The Meanest Man in Laos

By Mark Bowden - The meanest man in Laos probably didn't start out that way. In fact, mean might not be exactly the right word for this man. Mean is a neat little word, so broad and all encompassing of ill nature. Coupled with man, mean writes itself into a catchy title, and what better for an author than that.

Fishing (Mark Bowden)

Other words spring to mind in celebration of this man: selfish, money and power hungry, greedy. Or one can say he is ambitious, successful, entrepreneurial, and driven. This man, I do not know the name of, owns a guesthouse. The guesthouse is in a small village, even this I do not know the name of, on the Mekong. This miniature city on the shore happens to be a stopover for boats taking travelers to more established towns up and down the river. Hoi Xai to Luam Prabang. Luam Prabang to Hoi Xai. The river flows south but this little village is ambushed from both sides.

Travelers are very much into discovering places. The vagabonds discover a place, then the media and, finally, the students catch on to the hot spot. Laos is now entering this second stage. Almost inevitably the third stage, the less devoted travelers, the weekenders, the bigger money will come to Laos.

In one of my favorite movies, Endless Summer, two surfers are traveling the world toting their boards from beach to beach. Wingnut, the longboard riding throwback, in one of his deeper moments says, “Every time we roll into a beach and the waves aren't perfect, someone always says ‘you should have been here yesterday.’” Unfortunately, some tomorrow from now Laos will be yesterday also.

We have checked into the meanest man’s guesthouse because there are only two in the whole place, right next to each other. The other is completely full and we need beds. It seems in the little hamlet of this little communist country, a few economic lessons have been passed on from the United States. Possibly in the meanest man’s bedroom on the meanest man’s nightstand there is a copy of Capitalism for Dummies. And possibly, there is one section that is more dog-eared than the rest: Supply and Demand.

Mountain (Mark Bowden)

For what amounted to no more than a bed, we paid more than we had the night before for whole rooms. The difference is something like one dollar compared to eighty cents. In dealing with competition, the meanest man knew enough to make Bill Gates smile: 1) There would be enough travelers each night to fill up both of the guesthouses. 2) He could wait until the later travelers showed up and the other guesthouse was all filled so that he would have the upper hand in negotiations. 3) Once you were his, you were his. He only had one rule for his house; it was his mantra: “Sleep here, eat here, drink here. Sleep here, eat here, drink here.” We could smoke, drink, be loud, whatever, but as guests of his house we could do it nowhere else.

After we put our belongings away, we sat down to the sunset at a table with a fellow traveler exchanging the usual pleasantries: Where have you been? Where are you going? For how long? How nice.

We got into a discussion about the Laotians. One of my friends said he didn't really like the Laotians as much as some other nationalities because they always seemed stressed. The other traveler quickly disagreed, “Actually, most of the country is extremely mellow, and the only ones who are stressed are the ones who have to deal with us.”

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