sabaidee: ten days in laos

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my body a bit confused because it was noonish the last place my body was before all that plane time. i took nyquill and slept five tossing and turning hours. then walked out into the world. i needed movement and actual nutrition after sitting and cardboard airplane shlop. also i needed to figure out what it is i should do in vientiane, a thing i hadn’t looked much (at all) into.

coffee first, and on my trek to find some i saw soviet flags everywhere. i was aware of the influence of russia in these parts. some cities in vietnam i’ve been to had their street signs in russian. and smug faced assholes mean mugging every male backpacker that came into their bars (none of the girls). i hadn’t forecasted the amount of hammer and sickle flags i’d see in laos. basically everywhere the national flag flies there’s a soviet one next to it. in cahoots with a nation that no longer exists.

che also gets good run. the people love che. especially the tuk-tuk drivers. his face plastered on nearly all of their frames. che certainly tracks with soviet love, but i’m still always surprised when i notice his staying power globally. motorcycle diaries in bookstores. sometimes it’s hard to know, sitting at home, which ideas will export to which places from which places. strange cultural symbolisms float around. more 2010's maroon 5 in 2025 southeast asian coffee shops than there were in 2010's american ones. if you are a millenialish american traveling in south america you might be shocked at the popularity of bands like ac/dc or guns ’n’ roses amongst your cohort there.

also can be hard to get used to what infrastructure and construction looks like when there are no fuckin rules. an osha official would have a stroke. dudes will be hand mixing concrete in front of a dozen story building under construction and climbing handmade bamboo scaffolding. wires on wires on wires, seemingly because the old ones don’t get pulled down when new ones go up. a street being remade was not marked off from the public. you could just walk through the construction zone. dodge the hazards yourself. or don’t.

—

this country has been through some shit. because of the geniuses (genii?) running the united states government in the 60’s and 70’s laos holds the title of the most bombed country by area in the history of the species. from 1964–1973 the united states, in its infinite wisdom, dropped more than 2 million tons of cluster bombs on a country of 2 million people. that’s more bombage than all dropped in world war two combined. to stop communism, ya know. much good it did. the hammer and sickle.

before that shitshow france controlled laos from 1893–1953, and the monument commemorating independence is one of the things you do when you are western and you visit vientiane for a couple days. the shape loosely resembles the arc de triomphe, but up close you see the design is mostly east asian mythological figures. it’s worth sitting across the street from and eating a mango in the shade. it’s also worth walking near, of course. but after the mango.

i had hoped to go to a temple where i read somewhere there were guided meditations offered by monks, so i showed a tuktuk driver the map and the route and he smiled and said yes. about ten minutes later i realized he had been driving the exact wrong way. he dropped me off at another temple and i had not the energy to argue. i paid him and walked back to the hostel. i realized in hindsight it might be because mapsme doesn’t always automatically orient north as the top of the map, a strange design choice for a travel navigation app.

the main event, for someone who really likes temples and monks, is phat that luang. it’s gold, it’s extravagant, it’s 150 feet high, it was first built eighteen hundred years ago, and there are a lot of monks there. what’s not to like.

i try to get to things like this before the others, and the heat. so i woke up in time to be there at the 8am opening. coffee first. coffee almost always first. the shop i walked to seriously made me consider staying in the city an extra day just so i could sit in it. a perfect coffee or book shop can just about bring me to tears. a public execution might do less to me emotionally.

because of the longstanding french colonialism, vientiane is known for a fair amount of french architecture. you see glimpses here and there. a cafe or a restaurant. shuttered floor to ceiling windows or tiny little balconies.

drip 1920 goes all the way for french era nostalgia. it has an exposed vintage vibe and gramophone music and baristas dressed like they might be about to grab dinner with hemingway or fitzgerald. the entire aesthetic was much welcome for someone who mostly sees every coffee shop back home compete for most minimalist vibe award. and typically plays trash music. i returned later the same day, before my bus, to listen to the gramophone and have another cup.

vang vieng

“your name michael? my name michael.”
“nice. easy to remember.”
“yes. michael jackson.”
“or michael jordan.”
“michael jordan yes. he’s good at volleyball, yeah?”
“actually i would assume so.”

—

you might be surprised how much bumpy road and direct shots on rocks a moped can handle. and did, for me, while i drove around the countryside west of vang vieng for 8 hours stopping at lagoons and lookouts and caves and little roadside spots for coconut hydration. in the 1960’s edward abbey wrote in desert sollitaire that arches national park was getting worse the more accessible it got. he thought you should keep nature’s isolated gems in such a standing that it might be a little work to get there so that only people who really value them will go. i imagine if he saw how accessible arches is now he would simply burst into flames.

the parks near vang vieng exist somewhere in between that 1960’s concern and the modern situation in southern utah. you can get there. a lot of backpackers on mopeds do, but it’s not a paved road to heaven. and the locations themselves are not cushioned on the corners to prevent injury. a spaniard and i wandered back into a couple caves that required a decent amount of attention to not get lost in and were encouraged to by signs pointing the way to the caves. there were no people to tell us where to go or where not to or come searching if we screamed or didn’t come out. when i saw the backpackers going in as i came out i immediately thought there should be more stories of people going missing. oblivious schmucks without shoes on giggling like they’re at an amusement park.

i feel the same about the mopeds and bumpy roads (seemingly) not turning more backpackers into hamburger. the only thing you need to have a moped for the day is 8usd and a turned in passport. there’s no need to see if you’ve ever actually driven one of the things. let alone driven anything.

i haven’t researched it much but with my low esteem of my fellow man’s capabilities in general and the lack of oversight it seems like stupid late teens brits should be running into the back of delivery trucks everywhere. a la duane allman. my roommate at the hostel, who did not seem stupid or british at all, was laid up in bed when i returned from my day with his foot covered in bandages. when i asked what happened he said he took a spill on a moped but he was fine and it would have been worse if he hadn’t been as cautious as he was. i looked at the damage of his foot. some legitimate cuts/scrapes and already some swelling. when i pointed out the interesting pattern of the missing skin on the top of his toe knuckles he looked me dead in the eye in earnest and said, “i think that’s because of the flip flop.”

—

if you google vang vieng you will see rows upon rows of drastic, steep green mountains and blue skies with hot air balloons in them. this is when things are ideal, and how i had always pictured myself there. i have been wanting to hot air balloon in this valley for five or so years since i first saw those photos. as a kid i always thought that lawnchair larry thing was cool as hell. guy ties 42 balloons to a lawnchair because he always wanted to be a pilot but had poor eyesight. ends up floating around the airspace above los angeles and causing problems. a hero some might say. on his own terms.

i did not see much of the color blue in my time in laos. from february to april slash-and-burn agriculture plasters the sky with pm2.5 particles as farmers burn up all the leftover vegitation in preparation for the rainy season. this might explain why i saw so many masks on locals in the first few days but was too stupid to even ask why until i started thinking about going into a balloon basket.

the sky had me second guessing the experience, as the hundred dollar cost is enough to get you by for multiple days here. it’s somewhere in the nieghborhood of 20 meals for the types of places i eat. an israeli guy named michael, who’s favorite joke was to say in fractured english that his pool shot was fucked because his fanny pack was too heavy, came back to the hostel after going up one night and told me it was a can’t miss experience. so i went.

one of the first things i thought about once the hot air balloon was up and going upper was how easy it would be for someone else in the basket to murder me. what if one of these guys has a loose screw? what if they just had a bad enough day. crazier things have happened. easy to tip me out. i don’t even pay attention or hold on. i’m just looking at mountains.

these morbid mind wanderings are familiar scenery to me. particularly when i’m higher than everyone else in the basket. the gummies from the airplane ride did wonders to make an already interesting task even more so. there is no place more appropriate to be stoned than in a hot air balloon. i prodded a french guy for his white knuckling the handles and his wife laughed. i giggled when i looked up and saw the flame. i’m not sure why. what about a flame is funny? i suppose it looks peculiar going up into a fucking ballon. while you’re standing in a fucking wicker basket. not strapped to anything. all the (i suppose, literal) shit in the air brought the horizon closer to the foreground, but there was something beautiful about the sillhouettes of those first couple rows in the haze and looking down to see rice fields and cows grazing in the patches of woods.

math

“you got a tend to the detail
you’ve got to write that shit down
you gotta put up a big sail
you gotta clean your dashboard cupholder”
— alan sparhawk

sunday march 30, 2025
1 night at the barn hostel (not a barn) for $10 with breakfast. 3 nights at sabai sabai hostel for $27 with breakfast. plus a pool and a pool table. both of which were utilized heavily. it was 99 degrees 2 days in a row. $9 to rent a moped for a day to see a 200ft waterfall and drive around the countryside. 50.000 for gas. 30.000 kip (that’s $1.50) for a coconut. 35.000 kip for a great cup of laotian coffee seated for 1 hour on a cushion on the floor of a platform built on the edge of a rice field. there was a breeze and shade. i can swear the rice field itself also cooled me. somehow 0 dollars for the skid and scrape i gave to the side of the moped. and my leg. 40.000 kip each for consecutive night market dinners of khao soi that reached all 206 bones in me body. maybe even that metal plate and screws too. these parts are for using. it’s a dirt nap in the end regardless.

$4.50 for that fernet the dirty little devil on my shoulder sniffed out. i don’t remember how much it was to send those 3 postcards home. a couple 4 hour walks.

$25 ticket for a 2 day slow boat ride on the mekong to the thai border. a night tonight in between those two days for $11 with breakfast in the village pak beng.

3 hours of sleep last night. 9 casual beer laos. 5 senseless cigs from that pack of camel blues that was too tempting at $3.25. at 12 midnight a couple shots with a bow at a range i shit you not in the parking lot of the bowling alley and 0 strikes thrown inside. i left home 12 days ago.

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sense of place

the only places i’ve been that could even come close to the charm of luang prabang are the city centres of oaxaca de juarez and old town phuket. what these places primarily have in common is they’ve found a way to combine old and new gracefully. it is quite common in many places to see a very old building next to a brand new condo, and usually it’s cool in a sense no matter how it is pulled off. athens comes to mind. but in these other three special places there is a blending that simultaneously allows for a unified experience without entirely homogenizing styles.

in luang prabang you will one moment be across from a 17th century buddhist temple and the next moment step into your hostel, which is in an early 20th century french colonial building. next door may be a chinese style villa from merchants who came during french rule. none of it seeming incongruous with what is next door.

my first day involved about five hours of wandering. stopping to cool off in coffee shops or grab a drink or snag dinner on a porch. check out some regional art in a shop. or simply stand staring at something beautiful.

—

a brief flurry of notes from a buzzed luang prabang walk:

4:44 this city is remarkable
4:55 ghost on ghost walking through the magic
4:58 i remember being introduced to this album
5:14 trying to get wrestled to the ground by a russian in conversation every time i turn around
5:16 what the hell makes something a unesco site
5:17 shoulda seen me trying to jiu jitsu outta that conversation
“how is it work in your city?”
(answer then try to politely leave)
“what about miami? expensive?”
(answer then try to politely leave, turning back)
“what you pay rent?”
(answer then try to politely leave, turning back and taking steps)…
5:26 when i do get a thing for an architecture experience it is in the same way that i enjoy music. i do not have the vocabulary to describe what is being done. it’s more of primal sense.
5:28 this might be the best walking city i’ve been to

—

i left home with ali smith’s autumn on recommendation from a friend. by vientiane it was done, so i found on the map a bookstore near the hostel. the selection was quite good. larger than i might have expected. the bookkeeper took autumn for 20.000 kip and i left with lawrence osborne’s bangkok days. seemed fitting being in southeast asia.

from a trip to vietnam years ago i still have two books as souvenirs that were very obviously bootleg reprints. no country for old men and mr. nice. the bindings suck and in no country you can tell some of the page numbers were hand written back onto what must have been a faded master. there’s also some specific type of paper used. it’s crisp and perfectly bright but stiff and easy to tear. this bangkok days print shared those features.

it would make sense books like bangkok days would be in high demand here. westerners adrift is a relatable ethos for backpackers. on that last trip the reason i bought mr. nice is i kept seeing it. it’s about an english drug smuggler who makes countless trips to southeast asia in the 70’s and 80’s under various passports. it’s also likely if you keep your eyes peeled you’ll notice a lot of shantaram. some on the road or papillon.

i flew through osborne’s accounts of the rejects and neighborhoods with whom he spent his outcast life and in luang prabang got lucky again at a french restaurant called l’etranger with one bookshelf to the side. the owner here took my swap and gave me half off for terracotta dog by andrea camilleri. left to my own devices i would never choose quirky italian crime novels. it came in handy days later to hand me some escapism during the sweatiest afternoons of a slow boat on the mekong.

—

—

sabaidee

on a walk one sweaty afternoon after a matcha chocolate on ice at a sleek cafe in downtown luang prabang i happened across a sign that said there was a theater with nightly traditional lao folklore stories and music. a few nights later i sat down in a portioned off corner of a building that housed maybe thirty chairs on tiered seating across from a small stage. a mythical painting hung above and a bright red sheet covering the stage commanded the eyes in a room otherwise entirely black. there were five other people in the crowd. for an hour a man maybe in his 40’s told origin tales of rivers and mountains. of names. of lao people. the khmer. a khene (a mouth organ of bamboo pipes) occasionally played in between stories or had a role in the action. sounded fractal. like an auditory kaleidoscope. the very first story we heard was highlighted by the presenter as being an important lesson about lao people.

a father, knowing he had not much longer to live, designed a test to see which of his ten sons should attain his inheritance. he handed a bean seed to all ten. he told them to come back with their harvest in a month and prove who deserved the family goods. a month passed. they reassembled. son number one presented a beautiful bounty of beans, and the father told him he was proud. son number two had an equally impressive return, as did three, and so on until nine were done. son number ten a bit meagerly told his father he was sorry. that his crop yielded nothing. the father beamed a great smile and said, “you, my dear boy, will inherit all that i have.”

our presenter then asked us to guess what happened. none of the guesses landed.

“the father had cooked the bean seeds. he made them sterile. nine of his sons cheated and lied. he rewarded the one son who came back honest.”

khob jai lai lai

.

luang prabang

come back from coffee at 9:16 because one more espresso looking at those mountains was absolutely necessary and now time to pack for that 9:30 pickup don’t fuck it up the train leaves on time it’s chinese and an hour from when it leaves you’ll be in luang prabang. 11 weeks to go. 1 down. taking lunch in a plastic bag gotta pinch the pennies where you can because sometimes you fuckin refuse and order the nice plate and the extra beer. gorged on hostel breakfast and stuffed a chunk of bread and a couple banans in the bag so the only meal you’ll have to buy today is dinner. bag packed by 9:27 nice. have slept in six different beds in five different cities since leaving home eight days ago and that’s just a nibble of it brother. life is for the living.

tracks

i am obsessed with matching music to mood. on this occasion iron & wine’s ghost on ghost was perfect. it is subtly energetic. it is walking energetic, not running energetic. it is just mystical enough. i remember being in kat and george’s apartment. shea and i stopped over for a meal and we were all stoned and she put the record on. my musical taste was miles behind but i was immediately drawn to the horns of desert babbler and asked what it was we were listening to. the fact this album was somewhat panned in pitchfork tells me the writer did not listen to it while strolling through luang prabang.

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books

“i can show you where it is on the map. if i try to say it i’ll sound like a redneck american so you should just read it.”

kindle is good and practical but kindle can’t flip a page. for me page flipping is as essential as water. it also is the case that when you are allowed to choose from everything that’s ever been, like in a kindle library, your selections are too much up to yourself. there’s no inherent diversity foisted on you the way there is when you go to a bookstore the location of which is selected by the ending of your last book. you will end up rereading bukowski and cormac ad infinitum.

i decided on this trip to be at the whims of being able to find hard copy books in english on the go, whenever i finished what i started. so far this project is two for two.

when i got to phat that luang i was pleased to find i really was first. the shops weren’t even set up. a man tried to sell me a little bamboo cage of teeny birds. he had a whole lot of the buggers strung up on a pole he was carrying. he said they’re good luck. i told him no thank you don’t want any and he looked genuinely confused. maybe he thought i meant i don’t want any good luck. i was thinking i’d have to take care of the goddamn things. a couple minutes later i saw an empty cage and thought maybe the luck was in buying them to release them.

the temple did not disappoint. it was just as big and gold as all the reviews said it would be, and it was nice they had paintings to help get a sense of how many times it’s had to be rebuilt. a group of monks were laughing and joking around while mixing concrete and waved at me when i stopped to take pictures. a japanese woman took a decently long video of me meditating near the reclining buddha before her husband ushered her off. she must have been shocked to see vikings were into such a thing. i regret not buying any birds.