Losing it in Laos: My Weekend in Vientiane...

[farangbah]

Just back from a weekend in Vientiane. The story I’m about to tell is long, and I’ll say now that it’s very possible it may not be that interesting and it only matters to me. But I feel a need to tell it. I hope you will humor me…

Losing it in Laos

Fresh off an exhausting and very satisfying first week at a new job, Friday night I boarded a plane for Vientiane, on what is hopefully the last visa run for a good while. Had never been, and it had been a while since I was out of LOS, and I was looking forward to it.

Checked into a place on the Mekong called the Suksavanh River Hotel. Basic but decent at about 900bt/nt, I only mention it as it turns out it boasts a ladyboy manager – the best kind, too, that ditzy, giggly kind, playful and not unattractive.

So, I hit the dimly lit dirt road along the Mekong about 10pm in search of Bor Pen Nyang bar that I read about here. Found it without trouble, settled into my seat at the bar, was enjoying my first Beer Lao draft, and surveying the rather busy room for some future friends.

There were plenty of GGs marking me, but I only saw one of ours, more of a crossdresser in a wig than a proper LB, when coming in. After further investigation I saw her at her table with a gay guy, a GG, and someone I couldn’t be sure about but either way was the most attractive of the lot, and the room, as it turned out – there were no other LBs there.

I start up the eye-contact game, and shortly thereafter the gay guy saunters over and invites me to join them. Introductions are made and chatting ensues, turns out the one in question is indeed an LB, and looking more delectable by the minute, a sort of a Laotian Bow, skinny, in a tube dress, with that short, trendy haircut that says, “Bite the back of my neck while you’re taking me from behind.”

After a round or two, Laotian Bow asks me if I’d like to join them in going to “a transsexual place”. This night is getting good, and fast...

[farangbah]

The bar is called GQ and it’s a gay bar. The only thing transsexual about it was the two femboys I was with, and that suited me just fine. The proprietor was a young guy who took a shine to what the cats dragged in, and gave them face for it. The music wasn’t bad, typical gay fare, and there were a few boys in there of the KenW stripe. And, strangely, a couple of gay backpackers who enjoyed sandwiching the owner.

Sadly, I wasn’t seeming to get any play from Laotian Bow, but crossdresser was inching closer and, with each Beer Lao, looking better. We’re getting jiggy on the dance floor, a touch here a squeeze there, and . . . FREEZE FRAME! Where’d everybody go? Music’s off, and I’m alone in the bar with the owner. That’s right, ol’ farangbah passed out from his long week and thirst for Beer Lao. Owner says both my girls tried valiantly to wake me up and eventually gave up but could I please stay and let him suck my cock…?

I eventually wriggled out of his clutches and beat my retreat back to the river to make my way home, the town now quiet. I hit the river road and LO! who has sidled up next to me but a petite little femmer. She ticks enough boxes and I certainly consider myself lucky to have found her at this point in the game, and after chatting while walking she says all the right things about it being late, she hasn’t had a customer, doesn’t want money but a place to go...

[farangbah]

She turned out to be quite sexy, with a scrumptious little paperboy body, and a picture perfect phallus that produced a healthy sperm sample. But after the deed was done, something turned in me – I don’t know if it was simply the usual post-coital want-to-be-left-alone-ness or something about her, but it got in my mind that she should not spend the night but go.

She asked for some money. “You said you didn’t want money.” “For taxi.” Some quid for a cab is no big deal, and most situations I comply. But something about the way she said it or something made me decide I didn’t want to give it to her, that I was gonna make a stand over a couple of bucks, for fuck’s sake.

She sits down. So now my options are to give her the money or physically throw her out. I don’t want to do either, so I decide, ok, I’m just gonna sit here too and wait you out. Farangbah proceeds to immediately pass out for the second time that night...

[farangbah]

I wake up and she’s gone. And a few minutes later I realize that so is my phone.

But everything else is untouched – my wallet is still in the same pants the phone was in, all my other possessions in the wardrobe are as they were. It was a long, blurry night, and I have no recollection of having or using it after I was at that first bar of the evening.

A little bit of trivia about my now-famous pants that the Belfast Boys love so much: I have a custom pocket built into the front of them where a change pocket can sometimes be found, made to the specs of an iPhone. It’s a nice little feature that saves sitting on it or having bulky things in your pockets, thank you very much. What is now clearly a drawback of it is that if you pass out in a public place like a bar someone can easily slide it right out of the visible pocket and make off with it.

So, who done it? The femboy in the room, or one of the nefarious characters lurking in the gay bar…? Or, did I just lose it? . . .

[farangbah]

So… what to do, what to do… I had now lost my 1000USD iPhone 4s, with all my contacts in it, in a country I’d been in for less than twelve hours, whose infrastructure has an unlit dirt road for its Riviera. Is it worth the effort to go through the bullshit process of making a report?

I eventually say fuck it, going through these things gives me the kind of tension I try to avoid at all costs, so that’s what I do, decide to absorb the blow and move on – it’s just money, and though I’ll certainly lose contact with at least a few people I would have liked to have kept the lines open with, I’ll get most numbers back eventually (ironically, just weeks ago I had deleted all my contacts from my old phone in order to lend it to someone). I’m gonna get a massage and go on a proper daytime bender of drinking Beer Lao and watching the Olympics.

After the second-worst massage I can ever remember having (the worst being at that Apsara place across from Guess Bar, and that one wasn’t even by a ladyboy, and nor was this one), I walk the town, to have a look and work up a thirst.

[farangbah]

The town’s ok, I probably would have enjoyed it more under different circumstances. I settle on a nice spot called Drop Zone, a silly name pandering to the backpacker crowd, but an otherwise good joint – on the corner, indoor/outdoor open air feel, pool table, proper bar with stools, good food, etc. I order a beer and it soon works its magic and starts to soothe my ills – the sun is out, it’s a balmy day, the Olympics are on, and I’ve got beer: fuck bad people and they can go screw, shit happens and life goes on.

The best part about the bar is the staff – adorable little GGs, the kind with smiles so pure they make you for the briefest of moments consider making an honest woman out of one of them and leading a “normal” life, and I am immediately smitten. Except for one unfortunate girl, chubby and touched with Down Syndrome. As I’m the only punter in the bar at this hour, I have their undivided attention, and it helps a little in lifting my spirits, except for being in that awkward position of having to be polite but not really wanting to be forced to make conversation with the wanting-to-talk girl with Down Syndrome (I never got her name, so henceforth GDS).

She gets the picture and generally leaves me to watching the Olympics. After a bit, an affable young lad from Pittsburgh settles into the table next to me, freshly arrived for his new teaching gig in Vientiane. We get to chatting, the beers keep flowing, customers come and go, the afternoon wears on, and Pittsburgh is too nice to rebuff GDS as she makes herself comfortable among us...

[farangbah]

Eventually I get to my story of the phone (minus any mention of penis, though of course GDS is quick to blurt out “GQ is a gay bar!” Had to dance around that one.). Options are explored, and one of them says have you tried actually calling your phone? Stupid me never thought to try calling my phone and see if someone would answer and if I could offer myself over for some good old-fashioned extortion. So, Pittsburgh kindly offers up his new local phone and GCS calls it to try to explain in Lao what I would be willing to do.

The phone’s on, she says, but no one answered. Then she asks me if my phone is locked with a passcode and/or if I have the “Find my iPhone” feature on. No, stupid me thought it stupid to punch in a passcode every time I needed to use my phone, but yes, I do believe I had the “Find my iPhone” feature on. All of a sudden, I’m starting to have hope, and GDS is turning out to be smarter than she looks and I’m feeling guilty for not wanting to talk to her before.

She says I can go around the corner to the pseudo-Apple shop and remotely put a block on the phone from my Apple account and if the Find feature is on, track the phone. And now I’m having these delusions of storming the gates of some LB hideout with my henchmen/rent-a-cops. I run to the shop with her and the staff apparently aren’t as excited as I am about my perdickament but allow me to use one of the available computers.

Right on the homepage of iCloud these days, one of only five icons, is the “Find my iPhone” button (apparently, a lot of people are as dumb as I am). I log in, follow the prompts and Apple tells me that I have successfully remotely locked my phone. How fucking amazing is that?

[farangbah]

I was pretty wowed, anyway. It also allowed me to send a message to the phone, which presumably would be right on top, so I said I’d pay for the return of the phone, but as Pittsburgh wasn’t with us, I put GDS’s number in the message.

Now, I try to track it. The phone has to be on in order to do this. You also apparently need a first-world or even second-world connection. As the god-forsaken thing kept timing out! A map of the world would come on, and the search icon would throb, and I would hold my breath, staring at Southeast Asia, praying for it zone in with a location and I could dash off and summon a posse to exact revenge on the fuckers! And then it would time out again…

[farangbah]

So, it’s back to the bar with mixed emotions. But at least the phone was supposedly locked now, and whoever had it couldn’t use it and had been contacted with an offer. Pittsburgh and I play a few rounds of pool with the adorable GGs, and they provide a nice distraction, as in spite of myself, I can’t help flirting with them.

A little while later Pittsburgh’s phone rings. His phone’s so new he hasn’t given the number to anyone, the number on the phone is private, we all look at each other, and GDS grabs it and starts speaking Lao. It’s loud in the bar, so she goes outside and comes back a moment later and says that someone has your phone, they say they didn’t steal it, but that you left it in the bar last night, and they want two million kip (maybe three hundred bucks, giver take). They’ll call back in one hour.

The waiting game begins…

[farangbah]

And continues for hours.

We kept getting short calls and then they would hang up. We’ll get a call like: they’re pissed that I told them to call GDS’s phone and it’s off because it’s in the shop. And then nothing for another hour.

It’s starting to get late and Pittsburgh wants to go home. But his phone is the only link to whoever has my phone. And I’m starting to get frustrated with this back-and-forth that’s getting us nowhere. There are other tidbits of information, but it’s all getting confusing and the Beer Lao isn’t helping. I stop drinking.

Another call: He’s (it’s a “he” on the other end) coming in to town in an hour and will give us a call. More waiting...

Pittsburgh, affable as he is, is drunk, tired, and more confused than I am. Here he is, fresh off the boat from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and he’s got a girl with Down Syndrome and a farangbah on either side of him, using his phone and spouting conspiracy theories. I felt for the guy.

But he was kind enough to trust me with his phone for the night, with the promise of meeting back at Drop Zone the next morning before I had to catch my flight. (that’s another thing – I was scheduled to leave in the morning, thus adding a pending deadline to the pressure of getting this deal done asap)...

[farangbah]

So off goes Pittsburgh. It’s getting late, and I’m tired and losing hope that this is gonna go down, and losing faith in GDS. She keeps leaving out details of the conversations, for example, that would have affected my actions if I’d known earlier. But I was trying to be patient, and chalked up a lot of her actions to her condition.

She was trying to help, in that Down Syndrome way, but it really was getting frustrating, having my hands tied like this. So, next time he called I took the phone.

There was now at least a third party involved, as the guy on the other end of the phone had a British accent. He started asking ridiculous questions, the kind with no answers, and wouldn’t get to the point. He said he was in England, for fuck’s sake.

My nerves were frayed by this point, and I was tired of being played with. Several times I said, “Look, the phone is locked (in an earlier call they had confirmed it). You can’t use it, and I don’t have it – we both lose. So, name your price and let’s get this over with already.” He still danced around it, so I hung up on him...

[farangbah]

Somewhere along the line GDS had said she thought maybe she recognized the first Lao voice from GQ bar. I hadn’t gone there today, as I didn’t know what I’d be walking into, if the joke would be on me, and they’d all be laughing behind my back. That, and the fact that I couldn’t remember where it was.

But at this point in the game, I didn’t give a fuck anymore. It wasn’t about the phone anymore, I had become victim to exactly what I wanted to avoid when I originally said, “Fuck it” and wasn’t gonna pursue getting my phone back, and had ingested all the tension I explicitly tried to avoid, and was now through to the other side and royally pissed off and looking to find the fucker.

So, GDS took me down to GQ bar. Here we go… I approach the door, and walk inside. There are about four KenW-ettes sprawled around and a couple customers including an older gentleman sitting next to the owner of the bar on a sofa. The owner immediately breaks into a bright and warm smile, the kind that seems genuine, but I’ve seen those in this part of the world before.

He sees the look on my face, a world away from his, and gets up and comes over. As I start to explain the situation, I’m trying to choose my words carefully. I don’t know who’s who in this game. GDS starts rattling off a bunch of Lao to him. He gets a perplexed look on his face and, as it’s loud in the bar, says we should step outside…

[farangbah]

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s phone is vibrating the shit out of my pants – I’m not answering it, because, fuck it, I took all I can stands I can’t stands me no more – I’m not gonna be tooled with any longer -- he can wait now, and have one last chance before I at least go down and out with a mouthful of the most searing vitriol this New Yorker can muster as a parting shot.

Outside, the bar owner and GDS are speaking in rapid Lao. Meanwhile, the phone keeps ringing. I want to see the bar owner’s reaction to whoever’s on the phone, so I hand it to him, and tell him the person on the other end of the line has my phone. He takes it, walks in a bit of a circle, and soon hands back the phone shaking his head and saying hasn’t a clue what that guy was talking about. I sense he’s telling the truth and there’s no connection between the two of them.

As he and GDS are talking, almost immediately I see a change in both of them. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can read their body language, and all of a sudden… the penny drops: GDS isn’t the unfortunate and innocent do-gooder at all – she’s actually in on the scam and the bar owner immediately recognizes it.

As I alluded to before, some things didn’t seem to be adding up earlier in her actions, but being in the awkward position of dealing with someone touched, I was trying to hold onto my good thoughts and not my bad ones. But once I saw Lay, the bar owner, question her and both of their reactions, previous events of the evening took on a new clarity…

[farangbah]

But does she actually know who has the phone, and/or who’s calling me, or was she just trying to extract money from me? And so, was the person on the phone just her cohort or did he actually have the phone or knowledge of who did? Was Lay really my gay savior, or just another shyster with his own routine to run on me? Meanwhile: Pittsburgh’s phone. Still ringing.

I had all but concluded that the guy on the line was in cahoots with GDS, and now that I’ve taken over control of the calls, and her phone was in the shop, she had no way of contacting anyone, so ensuing calls are the Brit trying to extract information from me, like my whereabouts. When I refuse to tell him where I am, he comes up with this:

Him: “I will get you back your phone for free. (nevermind his ridiculous reason as to why) Go to Sam Lo bar (which you may recall as the other bar listed in the Vientiane thread here, which I hadn’t made it to the night before, but had passed on my rounds during the day) and see if you see the girl who took your phone.”

Me: So, now I didn’t lose it in the bar, it was the girl by the river?”

Him: Don’t worry about that now. You want your phone or not?

Me: What do I do if I see her? Do I approach her or not?

Him: That’s up to you.

Me: Up to me? You don’t know if you want me to talk to the person who has my phone or not?

Him: Just go there and see if you see her and I’ll call you back. [He hangs up.]

[farangbah]

At this point Lay had called GDS’s bluff and sent her packing. She gives up too easily which lends further evidence that she had nothing to begin with, and made up this whole thing and the guy on the phone has nothing. I just had to shake my head at almost getting victimized a second time in twenty-four hours, by a girl who is mentally disabled.

But I had nothing to lose going to Sam Lo bar, so I asked Lay to follow me, and watch and see if anyone was marking me. Turns out it was just around the corner, with a bunch of people outside, including GDS and a gaggle of LBs crowing, “Farangbah! Farangbah!” (Farangbah’s reach is, apparently, vast) “You remember me?!” (one of them was a Lao girl that worked in Pook 6 a couple years ago, young and hot, but with that annoying drama routine if you pass her over. If anybody’s made it this far in the story, and wants to throw out a couple names, I’d probably remember it. Mimi, or something…).

Inside it’s cavernous and I make a round of the place. I don’t see anyone I recognize, or anyone signaling me. Meanwhile: phone. Still ringing. So, I’m looking around for someone on their phone, but nothing. Outside, GDS keeps her distance and Lay and I retreat to GQ. We discuss the situation more, and go over the events of the night prior, how I passed out, and we share a chuckle about how he wanted me to stay after I came to...

[farangbah]

I’m a little distracted because in walked one of the most beautiful ladyboys I’ve ever seen in my life. Miss International Queen beauty pageant style beautiful. Malaysian. Has to be super famous there. She’s on holiday with a short gay friend of hers, and though not usually my type, she was too pretty not to want to flirt with. But I was in no condition at this point, and we both knew it.

So, I’m sitting there trying to figure out why the Brit wanted me to go to Sam Lo. I finally realize he wanted me to unwittingly ID who actually had the phone if that person was there, at a likely hangout. Ah, so he doesn’t know. Their last card to play was me identifying who the culprit was, and GDS trying to get to them before I did, and work out a deal with them to get over on me. He doesn’t have the phone and doesn’t know who does. Next time he calls I tell him to fuck off in no uncertain terms, but I just don’t have it in me anymore to go off on him, and if I went too far GDS could ID me to him or someone, and I had no way of knowing who he was.

[farangbah]

So, the game was over, and I’d lost again – I was back to square one, and the phone was gone. So, after a ridiculous charade like that, when all is lost: party in a gay bar! Lay wouldn’t take any money and drinks were on the house. When he finds out I picked up a ladyboy on the street on the way home, he immediately scolds me and I can tell he’s a bit hurt that I chose to stick my dick elsewhere.

He says he knows the guys that work down on the river (pseudo-cops? random gadabouts? who knows…) and we should go talk to them. I’m like, fuck it, man. It’s over. Let’s get drunk and maybe I’ll do something stupid with one of you.

But he insists and we get on his motorbike and take the short cruise down to the river. There are two guys sitting there, and I think I recognize one of them from GQ earlier in the evening (which I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing). He seems pretty clean cut with good English, but what the fuck does that mean. He says, “Yeah, I saw you come down here and saw the ladyboy approach you and you walk off together. We know her. We’ll go look for her.” Oh, god, where is this going…? My heart can’t take anymore of this. I swear, if this is the start of another sham, somebody’s gonna get hurt – certainly me, but hopefully a couple others on the way down…

[farangbah]

Lay takes me down to the “police station,” some random place with some random dude looking like he’s closing up shop – it’s probably 2 or 3am by this point. They chat a moment in Lao and Lay says that if they find her they’ll come get me. He takes me home, no longer in the mood for any hanky-panky.

I lay down completely spent, leaving in a few short hours, and I won’t be looking back as I do. Next thing I know, Lay is at my door. “They found her. We have to go.”

And thus, we have arrived at the denouement.

The last card is being played. Lay will show his true colors, one way or the other. I have come this far, I’m gonna see what’s waiting for me at the other end of this motorbike ride.

When you’ve been through an experience like this, an emotional rollercoaster, you can sometimes kind of pass through an emotional wall to this place within yourself of a kind of inner calm, of being in the moment yet untouchable, like fate, karma, and a lot of other big ideas are right there in the room with you, are in fact in you. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, boy, it is a powerful feeling. I was ready for anything...

[farangbah]

Lay takes me back to the random police station. We walk inside and there’s a long table at one end of the room. Behind it is a row of men I’ve never seen before, dressed like anyone else. In front of it are a couple of empty chairs. And behind that, a dozen or so ladyboys. And among them was my girl. I couldn't fucking believe it. I identified her to Lay.

They ask me to sit down in one of the empty chairs, as they proceed to take their sweet time chatting with each other in Lao, as some young kid pours one of them beer and I can feel the eyes of the ladyboys behind me boring holes in the back of my head.

SO…??? Did she take it? Did she admit it? Does she have it? Where is it? Someone talk to me!

Answers are not swift in coming.

Lay pulls me outside and coaches me on some of the questions that will be asked of me. I didn’t know she was a pro, etc. Lay, did they find my phone? Still not getting a “straight” answer.

Back inside, I sit back down. They ask some questions. More chatting in Lao. When this seems to be going nowhere I start looking around the room, investigating the place for any information that can help me.

[farangbah]

There is nothing official-looking about the place or the men, whatsoever. But they obviously hold some sort of sway, as the LBs wouldn’t be sitting there otherwise. In front of the guy with the beer, who is perhaps head honcho, and es muy macho, there are a few random trinkets – could these be confiscated items from the LBs? That there looks like a mobile. And, is… that… an iPhone? It’s an iPhone. Is it an iPhone? Yes, it’s definitely an iPhone. Is that a black case? Yes, it is. Is that the little discolored chip off the corner of my iPhone’s case? Yes, it is. That is my fucking iPhone sitting in front of the beer-drinking muy macho head honcho at 4am and he’s drinking his beer and shooting the breeze.

I consider nabbing it and making a run for it. If they’re like some other asians I know, they’ll maybe just look on with a blank stare and watch me go, not getting off their asses in pursuit. But I decide not to take that chance yet. And Lay, who’s situated on their side of the table, by the way, knows where I’m staying.

Eventually they call my little paperboy up to sit next to me. The tension is so thick between us it feels like when Predator puts on his shield and gets all blurry, you could almost see it.

She says she took it because I wouldn’t pay her. They take her into another room and my mind starts to wander, thinking of all the naughty things they might be doing to her, but they came back too soon for it to have been anything good.

Another dude, sitting next to Lay, presumably takes down the whole story, in painstakingly-slow freehand, on blank paper, as we both sit there and eventually sign it.

And thus, after more than an hour of sweating it out, my phone was handed over to me. I turn it on, and though now in Thai language, there was the beautiful prompt to receive my passcode – the remote block had worked after all. And Lay was indeed my gay savior, as we walked away arm in arm into the sunrise, after one crazy weekend in Vientiane.

[farangbah]

I met up with Pittsburgh yesterday morning, as promised. After a long day of telling me, “Man, your phone is gone,” the look on his face when I produced it was priceless. And it only got better as I retold the story, over a Beer Lao, of course. He couldn’t believe GDS was a villain in our tale (but then again, he’s perhaps not the brightest -- he hadn’t even realized she had Down Syndrome. He just thought she was a lesbian). Apparently, she didn’t even work at the bar.

And here I sit a day later. I still can’t believe I got my phone back, untouched, and for what amounted to a little beer money as a thank you to the “police”.

If you ever find yourself in Vientiane, one, step lively, and two, go to GQ bar, around the corner from Sam Lo bar, and you and Lay have a drink on me. That’s a promise. Just make sure you tell Lay who it’s from. And please let him suck your dick. You’d be doing me a favor. And it might even keep you out of trouble.

[mardhi]

Blimey - what an adventure. I can just feel you going through all that crap.

[BigTel]

What a great story, could feel myself being there and drawn more and more into the situation, excellent F B , great conclusion.

[pdogg]

Nothing like a happy ending bro!

[strocube]

Dude, great writing.

Glad you got your phone back:)