He’s drawn from a temple mural of Portuguese traders. The true picture of a farang. Pointy chin. Pointy nose.
He gets out of a dusty Toyota pickup, crosses the street toward us. We are sitting clustered at an outdoor coffee stall finishing breakfast - cold coffee, the 9 o’clock rush hour of Vientiane has faded. A crazy woman targets a regular, talking in a loud voice about everything.
When he gets closer we can see his T-shirt. Some international organization, some logo with hands clasped, some slogan “Laos – working together.” He can’t spit or slap his children. Everyone is watching.
He is together with his Lao wife. Or so we all assume. They have two children, one a little beauty and the other still wrapped in his mother’s arms. The wife looks rural. Green plastic slippers, Lao skirt frayed at the edges, dangling gold earrings and a face of beauty so exquisite that we are convinced she was picked out as the most beautiful woman in the village or district or province or the entire country of Laos for that matter.
We try to look little closer. They are a husband-wife, right? The child looks more Lao than farang. She has her mother’s eyes, but then it could be her father’s eyes too.
There’s a hush among us. I can see that the woman ordering iced coffee has her eyes fixed on them. A man waiting on a motorbike doesn’t realize he’s staring.
Not staring in the rude way of a voyeur, but eyes helplessly transfixed. There is something odd, something that strikes awe and stirs up confusion. When Lao meets foreigner beyond the simple exchanges of a tourist, is this what it looks like?
Is she a Cinderella? Is this is her prince charming? What kind of man is he? There’s just the rattle of tuk tuk taxis and the squeal of breaks, no pumpkin carriage or glass slipper.
If he works for an international org. he has the credentials of being supposedly humanitarian. He looks that way. But what motivated him to cross that wide gap, to commit himself to a life in Laos, to step away from where he came from?
You meet all types. Among the tourists, there are those who follow the herds, still carrying Frankfurt or Fargo in their enormous backpacks. Others want to blend in with the local dust. Some want to create a world different from the one they come from.
In a rustic guesthouse I’m told not to disturb the European woman next door. “She’s can’t hear”, they say. Later I hear her talking to the cat in French.
An American couple talks about Laos. She is impressed with the quaintness of Vientiane. “Where else in the world can you find dirt roads in the capital city?” She doesn’t know that it’s a new sewer system under construction. Her man reminds her of her romanticism and seems eager to go home. She’s trying to persuade him that they must continue on.
A woman from Beijing says she’s a car designer. I comment that she’s more of an anthropologist. She’s enthralled with the ancient customs of Laos and shows off her ceremonial baci strings, wrapped thick around her wrist. She has it all recorded on video to prove it. She’s had an authentic experience.
So maybe Mr. Farang has the most authentic of all experiences. Those who want to boast of their travel experiences are humbled in his presence, but would we want his life? How about Cinderella? Is she the envy of her village or do her new glass slippers hurt?
We ogle and wonder, but don’t even know what we think. I wonder too what will become of me, in Laos.
