Lady Boys

Monday, Aug. 2, 2010—Don Khon to Savannakket

Now that I am leaving Don Khon, I wish I were going to be here another day or two. The reason is a friend I have made. He’s Ham, the man who owns a cyber café and sold me and my neighbor our boat tickets to leave the island. I’ve talked with him for a moment or two every day. But last night, we talked longer. Somehow, he got the idea I was strong. Maybe it’s because my legs are so fit from walking. Anyway, he started talking about that and our conversation quickly went to a nice back-and-forth repartee. He’s charming and intelligent. Then this morning we started the give-and-take teasing and talking more. He was asking me to promise to come back to Laos again next year.

We got an extra tour on the boat, because it took a couple from Don Khon to the neighboring island of Don Dhet. Then we returned to Don Khon to pick up more people. The reason Ham put us on the boat early was that we could get on it then at a more convenient site that was easier for Veronique, my neighbor, to handle. We got to see the people bathing in the river, floating in the river, eating at riverside restaurants, etc. Except for the seats being so hard and it adding to the length of a day that was already going to be a long travel day, it was wonderful.

When we got to the mainland, it was time to separate from Veronique. We had to quickly say good-bye to each other due to the fact that we were leaving by vans operated by different companies. She was being rushed off to her place, and I was having trouble finding my pre-paid ticket. We yelled good-bye to each other and never even exchanged ways of communicating with each other in the future.

Fortunately, I found my ticket. I had put it in a different pocket of my bag last night. There had really been no rush, however. We continued to wait about 20 minutes for more people before we loaded the van and left.

I sat beside Nikolai, a 17-year-old German. He was so impressive. He just finished school in Germany and is waiting to enter university hoping to be accepted to either medical school or dental school. Although he is young, he speaks English so well and is traveling on his own. He was aware of how long he had to stay in Laos before returning to Thailand due to the 15-day rule that Thailand has for lengths of stays when entering via an overland route. He had a good plan for where he would visit. He was very conscientious of the budget that he needed to follow and was staying within it. He did not have a cell phone or a computer with him and did not seem to miss being connected to his friends through them. It would not be easy to find an American that age who could do what he is doing in the way he is doing it. Our conversation helped make that part of the trip pass much faster than it would have seemed otherwise.

There were only two of us on the van going to Savannakhet. With more passengers, they would have had the van continue. Instead, they stopped at a bus station and put us on a local bus go make the rest of the trip. That made the rest of our travel interesting but so very long!

We left the station and went only a short distance where we went into a local neighborhood. The bus stopped at a house where they were tying the tops of many large baskets. They were filled with iced-down fish. They loaded all those baskets filling the entire open storage space below. It took a long time for them to do it. Then, the bus traveled at very slow speeds honking to get the attention of anyone who might want to go the direction we were going. About an hour later, we pulled into another bus station. There, a large pickup with side railings pulled up beside us. It was filled with big bags of fruit. The bus employees began unloading the truck by placing the fruit on the roof of the bus. Then they had to attach a rope netting to make sure the bags of fruit stayed in place. With the weight of the fish and the fruit, I worried that we might have tire trouble along the way.

Just before dark the bus was still crawling along trying to find more passengers, and we were still 145 km (87 miles) from Savannakhet. We were waved down by a group of people with motorcycles. I don’t know if they had tired, or if they had encountered problems with one or more of the cycles. But suddenly, someone was on the roof rearranging the fruit. Then he threw down a rope which was tied to the front wheel of one of the cycles. Then about six men working together lifted and pulled the motorcycle onto the roof. Then the process was repeated three more times for the rest of the bikes. The people boarded the bus, and we took off again with even more weight and being even more behind in schedule.

After dark, the bus finally speeded up. But it wasn’t until 20:30 that the driver let us off. We had been scheduled to be in Savannakhet at 18:30 originally which would have been just before dark. And worse, we were not yet in Savannakhet. We were 25 km (15 miles) north of it, and we had to take a tuk tuk (small motor-cycle driven truck with bench seats) into town. Fortunately, the ride was paid for by the bus company, but it was such a disappointment to find that we still were not there. We had to wait a while for there to be enough people for the tuk tuk to depart.

My fellow passenger from Don Khon, a young woman from Holland, was just as disappointed as I was that the trip was not over yet. We discussed where we planned to stay, since the tuk tuk would only take us to the bus station. I told her where I thought would be best, but she wanted a cheaper place. I agreed to go with her to it by paying the tuk tuk driver extra money to take us there. When we arrived at 22:00, the lady at the guest house told us it was full! We walked back to the place where I had planned to stay, and fortunately they had two rooms. I was so disappointed in the lady from Holland, though. She had been so concerned about cost, and she automatically accepted the price quoted at the new place when everyone should know that the quoted price is never the final price and that bargaining should be done. Anyway, her accepted that as an agreeable price meant that I couldn’t bargain; I would have to pay it, too. It was too much money for such simple rooms, and we could have saved about 25% by bargaining.

I had not eaten all day, but it was already after 22:00 and I was tired. I had traveled for 12 hours—the boat for 1 1/2 hours, the van for 3 hours, the bus for 7 hours, and the tuk tuk for 1/2 hour. I just brushed my teeth and went to bed.

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010—Savannakhet

The first thing I did today was eat. I left the guest house and walked to the first placed where I saw two woman making Lao-style sandwiches—pâté, ham, cucumber, green onion, chile sauce, soy sauce, etc., in a French baguette. Here, the price was only 60 cents, and the sandwich was so fresh and delicious!

A man had told me a few days ago that Thailand is giving free 60-day tourist visas from the consulates in Laos to try to promote people visiting here to also visit Thailand on their trips. I am seeing far more tourists here in Laos than I did in Thailand, so my guess is that many people have avoided Thailand because of the problems there with the Red Shirt Movement in the spring and early summer. Therefore, it is a wise move on the part of Thailand since people entering via overland routes normally only get to stay in Thailand for 15 days.

There is a consulate here in Savannakhet, so I thought I would go there and maybe apply for such a visa, since I would have a better travel plan by transferring about 5-6 of my travel days I’m forced to be in Laos to Thailand. I went to the consulate at 9:00 this morning, and there were probably 50 people there to apply for visas, and most of them were Asians—Laotians and Vietnamese. I got my forms and was told I was right about the 60-day tourist visa being free. But as I completed the form, I could see that the line was not moving. I decided that applying for the visa was going to be more trouble than it would be worth. I’m just going to stay in Laos until I have only 15 days left before my departure from Thailand and cross over the border in the normal, easy way.

Among that crowd of people applying for visas were several “lady boys.” Here in Southeast Asia, each country has quite a few of these. They are young men who openly live as transvestites. They dress as women at all times and live their lives as if they are women. It must be a hard life, but they seem to be accepted by everyone. No one cast a second glance at the 3-4 lady boys who were in the group at the consulate this morning. I wonder if the lady boys at the consulate were getting visas because it is easier (more acceptable) for them to be themselves in Thailand than in Laos? They are very popular on entertainment programs including here in Laos. Yesterday on the bus, there was a long DVD of a comedy in which the majority of the performers were lady boys. Thai cinema includes several major films about characters who are lady boys, and DVDs of them have been released internationally. Therefore, maybe the lady boys at the consulate were just getting visas because being a lady boy in Thailand is a goal for them, like an actor feeling he has to go to New York if he wants to perform on the stage or to Los Angeles if he feels he must be in the movies.

After departing the consulate, I started looking for another place to stay. Where I was last night was very clean, but the room was also very basic with only a fan and hot water. Even the toilet was flushed by pouring a pan of water into it. It was attached to the floor with a drain, but had no tank or flushing mechanism built into it. Also, I didn’t want to have to continue to pay the overpriced rate I had to accept because of arriving with the girl from Holland. I went to the two other places I had selected from reading my guidebook about places here. One was nice, but the only room they had was a bit dark since the window faced the wall of another building. The other was as basic as the place where I was already staying. After that, I just wandered the streets keeping my eyes open for places that looked like they might be nice. I checked out two places that were more than I wanted to pay here and/or had problems. One was a large hotel owned by a Chinese company. It had large rooms with cable TV and a/c, and breakfast was included, but they wanted $40 US. It wasn’t that nice. Another guest house in a very nice looking colonial building also included breakfast, but it had lumpy beds and no TV while still wanting $18 US per day. Finally, I found a modern place. As my guidebook says, it has no atmosphere. But the room I saw is very clean and very light and includes a/c, cable TV, and hot water for only $8.50 per day. Again as the guide book says, they are good value rooms. I returned at 10:50, checked out of my old place, and left to check in at the new place—the Savanbanhao Hotel.

My laundry has been piling up. There is limited drying space here, so I washed only half of it—a pair of shorts, a shirt, and a pair of socks. If those dry overnight, I will wash another two shirts tomorrow afternoon. After that, I watched the last 45 minutes or so of the film Burn before Reading on HBO. It seemed poorly acted to me; I’m not sure why it got so many award nominations. From there, I moved to reading in my current book, one about a woman in an arranged marriage to an Bangladeshi man 20 years older than she who moves her to England with him. So far, it’s a very good book—one that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It’s the usual hot afternoon in Laos, so those activities have kept me inside and cool. I’ll go back out to explore more when the heat of the day starts passing around 17:00.