Sabaidee Phil
This letter to you is to help you remind the days in south Laos. Please keep it, don’t put it away too far as it might help you later when the weather outside or inside is cold and foggy. This should be a piece of evidence of a time you felt like having reached the highest level of traveling. A time when a day was defined by the movement of the sun between sunrise and sunset over the Mekong river. Your spirit flooded with joy, happiness and gratefulness, anchored in the moment. The only link to the past were the glittering stars in the night sky, the future just one breath away.
There was this national road number 13, the one “you just have to go through with nothing to see”. And how there was nothing. Incredible the fact riding on an important highway connecting two countries and crossing not a single vehicle in half an hour. Stopping on the middle line, gulping some water under the heat of the day and taking a picture of this endless nothing. And when you drove left or right for just some miles, pristine villages and towns, away from touristic mass processing. Food was real Lao food there. Chewy meat, fish head and chicken bones. You crazy nut tried dried dog. At least there was tons more you haven’t tried eating. Not so the roads. There was this 70 kilometers well prepared gravel road, winding up the eastern slopes of the Bolaven plateau. Starting in the flat fields of farmland, entering different types of dense forests when you finally reached the coffee and cocoa plantations in the heights. One of the most beautiful legs you ever drove.
The wife beater
All this beauty of nature and easy-going living shouldn’t blind your senses. Remember this elder, distinguished, brave French lady. After ten years of dedicating her life to improve the existence of local villagers, there was this silent but unmistakable message inside her voice. Not cynicism, not desperate, but some hope has gone, just a little bit. Listen to her collected experiences, mainly about an uneducated people sells its soul to neighboring countries, was as fascinating as it was talking to this young US American-Lao couple. They got married quite quickly to prevent her being deported to some state correctional facilities for women having an affair with “falang”. (“Falang” initially meant “Francais”. Nowadays every foreigner is just a French guy in the eyes of the Lao language). Two successive nights we spent talking, drinking Beerlao, laughing a lot. You told this story of the guesthouse manager somewhere on the Bolaven plateau who got so excited about your motorcycle that he immediately promised to “find a nice Lao woman for you tonight”. When you told him to better watch out for two ladies on rented scooters eventually passing by, his eyes started to glare, pointed with his finger of his right arm to you, a smile all over his face and said: “Yes, you’re the man who can have two women at once!” And when the American guy tried to explain what kind of shirt a “wife-beater” in his Oregon slang is, you just opened your yellow shirt. Everyone laughed and you knew, oui, j’ai du chien! For the records: The temperature fell to a freezing five degrees in my bamboo hut on the Bolaven plateau and I would have taken if not a woman at least a hot water bag! If there was one!
Sabaidee
Literally sabaidee means “I’m fine” and it’s exactly where it takes you. Try! Say loud “sabaidee”! Open your mouth wide, say it louder and stretch the ending “dee”. In sabaidee is the sunlight, the warm weather, the smile. Sabaidee is smiling. Waving at some people, shouting loud “sabaidee” and get back a hearty “sabaidee” just made you feel lucky. Life as a traveler in Laos brought back lost feelings, last seen as a teenager maybe. Untroubled, light, unworried. Yes, you lost your heart to this sabaidee; just a little bit. Keep your heart and take your sabaidee with you, wherever you go.
Finally I managed to enter Thailand after waiting quite a while in a back office of Lao customs. At least the officers let me wait in an air-conditioned room, so I was watching some television soaps with them while the one with the shortest straw collected some stamps for me. I was speeding up quite fast, chasing the last rays of the daylight. Sure I knew I would fail but it was in this very moment when I felt that the earth is turning away from the sun, stronger than never before. Even I knew and I know now, that tomorrow will be another sabaidee, it was hard to let go.
Rasta-Phil wearing his wife-beater
This letter to you is to help you remind the days in south Laos. Please keep it, don’t put it away too far as it might help you later when the weather outside or inside is cold and foggy. This should be a piece of evidence of a time you felt like having reached the highest level of traveling. A time when a day was defined by the movement of the sun between sunrise and sunset over the Mekong river. Your spirit flooded with joy, happiness and gratefulness, anchored in the moment. The only link to the past were the glittering stars in the night sky, the future just one breath away.
There was this national road number 13, the one “you just have to go through with nothing to see”. And how there was nothing. Incredible the fact riding on an important highway connecting two countries and crossing not a single vehicle in half an hour. Stopping on the middle line, gulping some water under the heat of the day and taking a picture of this endless nothing. And when you drove left or right for just some miles, pristine villages and towns, away from touristic mass processing. Food was real Lao food there. Chewy meat, fish head and chicken bones. You crazy nut tried dried dog. At least there was tons more you haven’t tried eating. Not so the roads. There was this 70 kilometers well prepared gravel road, winding up the eastern slopes of the Bolaven plateau. Starting in the flat fields of farmland, entering different types of dense forests when you finally reached the coffee and cocoa plantations in the heights. One of the most beautiful legs you ever drove.
The wife beater
All this beauty of nature and easy-going living shouldn’t blind your senses. Remember this elder, distinguished, brave French lady. After ten years of dedicating her life to improve the existence of local villagers, there was this silent but unmistakable message inside her voice. Not cynicism, not desperate, but some hope has gone, just a little bit. Listen to her collected experiences, mainly about an uneducated people sells its soul to neighboring countries, was as fascinating as it was talking to this young US American-Lao couple. They got married quite quickly to prevent her being deported to some state correctional facilities for women having an affair with “falang”. (“Falang” initially meant “Francais”. Nowadays every foreigner is just a French guy in the eyes of the Lao language). Two successive nights we spent talking, drinking Beerlao, laughing a lot. You told this story of the guesthouse manager somewhere on the Bolaven plateau who got so excited about your motorcycle that he immediately promised to “find a nice Lao woman for you tonight”. When you told him to better watch out for two ladies on rented scooters eventually passing by, his eyes started to glare, pointed with his finger of his right arm to you, a smile all over his face and said: “Yes, you’re the man who can have two women at once!” And when the American guy tried to explain what kind of shirt a “wife-beater” in his Oregon slang is, you just opened your yellow shirt. Everyone laughed and you knew, oui, j’ai du chien! For the records: The temperature fell to a freezing five degrees in my bamboo hut on the Bolaven plateau and I would have taken if not a woman at least a hot water bag! If there was one!
Sabaidee
Literally sabaidee means “I’m fine” and it’s exactly where it takes you. Try! Say loud “sabaidee”! Open your mouth wide, say it louder and stretch the ending “dee”. In sabaidee is the sunlight, the warm weather, the smile. Sabaidee is smiling. Waving at some people, shouting loud “sabaidee” and get back a hearty “sabaidee” just made you feel lucky. Life as a traveler in Laos brought back lost feelings, last seen as a teenager maybe. Untroubled, light, unworried. Yes, you lost your heart to this sabaidee; just a little bit. Keep your heart and take your sabaidee with you, wherever you go.
Finally I managed to enter Thailand after waiting quite a while in a back office of Lao customs. At least the officers let me wait in an air-conditioned room, so I was watching some television soaps with them while the one with the shortest straw collected some stamps for me. I was speeding up quite fast, chasing the last rays of the daylight. Sure I knew I would fail but it was in this very moment when I felt that the earth is turning away from the sun, stronger than never before. Even I knew and I know now, that tomorrow will be another sabaidee, it was hard to let go.
Rasta-Phil wearing his wife-beater
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Written on the 175th day of trip IV - India/Asia/Australia
14'710 Km on the road
