Indochina 2006: Homie Don't Play That

When I was in Europe, I relentlessly mocked the work ethic (or utter lack thereof) of the French, Italians, and Greeks. But now I realize that these three peoples, who are probably too lazy to wipe their own asses, have nothing on the citizens of the great nation of Laos.

Some of you will have heard of Homie the Clown, the black clown on the comic TV show from the 80s “In Living Colour”. Homie the Clown was a party clown. His job was to do tricks or little kids. But his response to any requests, whether it was to turn a cartwheel, make a balloon animal, or fart through his dick, was “Homie don’t play that.” Homie was too lazy, apathetic, and unapologetically unbothered to do anything.

Lao is filled with Homie the Clowns, and they don’t play fuck all. In every town and city, you see vast hordes of little brown monkeys (I am referring to the Lao here) sitting on their asses, doing… nothing. Now, in Canada, when we say “I’m doing nothing” we really mean “I’m watching TV”, or “I’m surfing the net”, or “I’m just chillin’.” In Lao, “I’m doing nothing” means
that the person doing nothing is on his ass, staring into traffic glassy-eyed like a cow digesting grass, silent as a jar of ketchup, doing… nothing.

I have never- and I mean NEVER- seen a job that could be done by one person in Canada being done by less than 5 people in Lao. Example. In every city there are taxis. These taxis are actually pint-sized pickups with loud, stuttering engines and two rows of seats in the bed. They are called tuk-tuks.

Everywhere you go, you see rows of tuk-tuks sitting there, doing… nothing. Their drivers are napping in the back. Their friends are napping with them. I have seen tuk-ruks draped with as many as four Lao in various positions of unconsciousness. This brings me to one conclusion (Besides the obvious one that Lao are lazy and can’t be bothered to drive around looking for fares. Homie don’t play that.): about three-four Lao share one tuk-tuk and take turns driving people around.

This boggles the mind. If three or four people share one vehicle, what the FUCK is it sitting there with all of its co-owners snoring on its seats? Shouldn’t they be taking turns with the vehicle earning money to feed their families? But clearly, Homie don’t play that.

This is perhaps an exaggeration. I have been hassled to the point of rage by tuk-tuk drivers whose only knowledge of the English language consists of: “Hey you! Where you go?” Sometimes, they yell: “Hello? Tuk-tuk?” and occasionally, they spice it up with: “Tuk-tuk! Hello?” So even when Homie comes out to play, he annoys the hell out of me.

You just can’t win with Sean, but you all know that.

Oh fuck. At one point, Amber and I were on an island in the south of Laos called Don Det. It was a scorching day, and we decided to rent kayaks and paddle down the Mekong river. When we got to the kayak rental shop, there were two guys snoring it up, stretched out on the ground. It was 11 in the morning.

I yelled at them: “SA-BAI-DEE!” This means “HEL-LOOO!”

Nothing.

I yelled at them twice more, before one of them opened his eyes. He didn’t even sit up. Here were two customers, standing in front of him, wanting to pay him greenbacks, and all he would have to do was get up, haul two kayaks off the racks, and pocket our cash.

But no. Buddy Lao stared at me. I pointed at a kayak. He shook his head, put his head down, and closed his eyes. The message was clear as a summer day: Homie don’t play that.

WHOOOOO-HOOOA. I have so many examples of how lazy these people are that I’m just going to quit.

Anyway, I have been so bombarded with sights and sounds and experiences that they are all blending together. But I have one good one: the Border Run.

A “border run” is a term, one of many, for crossing a border. Border runs are fun, but they are also taxing upon both the wallet and the patience. This is because everyone, from the bus drivers to the customs officers to the “guides” at the borders, conspires to cheat the traveller at the border crossings of as much money as possible.

The logic, of course, is impeccable. In the city, the traveller has his or her bearings. He has a map, he has numerous sources of information, and more modes of transport than he can shoot at (you have no idea how much I’ve fantasized about gunning down a tuk-tuk driver). But at the border, there is limited options for the traveller. He’s entering a new country, he has no
idea how to get from A to B, and there are few sources of info and transport. Those who provide these services know they have a monopoly… so they do what all monopolized markets do. They raise prices.

We took a bus from Pakse, in Laos, to the border with Cambodia. We intended to get to the Lao border town of Vung Kham, but before we could get there, a minivan stopped our bus and told us they would transport us to the border… for free.

This did not appear as suspicious as it now sounds. The bus we were on (a larger tuk-tuk that was packed like a cattle-car with vegetables, Lao peasants, vomiting infants, and a crazy toothless lady) stopped for the minivan and all involved acted like it was a regular occurance at the border.

There were five of us travellers, Amber, I, and three Americans: Katie, Val and Kenny. We got to a tumbleweed outpost on the other side of the border, a Cambodian shanty-shithole called Dong Cralaw, where we had to, of course, bribe the customs officials with a luxury tax. We had already done this on the Lao side, so it was just part of the routine.

Then the minivan-man, who spoke FABULOUS English (of course), after a long bit of primiminary nice talk, produces a swarthy little fuck-face compatriot with equally great English, who turned out to work with him for the same transport company. The offer: they would take us to Phnom Penh, 11 hours away, for US $30 each.

Of course, we laughed at them, and they kept having at us. It was only after a long bit of banter that I realized that we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. We were in a border outpost, surrounded by jungle, with 5 km of potholed road leading back to Laos and 50 km of gravel road going to the next Cambodian town. There were no alternative forms of transportation, as there would have been if THE BUS WE HAD BEEN ON HAD BEEN ALLOWED TO REACH VUNG KHAM.

These motherfuckers had deliberately picked us up BEFORE we reached Vung Kham, driven us to Buttfuck Nowhere, and given us an ultimatum: pay our exorbitant price, or we strand you. And of course, they never said as much. They kept smiling and acting like they were doing us a huge favour, and when Katie and Val got American and started yelling about how they were cheating us- oh, my- you should have SEEN the hurt on their faces. That swarthy man could not have been as sad if I had fucked his mother with a knife.

We got the price down to 25 and started driving. After an hour, they told us that we had to change cars (the pretext was crossing a river… another car would meet us on the other side). The other car, instead of a minvan, was a clanking claptrap of a tuk-tuk half filled with bales of rope.

We had no choice. We got in, of course, and at least had the presence of mind to make an adventure of it. Katie rolled a joint the size of my pinkie, Kenny got out his guitar, and we sang along to Sublime, Tom Petty, and Blind Melon as we churned down the dirt roads. In retrospect, I would not have traded that experience at all.

We got to a town, where the driver swore that there was another minivan waiting to take us the rest of the way. The minivan- I have pictures- was the kind of vehicle that Canadian bums would refuse to sleep in. It was also already full. The back was stuffed with backpacks, and one of the travellers who had been sold a seat on it before the five of us had showed up told us
there were already 10 people sitting inside, with another 4 locals sitting ON TOP of the van. The seats were riddled with holes, there were cockroaches on the floors, and a can of Raid sat prominently on the seat.

Val and Katie got American again and absolutely harangued the people in charge of the situation. In the end, we were granted hostel rooms for that night, and free tickets to Phnom Penh on the bus the next day. As the minivan pulled away, it had to be push-started by four people shoving from behind.

The bus was far better. When we got to Phnom Penh, about 50 tuk-tuk drivers were horded outside the bus, shouting for our business. I suddenly felt like I knew how movie stars feel when assaulted by papparazzi. But- oh MY GOD- the tuk-tuk drivers were herded back by two cops with truncheons, which they used to BEAT the drivers. Oh, it was wild. It was mostly in the knees. I also say a fight between two drivers. Come on boys, you don’t have to fight over me.

Ok, the email is clearly too long. I’m going to see the Killing Fields tomorrow, where they have 8,000 skulls neatly piled up… all victims of the Khmer Rouge.