid for a night in a double room. We aren’t the ones who need convincing. But lacking the sack to stand on the street and confront the strangers, he rewards himself by delivering his sales pitch to people who no longer care.

For five full minutes he pins us to the wall with daggers of sound. It’s impossible to interrupt. He has the kind of smile you’d like to see on a nephew, an entirely innocent broadcast of earnestness. He also has a voracious appetite for head nods, and peppers his speech with these jittery affirmative motions. Every time he finishes a particularly consequential point, he carries himself to the next valuable premise with a quick vertical jerk. They come like rapid fire

“We have HBO” Check!

“Hot water in every room” Bam!

“Free WiFi.” Noted.

We’re saved by the phone ringing, and as soon as he answers we make a bolt for the door and escape back into the night to try and find dinner. Asking Chan for a recommendation is out of the question. Maybe this wasn’t the best choice. We were desperate for a place to rest, no questions asked, and we managed to stumble into an empty building home to an Asian hobbit with whose entire conversational capacity seems to be shaking his head through run-on sentences until he runs out of breath.

But now that we’re here, we pass in front of him at his desk two or three times every day. After the second day I begin to notice a change. The smile isn’t set in stone. When I walk through the lobby unannounced he still flashes the beautiful grin, but there is a hesitation, a moment of readying when his eyes tell a different story. He is sad. I can’t bring myself to ask why; I just want to escape to breakfast.

But Chan maintains an indelible appetite for conversation. Like clockwork, he pokes his head out from behind the computer screen in a shadowy corner to ask our plans. Characteristically we don’t have plans for tomorrow. We don’t even have plans for tonight.

No matter! He knows so many things to do. He reverts to checklist mode, falling into the same unassailable verbal onslaught: We could rent motorbikes and go see the waterfall. We could get a tuk-tuk driver to bring us to the rope swing. If we’re thinking about leaving Luang Prabang, he’s got that covered too. “I can get you bus ticket cheaper than travel agent,” he practically screams at us. His smile never wavers. He’s too unfalteringly earnest and fearlessly helpful. And he wants to get that cash. I see these two sides of the coin every time we talk. The one small bit of bad manages to taint the small mental portrait I’ve been painting. 

“We were thinking of taking a trip to a more rural area, further north.” We had planned on trying to squeeze in a concentrated blast of wildery northern Laos. On the list were Phongsali, Luang Nam Tha and Bokeo districts. The only thing that stopped us the thought of another soul crushing bus ride – at least 9 hours each way.

“I think you should go to Udomaxi Province.” He points to it on the map, it hugs Luang Prabang province to the north and east. “That’s where I am from. It’s very beautiful.” He’s building up a head of steam, getting excited; he starts doing the little-kid-jumping-from-foot-to-foot thing. “You can see many villages and lots of forest,” he starts. “And waterfalls. You can go to my village. My village is very beautiful, and you walk, maybe hour walk. See beautiful waterfall. No tourists go there.”

I admit that it sounds pretty cool, and close by, another plus. He watches me working out the details; he nods the entire time. His excitement is palpable enough to make my own abstracted expectations feel morose by comparison. “Maybe we will try and find it tomorrow,” I let on.

But when I ask him to point out on my map where this village is, his grin begins to break new ground, lips stretched taught as his teeth begin to show.

 

“You cannot find by yourself. You need a guide, and then they show you places that – maybe harder to find places….Maybe I can be your guide.” The whole time he’s talking his voice drops lower and slower until he’s almost whispering the last part, the offer, the final pitch.

It’s too much for me to take and I’m walking out the door even as I let him know, “Sorry I just don’t think we have enough money to hire a guide for two whole days.” It’s a lie, of course. I could pay a Laotian to motorbike with me for a few hours each way, but after three days of testosterone-lacking sales offers from this man, I’ve started to get angry with him. I’m nauseous on my own pity.

We never end up making it to the north, not for lack of motivation but for lack of time. We are scheduled to meet a friend in Bangkok and the travel time for the trip south is over 36 hours, we can’t waste any more time on busses. So we end up staying with Chan for four nights.

On the morning of our checkout I poke my head into the lobby to ask for the bag of laundry I had dropped off the day before. “I’m packing,” I explain. “Are those clothes from yesterday all set?”

He begins opening doors and putting his head inside, looking at plastic bags and dripping them to the ground. He’s slamming drawers shut and getting frantic. Watching him watch me watch him flail is beyond awkward. I retreat to the room. “Just knock when you find it,” I let him know.

He doesn’t find it.

Another guest took my laundry. By the time I woke up to ask for it, he was already halfway to Vang Vieng. Chan tells me that on my upcoming bus trip south to the capital, I can meet him at the local bus station. Here’s his number. Just coordinate and tell your bus driver and make the trade off. Smiles the whole way.

This is obviously absurd.

I let him know – plumbing the reserved assertiveness, the background static of frustration that I’ve tried so hard to put aside the past few days – that if he doesn’t get my clothes back to me by the time we have to leave in the evening, then I’m not paying for the room. “You can’t just be losing people’s clothes like that,” I announce to the world as I shut the door to my room. They were expensive, I try to convince myself. Maybe $50.  It’s only fair.

Then the possibilities really start to pile on top of each other. What a cool way to get out of paying a hotel bill. Has anyone perfected this con? Steal your own laundry and complain it’s lost. Or better yet, just throw away a couple pairs of underwear and a t-shirt. No biggie.

But even in non-fantasy world, a small part of me hopes that the clothes don’t turn up. Chan is confident he can get the bag sent back on another north-bound bus later that day, and by the time I leave for the night bus every thing will be set. If he’s wrong though, if I leave missing half my wardrobe the interaction will get weird, fast.

By 7 p.m. the clothes still aren’t here. I sit down with Chan and offer to pay him half. Here’s $30. I even get him to admit to the fairness, but he insists on accompanying us to the bus station. If the clothes are there, we can pay him the rest before getting on the bus, if not, “…then half is OK,” he mutters before turning away. He wants that money, and I cant decipher his true motivations for coming to the station. Does he want to help that badly, or is this possibly all some kind of swindle? Who is conning whom? Do we trust him or dishonor his efforts by refusing? Neither seems a wise choice.

So before we can say anything he’s hopping in the back of the tuk-tuk and the next ten minutes are the most painfully awkward.  Forced to sit next to him, I take the time to try and get to know Chan a little deeper. It turns out that he’s older than I thought. Older than me.

“I’m 28,” he announces proudly. “Look small but old. I have baby.”

“Wow, that’s awesome. Congratulations.”

“How old are you?”

“We’re both 23.”

“Ooh, so young,” now that he’s established his patriarchal role in the human triangle, he takes on a more lecturing tone, not asking for answers so much as demanding them.

“Was that your baby in the hotel lobby,” Zane asks.

“No that’s my boss’s wife and baby. Mine are not here, they are in Udomaxi province, my home.” He misses his daughter, for the first time we’ve spoken, he fails to keep up his steady close-mouthed grin. “I don’t get to see her much,” he concludes.

An awkward moment stretches the length of the entire road. As we turn on to the makeshift driveway that leads to the bus station he sparks up again. “Will you have babies later?”

ME: “ I hope so. Need to find the right girl first, you know?”

“Yes! You will. Maybe you find on this trip.” More silence. Then, “Are you working on this trip?”

“No, I quit my job at home to travel.”

“Oh, so you just travel around for a long time. Just spending money.”

“Yes, it’s expensive, but then we go home and find new job.”

“You have such a good life. You see many wonderful things. My life is not so fun.”

Now he’s smiling again, but there’s no mirth in his face. It’s a sad smile, an awkward smile. I look at Zane and he looks out the window. It’s impossible to meet Chan’s eyes for a long moment.

“But you have a kid, a little girl,” I tell him, breaking through the void. “That’s a wonderful thing.”

“Yes. I send her and my wife all my money so they can live while I work here”

“Do you get to visit often?”

“Sometimes, if I have enough money. If I can’t make money, I have to stay here and I don’t get to see them.” The conversation can’t go on. I can’t tolerate the awkwardness. The guilt and the pity and the newfound admiration keep my mouth glued shut. What can I say to this man? As we roll into the station he drives the final nail into the coffin. “Your lives – much better than mine.”

At the station we wait together in a line. Zane and I stand by the bus. The driver keeps tapping his toe. He wants everybody on – Now! – even though he cant depart for another 15 minutes. Chan keeps telling us that the laundry will be here any minute; he smiles, trying to be reassuring. What do we do if it doesn’t show up in time? “Thanks for trying, peace out, too bad you aren’t getting that other $30, guess you wont see your daughter this month.” I didn’t sign up for these ethical dilemmas.

Chan is acting weird too. He feels deeper that his smile can give him. It is a mask for the people he works with. But with his own people he is a loner, he’s trying to scrape by and he’s worried.  He is hobbit like in his stature and timidity. He has a niche and doesn’t feel comfortable outside it. At the bus station he has a hard time joking with the stoic Laotian men squatting and smoking cigarettes, still as statues. Chan is on the balls of his feet the entire time, pacing, nervous to get my bag of clothes back, but also clearly falling prey to his inner social demons. Compared to the bubbly, talkative man with the irremovable smile in the back alley hotel, I feel like I’m with a different man, smaller, more broken, more heartfelt.

LPDR

A deck expands out over the silent water, supported by thick wooden stilts burrowed into the shore. Its profile is mirrored in every building up and down the road, which is built up at the top of a steep bank. Muddy steps lead down to water that doesn’t seem to move. An occasional ripple laps up the brown slope an inch or two. In the morning’s undisturbed light the water shivers with the wind, and the eddies and still spots stand out like dark tectonic swaths, their stagnant pools interrupting the vibrating shadows on the speckled surface.

Up on the road it is quiet. The crooning of roosters carries up the dirt avenue. A woman perched barefoot on a table strings gutted river fish on a strip of bamboo; the others pulled out of the trap this morning already hang alongside each other in the bright sun. Each time she plucks the sharp blade of plant through the thin pink flesh, the quick fibrous snap can be heard next door. Life here is listless. The thick air carries a near vacuum of sound. In the hazy heat an unfocused tranquility extends through every person. The stasis is contagious.

This is the protozoan-shaped island Don Khon, which lies at the bottom of Si Phan Don, known inter-linguistically as 4000 islands. Here, in the southern toe of Laos, the distended belly of the Mekong opens and softens, the brown water blossoms into a mini-delta with every describable upwelling of land – one island big enough to support a small runway, hundreds of uninhabited spits of dirt and grass that sink below the surface during the rains and everything in between. Trees furry with symbiotic growth dip and drink straight from the river, while islands of bamboo erupt out of the shallow mud like strings of volcanic islands.

The only work that can be seen is the occasional island dweller carrying a bundle of sticks, or maybe a single drooping bamboo pole, plodding through the palm-dappled shade with his load balanced over one shoulder. One man moves a lonely sack of grain, pushing a single-axle garden cart over the dirt troughs in the road. This is the extent of on-land exertion. Only the boats in the river move with a speed resembling urgency.

Twenty graceful feet from stern to prow, shaped from the sleep trunks of the native palms and ribbed down the length with curved strips of wood, these river cars are custom painted in a Technicolor whimsy for each captain. Docked on the bank, a man sits with the sawed off handle-ended-half of a milk jug and bails the night’s accumulation out the bottom of his boat. He sits in the far back to pull the water towards him. This 2-3x daily maintenance exercise is his simple circadian task, one of the few he can claim. Nautical upkeep is important when it’s the only way to get around here.

His craft’s 6-inch, lawnmower powered propeller rests at the end of a five-foot metal pole, revved by turning the handle the same way you would on a motorbike. As he boats chugs upriver, the aggressive petroleum exertion cuts through the soporific stillness.

It isn’t that leaving the hammock is difficult; there is just no reason to. Rural Laos moves at a pace that beyond slow. You want to check for a pulse.

The Laos Peoples Democratic Republic has birthed a popular acronym – LPDR: Lao Please Don’t Rush. I’ve never seen a group of people so content to do simply nothing. I thought Cambodia was a little heavy on the chill-out factor. And before that, the Vietnamese floored me with their capacity for heat-inspired tranquility, even as traffic roared by mere inches away. But Laos seems as though it’s been fossilized.  Now, a day spent doing nothing but reading in a hammock doesn’t feels like a retreat from the constant state of forward-motion travel. Instead it has become just what to do. It isn’t accompanied by a sigh of relief to sink out of the rush around you – it’s a settling into the surrounding glassy mirror. The new normal has become even slower, which I didn’t think possible.

This country is new to me. I’ve only been here a couple of days, but I can already feel a sort of mental breath catching. Instead of trying to record everything, this is a chance to sit and think, to try and collect.

I never did well in an economics class, but from my three-country venture so far there seems to be an exacting correlation between GDP, population and stillness. Vietnam, at the top of the list, is bustling, flexing its new economic muscles for the pride of its 85 million people. Cambodia is on the rebound, still nursing its wounds from Khmer Rouge rule; its 12 million people are quiet and smiley, but still ready to run up a white person trying to sell anything. After Sub-Saharan Africa, Laos is one of the poorest countries on earth, almost entirely rural, with less people in its 91 thousand sq. miles than the population of New York City.  People here don’t care who you are; they aren’t moving to sell you anything. If you want it, you have to come to them.

But sitting still is so much nicer. When no one wants to exert themselves, not much really gets done. Instead of cash, people seek contentment. It’s a tutorial on happiness for people passing through.