Gay Boy Thailand

To go from Udon Thani to Laos:

1. Take a tuk-tuk to the bus station in Udon. 30 baht.
2. Find the bus to Nong Khai. Only if you have a Lao visa already can you take the bus direct to Laos. Most people don’t have a visa. 48 baht.

3. Arrive in Nong Khai. The driver was supposed to announce where passengers for Laos were to get off, but he didn’t. Luckily I saw a collection of tuk-tuk drivers and guessed that was the place. Don’t take the bus to downtown Nong Khai if you are going to Laos.
4. Take a tuk-tuk to the Friendship Bridge. 50 baht.
5. Check out of Thailand at Immigration.
6. Take a crowded bus across the Friendship Bridge. It is 15 baht and takes a few minutes.
7. Get an application form from Lao Immigration. Give it back with the info filled in and 1500 baht and hand in your passport. If you have US dollar it is cheaper at 35 USD.
8. Get the passport back with the Lao visa stamp.
9. Pay a ten baht entry tax to a guy behind a desk.
10. Get transport to Vientiane.

This is where my trip departed from the usual because I got lift with a bus. I didn’t have a ticket, and I didn’t belong on that bus, but the driver said I could hop in. Otherwise I would need to hire a taxi or a tuk-tuk to go to Vientiane.

I noticed the Lao driver went back in the bus while having a break to chitchat with passengers. Thai bus drivers don’t do that. Thai bus drivers think of themselves as captains and are too important to mingle.

—

Farang N had recommended a hotel in Vientiane. When I arrived there, after much back and forth since nobody had heard of it, the place was barricaded and closed. They were out of business

I asked the tuk-tuk guy to take me to some other affordable place. He found one, and the reception staff assured me that the rooms had air condition and bathroom and all kinds of good things. I took the room unseen.

I am not picky about hotel rooms but this one looked quite worn. It had spider webs in the corners under the ceiling, the walls were full of marks and I disturbed a number of mosquitoes when I entered.

The girl from the reception turned on The Cartoon Channel and I gave her a 20,000 kip tip.

I was now in the land of strange money. People used a mix of US dollar, Thai baht and Lao kip. Pay in one currency and get change in another.

Rule of thumb: 4,000 kip buys an ice cream.

The hotel was a favourite with West Africans, young men from Ghana and Burkina Faso and Nigeria who, thanks to some mysterious source of income, spend idle days in Asia. It also had a skinny farang drug addict who sat in the lobby, watching everything with his large, nervous eyes.

—

Vientiane (pronounced win-chen) was a pleasant surprise. The city was small, hardly larger than Udon Thani, but it had wide streets, lots of trees and beautiful buildings. The roads were called “rue” and some buildings had signs in French. Everything sounds more impressive in French.

The guidebooks are out of date. No longer are the roads dusty, they have paved them. No longer are the streets quiet, hordes of new motorbikes roam the city.

A tuk-tuk driver took me to a disco. He had offered me ladies but when hearing I wasn’t into that he showed me the disco instead. He joined me entering the place, sat down and expected free drinks. I told him the disco was too noisy and left. With a long face the tuk-tuk driver left too.

But he had someone he wanted to introduce me to. This was a “100% boy” who could “take care of me everything”. This person lurked in the shadows outside of the disco.

I named him Fem Boy. He was a ladyboy-in-training by my standards, with long hair and flashy dress. We went back to my hotel and sat down in the sofa in the lobby (again disturbing the mosquitoes).

- Are there many gay boys in Vientiane? I asked.
- Only me, said the boy.
- Only you?
- Lao not same Thailand, said the boy.

One of the Afro boys came by and grinned knowingly when he saw my new friend.

We spoke Thai. The Fem Boy had been in Thailand twice to work illegally in restaurants there. Now he lived in Laos and had a job, but appeared to freelance in the evenings. He behaved in the polite but reserved manner of a pro that was trying to talk me to bed.

Fem Boy told me that the tuk-tuk driver had demanded money for introducing me. I believed him. I covered that, and some taxi money for Fem Boy to go home.

—

The Africans and the drug farang held court in the lobby with some visa runners who had tattoos on their arms and young bargirls at their side, but I went to back to my room.

I had killed many mosquitoes in my room but new ones kept appearing. I went to bed wearing as much clothes as possible to keep them from biting me. Several times during the night I woke up and swatted more mosquitoes. Still they kept coming. I don’t know how they got in.

The next day I went to look for a new hotel. When I found one it was mosquito-free, clean and the same price.

I hired a tuk-tuk to move to the new hotel. I told the driver to go to the old hotel so I could pick up my bag, and then take me to the new one. I said this in English and Thai and the driver and his pregnant wife (who also sat in the tuk-tuk) nodded and said yes.

When we came to my old hotel I heard the driver got agitated when I left him on the street. Kip kip! he said. I ignored him. But the driver came running after me and caught up with me in the lobby. Much confusion followed as the reception ladies, the drug farang and I tried to sort out the misunderstanding with the driver using three languages.

- But why? asked the reception ladies when I said I was leaving.
- Mosquitoes, I said.
They had no further questions.

It was 6pm and I had not counted on any refund for my room. But they gave me the money as if this was automatic. That would not have happened in Thailand. I don’t think Thai reception staff would have asked why I left either, or looked so sad and worried when I told them their hotel left something to be desired.

The new hotel was of the Chinese sort with an unpronounceable name. It was for travelling business types. There were no Africans or farang druggies, but they had Lao girls in the lobby. The girls stood by the lift so anyone could just nod discreetly and they would come to your room.

The new hotel was much better and I didn’t feel the need to sleep with all my clothes on.