Changes — Vientiane, Laos |November 2007
“The stars look very different today.”
Snap, the white cotton string tied between our wrist breaks as we pull apart. An approving cheer ripples through the group of family and friends gathered around us, rice is thrown and someone places a boiled egg in my right hand. I don’t know what all this symbolises or what to do next as nobody has bothered to explain the role I’m supposed to play in this ceremony; I don’t even really know how I got to be here.
It all happened very fast. Last summer, I was sitting on a mountain top in Kenya and decided to change the direction my life was heading. Now, four months later, I’m at the centre of attention of this traditional Lao Baci ceremony together with my fiancée to be, Kayamphone Phommachanh, better known as Pan.
Traditional Lao Baci ceremony.
I met her on Laos’ National Teachers’ Day (7 October) last year. After a morning of boring speeches by the management — Mostly in Lao, so few of us really understood what they were going on about — and receiving well-intended, but not very useful, gifts from our students, my colleagues and I decided to head downtown for lunch and drinks. As we were enjoying our lunch, the girlfriend of one of my colleagues, who taught at another school in Vientiane, stopped by. With her where two Lao girls, one of whom was Pan; we were introduced.
In the months that followed, I saw her a number of times at parties and a couple of times she joined me and my friends on our weekly assault of the Wattay airport buffet. The Buffet International on the third floor of Vientiane’s Wattay airport, open for a buffet lunch from ten to three every day, is quite spectacular. The quality of the food isn’t that special, mostly rather uninspired generic South-East Asian cuisine, but the 64,000 kip (just over $5½ in 2007) all-inclusive fee also allows you to gobble up an unlimited amount of sushi, dim sum and steaks, to be washed away with a bottomless supply of beer and wine. We go there almost every Saturday.
The times I had seen Pan, I always thought she was pretty and friendly, but as she didn’t speak much English and my Lao is nonexistent, we never really got talking. It was mostly a smile-and-wave friendship. But when I met her again, a week or so after I came back from Kenya, at a party at a friend’s house, I realised she had crossed a major language threshold while I was away. This time, she started talking to me and didn’t stop. We talked all night, about our lives, our plans, about everything really, and it didn’t stop there. I met her again the next day and for the next couple of weeks we saw each other regularly, either for lunch or dinner, and talked more. Later, when I decided to move to another apartment, she helped me move and… stayed. We became a couple. Then Lao tradition kicked in.
After we’d been together for two months, Pan told me her uncle wanted to talk with me. Like many of the city’s inhabitants, Pan isn’t originally from Vientiane. She was born, and spent her childhood, in a small town near Savannakhet, about six hundred kilometres south from Vientiane. When she had finished primary school, her parents decided to send her to live with an uncle and aunt in Vientiane so she could attend a better secondary school. With her father decrepit after suffering a stroke and her mother now deceased, her uncle and aunt had become her de-facto parents. As the surrogate father, her uncle now wished to speak to me. As I drove to his house, I wondered what it would be about.
“You know,” he said as we sat down on the veranda, both of us clutching a cold bottle of Beer Lao, “You and Pan have been together for quite some time now and, as you know, in Laos this cannot be without an official stamp of approval. If you wish to continue this relationship, we should move forward and apply for this. We have to think about Pan’s reputation. You understand?”
Pfff, yes I understood he wanted us to get married, but I don’t believe in marriage… and this quick!? I know that in Laos there is a law which states that couples can’t stay together unless they are married, there’s even a rule that if government officials get involved with foreigners they have to resign their posts, but how long had I known this girl… just over a year and we’d only really been together for two months. We hadn’t even been on holiday together, which is always a good test for a relationship.
Yes, that was it, first we’d go on a holiday and after that, I would make up my mind. I asked Pan’s uncle if this would be okay with him. He agreed, seemingly relieved, so the following week Pan and I went for a two-week holiday on Koh Chang in Thailand and… we had an amazingly great time!
Back in Vientiane, a decision had to be made. What was I going to do? The institute of marriage really doesn’t make any sense to me, why on earth would you seek formal permission, from a bunch of civil servants you don’t know and who don’t care about you, to stay together? But it is the law here and it is true that I’m damaging Pan’s social reputation in Lao society with her just being my girlfriend. What to do?
Four months ago, I sat on top of a mountain and decided to change direction. This is why now, 25th November 2007, my grandmother’s birthday, I’m at the centre of attention of this traditional Lao Baci ceremony. After long hesitation (relatively speaking), I made the decision. I do know how I got to be here: if I really want change, there have to be CHANGES! As the ancient Chinese sage Laozi once put it: “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
David Bowie. Changes on Hunky Dory [LP]. London, United Kingdom: RCA Records. (1971)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
