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Published: January 31st 2010
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Communicating by text message with Lao friends, with varying degrees of English proficiency, means receiving a multitude of entertaining messages. These, though they come everyday, never cease to entertain. And since many friends have two or three sim cards which they switch in and out of their phone, allowing them to communicate cheaply with different friends, depending on who has which one of the three providers, that means I get many messages from strange numbers. I often don’t know who the message is coming from. I’d like to share a few messages I received this week.
“I saw you.” - sent from an unknown number
“How are to day? … R u have lunch? … I’m studying … Sorrywhoareyou?” - a series of messages also sent from an unknown number
“Hi! How about u today? I am really like your lotion much its good smiling” - from a friend I gifted with some lotion.
“Really, ms.I think couldn’t miss it, if u free time but I like it so much.” - from a friend who is a head monk in the capital city, regarding telling me to watch the American Golden Globe Awards because they were on
TV just then.
Oftentimes, I pass by areas of town that stink of burning plastic. The reason for this is that people are not aware of the dangers of burning plastic, as well as the fact that people here are very clean. So at the end of the day the locals will sweep their dirt yards, with a broom, making a pile of trash, which they will then burn.
The other night there was a dance show in town, part of a larger dance festival based in Vientiane, with a few nights here and there, performing all over the country. The first performers were a group of young Lao men, who performed hip-hop dance moves to Thai hip-hop. I was incredible impressed as I’d never even heard hip-hop music played in the country and had no idea there was a break dancing scene here. The second and third performers were from Burma and Japan, supposedly internationally famous dancers, professionally trained, but their dances were totally inappropriate for the audience.
This was a free-show, for an audience of local people, many of who had never seen a dance performance that was not traditional Lao in their whole lives.
Both dancers chose routines that alternated fast-paced dancing with very slow, hyper-modern symbolic slow dancing, sometimes just staring out at the crowd, sometimes lying on the ground, sometimes folding a big origami bird. Little Lao kids in the audience later remarked that they thought they were watching ghosts, due to the slow and creepy way the dancers were purposely moving.
The final performance was an improvisational one, made up half of a team of French break-dancers and half local Lao break-dancers, who took turns dancing, with spur of the moment moves, to classic American hip-hop songs. It was just fabulous; another day, another surprise in Laos. And one of my favorite parts of the whole thing was the fact that many of the Lao dancers, plus the Burmese and Japanese dancers, were wearing these white sweat-pants with pockets. I guess they all purchased their sweatpants at the same shop because without fail, every single dancer had a large hole ripped in the crotch of their pants by the end of their routine. About 40 little kids in the audience giggled loudly while the Japanese dancer stared emotionally out at the crowd during a very interpretative part of her routine.
The other night I met a Lao friend for dinner, who had been out of town since my return. We’d been in touch by email while I was home in the US and I thought that meant I’d been aware of important things in his life. Not so.
“What’s new with you?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing much. Last week I got married.”
“What? Really? You didn’t tell me you were getting married! I spoke to you last week on the phone and you never mentioned it!”
“Oh, I didn’t really tell anyone. It was a very small wedding. Only six beers, some rice and some beef. Because both of our families are very poor.”
“Wow. Congratulations. I am surprised. Who is it? Your old girlfriend from before?”
“Yes, my old girlfriend I’ve had for two years. Our parents said we had to get married because she is six months pregnant. But I think I do not want to get married. I’d prefer to maybe date foreigners, not get married and not have kids yet.”
“Yes, I can understand that but I think it’s too late for that now.”
“Oh, no. It’s OK. I can have girlfriends now. No problem.”
“Uh, OK. So your wife, she can have boyfriends too, then?”
“No, of course not.”
So, my friend got married and he’s having a child. But when I asked him about getting a job he said he probably wouldn’t have time until after the baby was born because he’d be back and forth between home and his wife’s province, five hours north, until then. The guy has no money, no job and no home. He works for free, for food and a roof to sleep under, at a guesthouse in town. He speaks impeccable English, a rare and valuable trait in this country. I told him to let me know when he was ready to look for a job and I’d start looking with him.
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