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Published: February 21st 2010
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Box wine has grown increasingly popular here in the last year or so. At a Vietnamese New Year party I attended the other night, shots of wine were passed around, replacing the traditional lao-lao homemade rice whiskey that had been served in previous years. The way these celebrations usually work is that the host walks around the table with a small shot glass, pouring a shot for each person, waiting while they drink it, and then moving on to the next person, and so on, around the table with the same shot glass. I was familiar with this shot drinking custom with lao-lao, but had never seen it performed with a box of wine, and shots of wine before. Although I didn't love chugging wine, I really preferred it to chugging the often evil-tasting lao-lao. The kids are also really making the best out of the new box-wine trend, ingeniously blowing up the empty bags inside the boxes to use as flotation devices in the river or as impromptu pillows. The first time I watched a little kid float by me down the river, on a silver inflated foil wine bag, I couldn't stop laughing. Now, I've seen it dozens of
Nam Khan in the other direction
This is where I swim and watch the kids float by on wine bags times and just think oh there goes another kid on a wine bag, floating downriver.
Another part of Lao culture I adore is the way people talk about you as if you aren’t there, but in a good way. You never have to worry about what they’re saying about you behind your back, because they’d rather say it right in front of you. It’s very common, when you meet friend’s of friends, for the friends to ask all kinds of questions about you to your friend, even though you are right there.
“Oh, what’s your friends name? Where’s she from? Does she have a boyfriend? How long is she staying?” It’s a bit relaxing in a way, your friend does all the introduction work for you. You just sit back and enjoy becoming acquainted without actually talking.
Another amusing part of Lao culture is that people are very direct and honest, especially with money and relationships. If you have just purchased something, everybody will bluntly ask you how much it was and then always, always, tell you they know where to buy it for less. If someone asks you if your are married, as occurs roughly ten
Sunset on the Mekong River
The town is based in between the Nam Khan and Mekong Rivers times a day, and you reply that you are single, not married with no boyfriend, men will always assume that you want to date them.
“Oh, you don’t have a boyfriend? Would you like to be my girlfriend? What? You don’t want to? Do you love me? Why not? But I really like foreign women. They are so beautiful.” Married men will also sometimes assume that you want to be their “mia-noy”, or mistress, solely because you are single.
When this happens, I just politely say, “Oh thank you for the offer, but no, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
The biggest monetary bill here is the 50,000 kip note, introduced only a few years ago, and equivalent to just over $5 US. What this means is that people are frequently walking around with massive stacks of money, as payments are generally made in cash. The ATM’s here also only allow users to withdraw 700,000 kip at a time, the equivalent of $85 US. One million kip is only equal to about $118 USD. It’s funny to talk in such big numbers about such small amounts of money. A billion kip is only about $1118 USD!
Tourists are
The host with her box of wine
on a brief break between touring the party with the box always complaining that the Lao bills are worth so little, yet they don't realize that only about six years ago, the biggest bill was the 10,000 kip, equal to about $1.18. Imagine paying a twenty year lease, an average lease length here, with bills worth $1.18. It's also worth noting that Lao currency is completely worthless outside of Laos. Even in Thailand, a country with a very close relationship to Laos, you cannot exchange Lao kip for another currency. Nobody wants it.
The other day I heard some tourists complaining that they didn't like Luang Prabang because the people don't speak English and there are no tall buildings. Crazy tourists, where do they think they are?
I recently found out that a lovely old woman I know here, who I considered something of a grandmother, and was quite fond of, actually sold one of her children to foreigners, when the child was 6, and tried to sell her granddaughter years later, when that child was born. This came as a big shock to me. This sweet natured woman has actually been addicted to gambling for over fifty years, and tried to sell these children not out of necessity,
but because she needed the money for gambling. This seems a very sad example of the power of addiction. Her own son begged not to be sold but she sold him anyway. Now she has nothing but a photograph of him, and a wish to see him again before she dies. But nobody knows where he is. Who knows if he remembers his mother and his sister and his early life in Laos. The granddaughter, thankfully, was not sold, though the adoptive parents were waiting at the hospital at the child’s birth, and the grandmother had already begun to spend their money. The mother did not want to sell her child, and as the nurses at the hospital did not want the child sold either, they conspired together for the mother to keep the child.
When Lao people talk about showering, they always call it bathing. The other day, I thought to correct a friend, to tell him that what we call a bath in the US, they do not have here. But then I realized that what we call a shower in the US, most Lao people do not have either. What they have is something in between,
really not a bath or a shower. They have a cold-water tap in the bathroom, which they use to fill up a big bucket with water. When the bucket is fairly full, they take a small bucket and use it to dump the water over themselves, soaping themselves throughout. When tap water is not available, as is the case in many villages, villagers bathe in the river or from a spout, dispensing water from the mountains or a well in to one common outdoor tap area.
Speaking to my friend, I realized that almost everyone in America, no matter how low-income, has a shower. Most Lao people have never even seen a shower or a bath and most of our ghettos have showers and baths. Americans are really an extremely rich people compared to much of the world. Out of the cities, most Lao people live in houses they have built themselves, with dirt floors and bamboo walls and whatever else they could find, barter or buy. They get their sustenance from the land and the jungle. It’s a vastly different mode of existence, one our ancestors lived not so long ago, but one which most of us could
Vietnamese Rice Noodle Crepes
One of my favorite street foods and a very popular dish here. Filled with mushrooms and pork and topped with carmelized shallots and a sweet soy sauce barely fathom. I don’t think I really imagined it still existed, this way of life, before seeing it here myself.
On a happier note, the other morning, walking in to the kitchen, I came upon the maid, Seng, enjoying her breakfast. She was dipping her tomato omelette in to her coffee. I’ve seen many interesting differences here but I must say, seeing that might have surprised me the most. This morning, Seng called in to work hungover, saying she got very drunk last night and wouldn’t be able to come in to work today. Now when could one ever call in to work hungover in the US? You’ve got to appreciate the honesty here.
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