Local madness in Vientiane.

March 27, 2012.

Local madness in Vientiane.

In Vientiane, the capital of Laos, I went to a local company funded by the Japanese government together with my friend Shinji. At this company, an old friend of him was working as a supervisor. Seeing something local is always interesting, so I was happy to go with him.

The company existed out of a restaurant, a tailor and a factory for clothes. Local girls are hired to work, supervised by Japanese.

 At the restaurant, local old men were drinking beer. It was only 4 in the afternoon, but these men seem to be drinking here everyday from around 3. Their work ends at 5, but in Laos, it is normal to start drinking hours before the end of your job, which is a huge contradiction to working in Japan.

Shinji and I were invited to join these men, and were happy to do so. One of them spoke pretty good English, and told us about life in Vientiane.

Outside, in front of the company, people were playing a game of petanque, which is popular in Laos due to the period in which it was a French colony. We sat down on a bench to have a look. As a kid, I was fond of playing petanque in the Netherlands, and was hoping that someone would call us to join. Young and old, women and men were all playing together. People came on their bicycles with their own balls to join. After a while, some people came along with food and drink.

"If we stare at this food, they might invite us to have some" I said to Shinji.

Together, we started to stare at the food like madmen. As we had predicted, it didn't take long for a friendly old man to notice us and invite us to have some. We stood up, and politely both took one skewer of chicken.

But, if you decide to have some, you have to take it all. Before we knew it, all the people came to serve the two foreigners. Countless amounts of skewers, pork legs, cucumbers and tomatoes were literally pushed into our mouth. Old men would approach us with a bottle of beer and a glass, hand over the glass and filled it to make us chug it.

After eating our bellies full, we were now introduced to join the game. 

But just when we were about to start, Shinji's friend came out of the building.

"Time to go to dinner" she said, and so we had to say goodbye to our new friends.