National Glory Sold Out

This man is called Mick. He is living in his own version of the fields of Elysium. I somewhat spontaneously accepted an invitation to play pool with a random chez Mick at the Kangaroo Sunset Bar in Vang Vieng.

I’d been on a bus for a number of hours trying to tune out of the clamour created by the proximity of a trio of nineteen year old lasses to a solo young male adventurer (not pictured) wearing a very impressive collection of plaited bands on his ankles and wrists.

Although this ragged young man was no doubt seeking to project the twenty first century sense of the term adventurer, overflowing with derring-do and swashbuckling devil-may-care-dom, I am deeply immersed in my nineteenth century reading program and so use the word adventurer in the derogatory manner that one of Trollope’s drawing room ladies might; that is, to denote a slightly opportunistic and unscrupulous player of scenes and people. The bus trip from Vientiane to Vang Vieng was not a long one, but listening to three scraggamuffins from the north of English squeal to gain their knight’s attention, giggle to retain it, and then simper on his every inane word took its toll on my patience. I may have huffed a little. I may have allowed my glasses to slip a little down my nose to as to facilitate a schoolmarmish glare over the top of the frames. In a moment of compassion, I wondered whether the kindest thing to do might not be to avail the young ladies of my worldly wisdom as to the evils of the patriarchal romance conspiracy. Cold detachment won out and I kept my own counsel.

I digress but only to demonstrate why I de-bussed in a mood of no small befrazzlement. Once my bed for the night was assured, I betook myself for a stroll in search of a meal with a view. Vang Vieng is famously viewy, being a small town perched on two rivers and surrounded by limestone cliffs and caves.
My book of travel guidance, as well as a couple of random articles I had read, told me that Vang Vieng is also famous for scores of bars and restaurants constantly screening reruns of Friends. I had dismissed this information as unreliable travel apocrypha. As I made my way through downtown Vang Vieng, I was dismayed to discover that there were in fact scores of bars and restaurants constantly screening reruns of Friends. Of all idiotic TV shows of the last decade to have on perpetual show, why Friends, the most idiotic of them all, the one responsible for the fame of Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer? Why not vary the pain and screen a selection of late-nineties mediocrities? A bit of Dawson’s Creek, a bit of Party of Five (hisssss), a bit of Gilmore Girls? There is much in this world which I do not understand.

It was not without difficulty that I found a lunch venue with a view and without Friends. I made several circuits of the town before I settled down and I couldn’t help but clock the league paraphernalia outside Mick’s bar. Finding a Rabbitohs supporter in the middle of Laos provoked a little twinge of wistful homesickness, I suppose, and my eyes rested on the exterior of the bar for just a few moments longer than they should. As is reasonably well known, I do not follow any code of football so this vaguely emotional response to the green and red of the South Sydney Bunnies can be taken as a sign of vulnerability.

My defences were clearly down and before I knew it, I found myself playing pool with a shell-shocked ex-army dude from Brisbane via Kabul, drinking beer, listening to the Divinyls and Australian Crawl with footy reruns screening in the background, shooting the breeze with Mick, and feeling considerably bemused. Under other circumstances, it is possible that I might have had troubles finding common ground with Mick – a man who left Mt Druitt a few years ago to marry a Lao woman and set up a bar for tourists, a man whose bar, biceps, and chest were covered in the various insignia of the Australian state – and Charles – a man devoted to all things military, passionate about the security business, and unconvincingly owning to a great regard for the teaching profession. Anyway, Mick and Charles behaved very graciously towards this refugee from the Friends crowd with no pool-playing skills and we all managed to get along quite nicely. For such, thankibus muchibus. There did, however, come a time when I thought it prudent to leave and I was only able to do so upon pledging that I would return expeditiously. I am sorry to say that I made this pledge with no intention of keeping it and thus sacrificed both personal and national honour. Had I returned, I might have been inducted an honorary Hero of the Sunset Bar, a Deadset Aussie (Expat) Legend.