on language

Perhaps this post might have some copyright infringement from a certain nytimes columnist, but I'm quite certain he doesn't read my blog, so I'm probably okay.

Having now past the one month mark of being in Asia, I've begun to feel a bit of traveler fatigue: crappy budget hotels, moving around on hot buses, having the same conversations over and over with other travelers, and trying to feed myself on under $10 a day. But the real kicker is not being able to communicate with local people. It has an odd isolating feel to it whereby you only use one or two word sentences and a lot of gesturing. I really want to know more about the culture and understand why I get certain looks or what a food is, etc. While I've only learned two phrases in lao--Sabadee (hello, good bye, peace, etc) and kap jai (thank you), I've decided I actually know more than that. No I can't speak any more than that, but I can decipher a bit more. Here's what I've learned so far:

Sabadeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee: screamed from a small child from the side of the road, meaning "helloooooooooooooooooo white person, wave to me."

SabedEE with a high pitched squeal on the end: being beckoned by an old woman trying to sell you something meaning, "white person, you have money, come buy from me."

Then there's, saaabadeee, generally from a drunk guy on the street, with a bit of an eye raise.

Finally, there's the passive, completely sans facial expersion, sabadee, from the high schooler working at a restaurant or guest house, meaning, "I have to stop texting or watching tv and help you, don't I? what do you want?"

Yep, that's it. That's all I got. I think I knew chicken as well, but that was in Thailand, gaiw. Here it might be gaw, not sure. Pretty pitiful, isn't it?


Well, in case people want to keep up with me on their map of southeast Asia, I am in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. It seems to be a city of bad budget hotels, a few nice bars, a fountain and one art museum that I'd like to see tomorrow. That's about it. The buildings are kind of crumbling and there is a musty smell. I'm staying in a serious dive because I'm low on kip and also I got tired of searching for a place in the insane heat with my backpack.

I left Vang Vieng this morning. I was supposed to kayak from there to here, but the other two people in my group bailed, so I was outta luck. I just took a regular, vip bus, but the nice part was that this was air conditioned. Vang Vieng was okay, I didn't meet as many people as I would have liked, I think bc everyone is watching tv all the time-friends or family guy. It is amazing how many episodes of Friends I had seen before. And also, what was up with their fashion, was that really cool?
Vang Vieng is flanked on all sides by goregeous rock formations, which is pretty amazing.
Tubing down the river was okay, not totally my scene--twenty somethings playing tug of war over a mud pit and juimping off of swings that may or may not have deep enough water below. I did jump off one but I made it sure it was deep enough. It actually ended up being kind of a tranquil day though, floating down the river in a tube and looking at the scenery. The next day I biked out 6k down a rocky road, and then I climbed pretty much straight up a mountain to spelunk down into a really cool but pitch black cave. There were amazing stallagtites and stallagmites. Getting down was a bit trecherous. I think I fell about five times, one time just barely grabbing onto a tree near me as my feet swung out from under me. My pants got caught on something and now my one pair of pants has a small hole in them.

Then I spent the rest of the day in a hammock overlooking the river. Not bad, but somehow I'm just a little down and out. Sorry if this post is a bit negative, just having a frustrating couple of days.

Cheers,
Dina