Dark Side of the Mekong

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday night is unfailingly the week’s zenith in every capital city…

 

Already glutted downtowns are routinely stuffed to over-spilling with throngs of workers cutting loose after a week of underpaid toiling at the coal-face.

 

Release is palpable everywhere.

 

Tourists run amok, bar-hopping while wandering aimlessly. In spite of a grid system with only three main cross streets and the ubiquity of Google Maps, a disproportionate number of these travellers appear transparently lost.

 

Like in myriad other ways, Vientiane breaks the mould here.

 

The banks of the mighty Mekong are practically desolate although it’s not yet 10.30 pm. This is the time of the official curfew…

 

Laos, though, a mysterious and singular country with a depressing history of oppression and pillaging, is a true dichotomy. A single-party communist state, in effect a totalitarian regime, few people globally enjoy more freedom than Lao denizens.

 

Isolated pockets of locals and foreigners perch on rough stone steps zoning out across the muddy liquid separating Laos from Thailand.

 

Thailand is part of the reason for such a sparsely-populated city at weekends. The Lao flock across the Friendship Bridge to Nong Khai or Udon Thani as if drawn there by a supremely potent magnet.

 

Christmas is coming and the balmy temperatures nosedive early morning and at night. I sport a reversed fitted hat and hoodie.

 

As usual, I digress, meandering far from the track.

 

Zoom into town full-bore on a great 125cc Yamaha automatic to blow off the cobwebs and shoot a rack of American pool with Chongi. I weave in and out of traffic listening to pulsing hip-hop, no helmet and flagrantly disobeying any road rules.

 

Having spent the day decompressing at an upscale riverfront hotel after a vigorous game of tennis we both fancy rounding out the evening with the usual volley of laughter. The venue and location earlier was unimprovable, the service mirroring the work-ethic and vim of this fabled sloth:

 

Back to the riverfront shenanigans…

 

The bar in question is teetering on its last withered legs with a handover of ownership in the post.

 

The expected flotsam and jetsam of a transient city closely monitor a top-tier amateur beat all-comers on the free but strictly regulated table. Deviant house rules apply and the game is taken seriously, to understate.

Eclectic memorabilia pockmark the worn establishment. I love the juxtaposition of a fully-operational bazooka, an assault rifle slung above the bar then some magnificent faded photos offering a glimpse into the turbulent past of a country unknown by most but abused beyond the pale by all manner of interlopers on the grand scale.

 

Since my drinking days are a distant memory, I greedily suck down a large glass bottle of Coke.

 

Opt to decamp for a mooch along the Mekong passing through the vinegar strokes of a night market en route to its banks. The water is rapidly receding as the monsoon season is history for another year. Within the month you can walk half-way to Thailand across parched earth resembling something other-wordly.

Having fleetingly discussed the risk of smoking outside, such a notion was simply and mutely disregarded. Risk was not a word nestling in the vocabulary of that of Chongi or my own.

 

A desultory glance in each direction was enough for us to indolently select the route of least resistance: a farcical set of booby-trapped steps. Although only eight in number, descent constituted a full leg-workout. Design was not uppermost on this architect’s agenda. I think, in fact, the crude staircase was just built off the cuff.

 

Anyway, in less than two minutes a single large joint of pure sativa was shot-gunned, the roach thrown into the reeds.

 

We casually wend our way back up on to the terraced area.

 

A stupendously gormless youth in a jarring orange football jersey twice listlessly voices, “Stop…” to our backs.

 

First ignored, on the second occasion a barked “BO” [No] over the shoulder should have been sufficient to shake off what I first assume to be a hustling lady-boy dressed down or a pimp of some stripe.

 

Then, clean from left-field, a pure random asked for a light. To expedite our departure, I simply hand him a glowing cigarette butt instead of Zippo.

 

The camouflaged figure heaving into view is the very last thing we expect or want. The uniform emanates menace. His manner and body language, though, betrays his nervousness.

 

The official is utterly out of his element.

 

Chongi and myself, on the other hand, deal with chumps like this for brunch. We can sniff someone scrabbling beneath their depth as canines home in on the scent of fear.

 

The role of the emaciated figure in orange is now manifestly clear: an odious fucking stool pigeon.

 

His attempts to intervene are quashed. The pre-pubescent pseudo-official says, “You smoke…” as the despicable grass chimes in whiningly, his bleating falling on six deaf ears.

 

“Yes. Cigarettes. I smoke his. He smokes mine. Different: see. Brown. White. I hate them.”

 

“I see you. I see you pass. I see you smoke. I smell.”

 

“No you didn’t.”

 

“I smell.”

 

“No you don’t.”

 

I am reminded here of the manipulative Derren Brown…

 

When confronted by a would-be assailant he counters with pure baloney like, “My garden wall is nine metres high” which completely derails any attempt at dialogue causing complete confusion and disorientation.

 

What does a man respond to such meaningless drivel?

 

If further challenged, he briskly follows up with an equally nonsensical non-sequitur…

 

“Do you eat raw onions? I eat nine a day. Washed down with engine oil.”

 

Nobody wants to deal with an individual like that. There can be no meaningful response.

 

At this stage in our incident, defeat is writ large on the subdued features of all but the jubilant brothers-in-arms.

 

In the face of blanket denial there is but one recourse: evidence.

 

Glee and expectation are palpable as both bags are searched.

 

Our joy is compounded knowing that the only evidence, even in broad daylight with a dog, was a redundancy, swallowed by thickets of coarse, high flora with the remaining Diazepam coursing through our veins.

 

The 100 grams I have at home are a different animal entirely so I need to exit this scenario with no follow-up and that is precisely what I intend to do. What I will do.

 

To further throw the rank amateur off guard, I ask to move into the light better for him to inspect the innards of my Louis V messenger bag. Unzip all pockets and ask if he wants to see my MacBook.

 

“Teacher Angeet. No alcohol. Fit and healthy. Hate drugs. Hate smoking.”

 

I then cannot resist repeating the additional disarming tactic…

 

“Sure you don’t want to look at laptop?”

 

An extremely cursory glimpse through barely 10% of possible stash-spots within the capacious Vuitton leaves him slumped and stumped.

 

Chongi, all the while calmly berating the informant, now chimes in as a naked statement of fact, “We go now. Go home. Time to go.”

 

“You wait for boss.”

 

A figure in civvies is holding a (perhaps unrelated) conversation on a vintage Nokia pays us as much attention as the average Saudi student in class.

 

“No,” Chongi reiterates. “I said, Bo. Time for us to go now. Thanks, gentlemen. Goodnight. We’ve done nothing wrong but come for a walk. Don’t know why we’re even talking to you. Night.”

 

I’m scarcely able to suppress my mirth and we slouch, ponderously and without a backward glance or hint of anxiety, in a wondrous haze of blue and green.

 

Elegantly wasted.

 

Stripping my hoodie and – for once – donning my Biggles-esque helmet, I wend my way home at pace through the backstreets I know intimately after two years spent in this sleepy pocket of SE Asia.

 

Slumped on my bed chugging away at an obese three-gram joint, I bask contentedly in the knowledge that tomorrow brings with it merely watching money drop into my account online, brokering some new deals and taking a late, leisurely breakfast at a suitably decadent five star hostelry.

 

As usual…

 

We win.