Return to Vientiane by Ratchada on bigmangobar.com

[SukPsycho]

This is a post by WFTM published on bigmangobar.com

I had the opportunity to visit Vientiane for two nights on my recent six-week Thailand vacation extravaganza; here’s a brief trip report.

It had been a while since I had visited Vientiane…a year, in fact. Used to go 2-3 times a year when I lived in Bangkok; visa runs, work-related, to visit a close Lao friend I have there. And actually when you consider the nature of two of my 2008 visits (I brought “sand to the beach” for two of them), I hadn’t been there alone and on the town since waaaay back in Jan. 2008, so until last week it had been a good two years since I hit the bars.

First, a disclaimer: I speak quite good Lao, so YMMV…I have no idea what the English abilities are of any of the people I interacted with there.

Vientiane has definitely changed, even in just the one year since I visited with a companion. The economy is looking up; it’s bustling, lots of tourists, lots of artsy little cafes, restaurants, galleries, and, dare I say it, “hip” little theme bars have opened recently. It doesn’t seem to be development at the expense of the good things we all love about Vientiane (and Laos in general), though: that laid-back feeling is still there, as are the trees, and the cars still do not outnumber the motorcycles (as opposed to, say, the unchecked, smog-choked “progress” of Phnom Penh).

What really jumped out at me, though, is how the freelance Pussy For Pay (P4P) scene seems to have taken off.

Now, Communist Laos has always had a decidedly puritanical streak to it, even since it “opened to tourism” in the mid-late 1990s. It’s still illegal for a Lao national to sleep in the same room as a foreigner, and the bars still close early (midnight, up from 11-11:30 just a few years ago). You’ll find nothing resembling the bar beers and gogos of Thailand, which, of course, is part of the charm of its place.

But one thing I really noticed on this trip is the growing presence of P4P freelancers and “grey area girls” alike. And the way this has been able to happen in the Lao social and political context is, it’s not “in your face”. You generally don’t see Lao freelancers dressed extremely provocatively, nor do you seem them walking arm-in-arm or hand-in-hand down the street with foreign men. If that started, the ruling powers’ fears of Laos turning into “another Thailand” would surely kick in and the moral watchdogs would clamp down. No, this growth in P4P has a definitely laid-back, true “Lao-ness” to it, and again, it’s kind of refreshing.

From the reports of others, I know there are brothel-type places that the tuk-tuk drivers will be happy to take you to…not my thing. For one thing, such an enterprise violates one of my number one nightlife principles in Southeast Asia: I do not need a Lao (or Thai) MAN to find me a woman, I can do that on my own, thank you. I’ve also done the quaint, throw-back-to-the-1950s “dance halls” mostly patronized by Lao men…a fun experience if you’ve never done it, but it gets old, and you can never be 100% sure until the end of the night if your girl actually goes with customers (one of the prime venues of this type, the nightclub attached to the Lane Xang Hotel, is no more, it’s now become a Thai-style “Tawan Daeng” music spot). So what I’m going to talk about here are the freelancer spots. Remember, this is Laos, not Bangkok, so you won’t find anything as blatant as the Soi 7 Biergarden…but what is there represents a marked change from what you would have found a couple years ago.

First, there’s the very unassuming and wholesome (backpacker-ish) Kop Chae Der, a part-outdoor restaurant bar (with pool tables inside). Very good farang and Lao food to be had, and ubiquitous Beer Lao at the usual reasonable prices. I’d seen freelancers plant themselves at the bar before, but their numbers have definitely increased since my last visit. They’re very low key, but I did witness one of them get chatted up and taken by a customer, just like that, at about 8pm at night. Usually they sit in pairs or threes, but not a few could be found alone, nursing their cokes or wines at the bar, as well.

As the night goes on, it’s time to move to Bor Pen Yang, a fourth-floor sprawling restaurant/bar (mostly bar), again with pool tables, on the riverfront. Here the freelancing is a bit more out in the open; on any given night after 9pm you can easily count 15 or more freelancers around the bar. By the way, this is also a spot for groups of young middle-class Lao to hang out, including the aforementioned “grey area girls”. I had several beers there and a good time chatting with a group of 4-5 freelancers hanging out together, though they were much too young/small bodied for my tastes.

Bor Pen Yang closes up at midnight, and then it’s time to head to the premiere freelancer P4P joint, the Don Chan Palace hotel’s (sometimes called the “houng haem haa dao” or “5 star hotel”) 3rd floor outdoor beer terrace and small, packed disco, which is open until 3 am. If you can’t pull there, well, you’re not trying. You can’t miss the Don Chan; it’s about a kilometer south/southeast of the main cluster of restaurants, shops and hotels that line the river (it’s also on the river), by far the tallest building in Vientiane (meaning in all of Laos).

Myself, I ended up with a grey area girl: 26 year old beauty parlor worker (no kids) with large real tits who owns her own house and her own flashy yellow motorcycle. Upon spotting me without a beer at about 2:30 (the girl I had been chatting up for a couple hours had just blown me off, and I was ready to call it a night alone), she and her friend called me over to their table to share their beer (a warning to those of you who, unlike me, prefer women under 30: the friend was all of 17, and looked younger….!). After about 15 minutes of conversation, she offered “Do you wanna come home with me?” Done deal, and off we went on her bike to the outskirts of town (btw, this is not the first time I’ve been picked up by a Lao girl and whisked off on her motorcycle from the Don Chan), after stopping for noodles on the way with her friend. She even took me back to my hotel at 11am the next morning! Cost to me? 1,000 baht in “gas money,” discreetly placed into the loop of her keychain while she was showering, so as to keep with the “grey area” tradition. A good time was had by all.

[Lostinlao]

Hi all,

Well, being an exp that lived in Vientiane from 95 to 97 and returned in Laos in 2004 I have to say that the changes in Laos about "girls" (and many other things) are amazing compared to how it was on those days (ahhh, the old memories )... on that time pronstitution with farang was severly prohibited and, while the farang could be easily kicked out of the country and fined, the girl could go for a while (as always here in Laos, nobody knows for how long once you are in) to one of the dreaded Lao jails...

Don't worry, now seems that all the above is past and new forms of business are growing... since I live in a remote area, I'm not really in the nightlife of Vientiane but what written by Ratchada seems right to my knowledge, and maybe with more surprise for everybody looking for some "action" in the land of a Million Elephants.

Just keep a low profile and be gentle and you should not have problems trying to know more intimately a Lao girl nowadays... I guess it is not easy to find a good English speaking girl, most probably the ones that roam around those places can have a simple chat (which often is more than enough!)

The places Ratchada indicated seems the right ones and I would add, for sake of information , the Samlo Pub, near Wat Mixay. It was there in the nineties (one of the few western style pubs in Laos at that time) and it is still there now, up to his reputation! It's rather small and smokey but for sure many of the girls around there are just waiting to make some friendship with a farang (beware of the ladyboys, which by the way are usually ugly!!).

Cheers.