Extra Long Days, In the Best Way, In Don Det

As published on SubStack, 3/27/23:

[Don Det, 3/27/23]

Just 20 years ago, the first tourists arrived in Don Det. The only electricity was at restaurants and guesthouses with generators. Still, everything went dark around 8PM, because that’s bedtime for locals since, well, the Stone Age.

Thirteen years ago, electrical lines reached Don Det. This, Bouavanh remembers well, since it’s also the year he got married. Known as Ken to his customers, Bouavanh is the owner of One More Bar, where I’m sitting right now. Open on three sides, it’s cool enough in this heat. To my left is the Mekong with its islands. Right in front of me is Ken’s family having lunch. They sit on the floor around a coal-fired clay stove, with a boiling wok on top for dunking greens and fish. A counterfeit Yamaha speaker softly plays Lao rap.

During the early months of Covid, I was stuck in Busan, South Korea. Though I grew to love everything about that city and country, I couldn’t stand Cass, Hite and Terra. South Korean beers seriously suck. Not long ago, I thought, I was drinking Beerlao in Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Phonsavan.

In my minimal room, I gave a poetry reading to an audience of zero. Midway, I said, “As soon as this lockdown bullshit is over, I’m gonna fly back to Southeast Asia. If I can’t get back into Vietnam, I’ll go to Laos, so I can drink Beerlao, you know? I’ll go to Laos and drink Beerlao all the fuckin’ time. It’s a great fuckin’ idea!”

If you have reasonable goals, you might just achieve it, unless Uncle Sam or Israel sends a missile your way, or you get hit by a stray bullet, or you’re thwarted by affirmative action or equity bullshit, or you’re canceled by a cowardly society on its deathbed. I mean, anything can happen to dick you over. If you just want cheap Beerlao, however, the gods might indulge you and, if they’re drunk enough, parachute you onto a tropical island, albeit riverine.

At One More Bar, I’m on my second Beerlao. Ken opened this mellow joint ten years ago. During Covid, though, he lost three years of business. Even before tourists were locked out, his mother-in-law begged him to close up. Being in constant contact with foreigners, Ken was sure to catch that cartoony ball with snarling teeth and spikes radiating from it, thus bring death to his whole family. One More Bar reopened just three months ago.

Was it Jessica Diamond who did that hilarious drawing, “Shack with Disc”? In any case, Don Det is filled with shacks, cabins and houses on stilts with satellite discs. Obsolete, they’re rusting.

Ken was 11 when he encountered his first television. “To see a movie, you go to someone’s house, and they charge money!” Ken laughs.

Now there’s Wi-Fi, so even little kids know how to access YouTube and TikTok. They’re nowhere as hooked on the virtual as nearly everywhere else, though, and that’s why dazed First Worlders come here. It’s not easy.

From San Francisco, say, you’d have to fly to Bangkok, then take vans or buses across Cambodia, then vans or buses, again, to reach Nakasong. From there, you can finally buy a boat ticket into a much saner past, which, three years into the Great Reset, matters even more.

If you’ve lived here all your life, though, it’s just a dusty village without even a decent temple, though one is being upgraded, with an ornate gate meticulously constructed even as I type.

With hip tourists came pizze, pasta and even poutines! Right at One More Bar. “It’s our signature dish,” Ken solemnly said. I was speechless.

Since it’s not quite noon, there are only two other customers at One More Bar. French, they’re lying on cushions. At any time of day, you’ll find people, tourists and locals, lying down, often on hammocks. Cows, chickens and ducks wander about. The most common sound is that of a boat engine. With a population of 400, including roughly two dozens foreign residents, it has no police, though a cop from nearby may pop in to remind people to close up at 11PM.

When I asked 40-year-old Ken if he remembers any murder in his hometown, he said no. Kent went to Pakse, a hundred miles away, for high school, and visited Vientiane, but hasn’t been anywhere else.

“I have my children. I can’t travel. I meet people from all over, at my bar. I meet interesting people. I’ve met you, and Miha,” a Romanian who was standing nearby.

“Oh come on, Ken, you’ve also met assholes!”

Ken just shrugged.

Later, Miha said, “They don’t really fight here. Ken told me he only remembers one fight between his parents. In Laos, if you speak to someone without respect, it’s a fight.”

“I must say Vietnamese are a lot more aggressive. Most people are OK, but they’re definitely more aggressive.”

While visiting Laos for a month in 2020, I heard no loud voices until I boarded a van for Vietnam, and this lone loudmouth, you’ve guessed it, was Vietnamese! He had to broadcast himself nearly nonstop to make sure everyone knew he was a badass not to be fucked with.

Romanian, 37-year-old Miha worked in computer for seven years, but ditched everything to blow bubbles for tips, a profession, so to speak, that sustained him for seven years through 16 countries, all European. Although Miha had to resort to dumpster diving at times, it beat staring at a computer all day.

Miha’s first stop in Asia was Thailand, where he took scuba lessons, with the aim of becoming an instructor. A side trip to Don Det, though, had him thinking of just moving here. Miha had already checked out a space where he might open a restaurant.

For three years, Ken went back to farming and fishing. Unlike nearly everyone else on earth, most Lao villagers can live without money. Only in the 21st century were Don Det islanders catapulted, sort of, into our globalized asylum, but they’re still very much on the fringe, for, as I’ve already said, it’s not easy to get here.

An influx of outsiders gave them the cash to buy motorbikes, cellphones, jeans and better boats, but should this circulation of men, money and merchandises be squelched tomorrow, few will handle it better than these islanders.

At One More Bar, I had my first Lao meal. Ordering curried chicken, I had rice that was grown by Ken himself. He’s still a farmer.

“It’s good for me. I like that work.”

In a place this tiny, there aren't many options for breakfast just after dawn, so I've been trekking to Green Bamboo, 1 1/2 mile from my room. At the front, roughly a dozen items are displayed for sale. They include instant noodles, packets of shampoo, bags of salt, fresh bananas, dried bananas, bottled water, eggs, cigarettes and Beerlao.

The restaurant section has one low table, which you reach on uneven planks. Within a few feet of you are tomato plants, broken fans, fishing rods, an ancient fridge and an old TV, next to which sits a hen on ten eggs. Chickens not burden with bringing forth the next generation wander in and out of Green Bamboo. Here and there lie bits of trash long forgotten and so dusty, they’re no longer dirty. At the back, a disused satellite disc aimed past the banana trees and Mekong, to reach, once, that phantasmagoric universe.

As for Green Bamboo’s menu, just about nothing listed on its board is available, but what’s made is good enough.

Green Bamboo even has four guest rooms, all clean and comfortable enough, though without AC or river view. For just under $600, I can rent one for a whole year, the owner said, and he’d help me get the right visa. I’ve already found a cheaper room at a better location, however. It’s good to have options.

When the tourists disappeared, the owner of Green Bamboo reverted to growing vegetables and fishing. Catching six or seven pounds of fish daily, he would sell two thirds, and with that money, buy whatever else he needed.

In his 20’s, though, he did illegally emigrate to Thailand to earn more. Although the coyote promised he would be working at a hotel, thanks to his English and computer skills, this man ended up laboring on a farm, then installing electrical wires for the railroad. The last job was so exhausting, all other Lao immigrants quitted, but he toughed it out, so as to come home with more money. The wire scraps, he was allowed to sell. That also helped. Happily back in Don Det, he has no intentions of going anywhere again.

Many strangers can’t help but think the same. Within seconds of arrival, I said to a Brit I had just met, “Look at this, man! Why would you want to be anywhere else?”

Twenty-three-years-old, this was his first taste of Asia, with France and Spain his only other trips overseas. After Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, he would go to Vietnam to finish his three-month vacation. With just a high school diploma, he managed a restaurant back home, but he wasn’t happy. In Don Det, he’s paying just under $3 for a hostel bed.

I was very impressed by this grounded and composed young man, “In my 20’s, I didn’t dare to go anywhere, not that I had the money to do anything.”

Don Det got its first paved road just +2 months ago. Suddenly, it’s much easier to ride a bike, the most common vehicle here. There are no cars. Women sweep this smooth concrete baby in front of their houses, and there’s at least one trash can next to it. Littering remains a problem, but you must remember, these fine folks only tossed away banana peels and fish bones not that long ago.

Arriving here by boat three days ago, I walked down this concrete road to find a place to stay. A sign advertising $10 a night room with AC sounded promising, but the owner was not there. At the second mini hotel, a white man said he had no vacancy, but I could get a room the next day for $35 a night. No way, I thought. At the third place, a Lao lady said she had rooms for $6 a night, so I had her show me one. Satisfied, I asked what she would charge if I stayed ten days. She promptly lowered it to $4.14 a night, so here I am.

For that exorbitant price, I’m getting my own bathroom with no hot water, but it’s hot enough here. There’s Wi-Fi, and on a deck facing the Mekong just outside my door, there’s a hammock and tiny table, so I’m set.

As a poor, landlocked nation, Laos is already isolated, but Don Det is a riverine island shoved into a corner of the country, but that’s its appeal. Coming here to regain their equilibrium, most First Worlders don’t stay for more than two or three days, at most, because their vacations are short, and there’s so much else to discover.

After quickie selfies at Angkor Wat, Plain of Jars, Ha Long Bay and Penang, it’s time to fly back to Manchester or Philadelphia, the last with its +500 murders and 1,300 fatal drug overdose a year, but hoorah! They have regained two million channels showing everything from Biden explaining the Tao Te Ching to the Transsexual Olympics. Don’t miss tonight’s curling final between Belize and Tonga.

First Worlders also come here to get high, for weed and shrooms are cheap. The latter grow from cow or buffalo dung, so there’s no investment except water, plus a fridge to keep it fresh. A $6 bag will send you reeling for at least an afternoon. If you start to think and act like Rimbaud or Mother Teresa, no one will care. Just don’t pull your pants down to prove you’re at one with everything.

I finish this in Sunset View. Sounds fancy, but most meals here are under two bucks. Right in front of me, five laughing kids are splashing in the Mekong. Behind me, adults banter and laugh.

You can judge any community by the serenity of its residents, especially the children. Are they calm, trusting and easily cheered, or do they dress, talk and strut like whores and gangstas? Do they enjoy just being kids, or do they strain to become as insane, addicted, angry and frustrated as their elders?

Though I have much more to say about this place, I must take a breather. Was it Eliot who said, “For everything said, something else must be said”? A lifetime isn’t long enough to record and explain what happens to anyone in a day, and in Don Det, each day is extra long, in the best way.

[Don Det, 3/26/23]

[Don Det, 3/27/23]

[Don Det, 3/26/23]

[Don Det, 3/25/23]

[Don Det, 3/25/23]