Identical

June 2012. Luang Prabang, Laos. 

I was sitting and sweating in a small travel agency that doubled as an internet café, returning emails on a battered computer and periodically unsticking my thighs from a cheap molded plastic chair.  The little room was open to the street, and was empty aside from myself and the Laotian travel agent. He had smilingly greeted me and shown me to an ancient computer before returning to a handsome sort of folding chair of brightly colored fabric slung over dark, polished wood. A few moments after I had settled at the keyboard he began to snore softly, and I saw that he had kicked off his sandals to flatten his bare feet on the cool tile floor. Situated directly in front of an oscillating floor fan, he was getting the best of the breeze that occasionally reached me just a few feet away.  His quiet exhalations and the rattle of the fan and the dimness of the room made me feel as though we inhabited our own funny little domestic sphere, drawn together by the lethargy brought on by the scathing heat of the midday sun. He and I were, I think, perfectly prepared to spend the hottest hours of the day snoring and typing, respectively, in the shade and artificial wind.

It was into this quiet scene that a group of chattering backpackers – two girls and boy in their early twenties- entered. My host came awake immediately, although he took a few moments to raise himself from his chair and shuffle into his flip-flops, a physical demonstration of the ambivalence I repeatedly observed in the Laotians when it came to money. Sometimes a nap is worth more than a commission. 

But these kids were planning a trip south to­­ the islands of Si Phan Don with what seemed like a horde of likeminded youngsters. They were tired of the dust and temples of Luang Prabang and were ready to move on to beaches and beer. The number of tickets that needed to be booked promised a decent profit, so my host took a more upright seat behind a desk and a computer and began to rattle off their transport and housing options.

After a few moments the girls pulled plastic chairs away from the unoccupied computers and perched on them. I cringed to see the boy settle himself into the agent’s low fabric chair, which was clearly a personal item in the otherwise minimally furnished office.  I remember all three travelers as caricatures. They each sported a tank top splashed with a local beer logo, and the girls had strategically sliced apart the backs of their tanks, tying the strips of fabric so as to expose their brightly colored bras and their wing-like shoulder blades to best advantage. The boy was wearing the baggy, shapeless pants worn by fishermen in the south of Thailand, while the girls tugged at their micro jean shorts (denim is not such a good choice in that humidity). Their tan, lithe limbs were heavily bound with woven bracelets and anklets. With all these elements assembled the three were modeling minor variations on the uniform of the young Western backpacker in Southeast Asia, styles which reveal a blithe lack of concern for the modest culture of the area, not to mention the very real risk of serious sun damage.  

So, nothing too notable. I tuned them out and resumed my very important work of composing a facebook status that was subtle enough to not sound gloating, but also made clear to my friends and acquaintances in their air-conditioned offices on the Eastern seaboard that I was loving this city of bright blossoms and gilded temples, while simultaneously endeavoring to tread as lightly as possible on Edward Said’s toes.

After some time the backpackers seemed to reach some kind of agreement on housing, although one of the girls was unhappy with it; she kept petulantly repeating, “I know Kim was really hoping for beachfront”, deeply concerned about the preferences of an absent member of the group. Nevertheless, the Laotian agent rose to fetch something from a farther room that was necessary for matters to move forward, but before crossing the threshold he turned back towards the kids and intoned the refrain of every merchant who deals with tourists in any part of the world: “Where are you from?”

“Canada,” the kids chorused.

“Ah,” he said. “I thought maybe America.”

He disappeared into the other room. There was silence from the backpackers for a moment, and then:

“Did he seriously think we were Americans?”

For a moment, I sympathized. No one wants to be misidentified, particularly when that misidentification allies you with a country famous for foreign policy that borders on warmongering. Laos in particular has suffered at the hands of the U.S. military as the Vietnam War spilled over the border. In fact, by the time the war ended, Laos (which was declared neutral at the 1962 Geneva conference, incidentally) had become the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world. The U.S. dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos, more than the allied forces dropped on Japan and Germany combined during all of World War II. It averaged out to one bombing raid every eight minutes for nine years. Every eight minutes for nine years. And thirty percent of those bombs didn't explode forty years ago. The countryside is riddled with 600,000 tons of unexploded ordinance. 70 percent of Laotians are subsistence farmers, but the explosives just under the soil make farming living extremely dangerous. Every fourth village is contaminated. It’s little wonder that Laos is the 44^th poorest nation in the world. 

So I understand not wanting to be mistaken for the citizen of a country with that legacy. I came to hate it myself.

But then:

“How could he think that.”

“I know, right? Canada and the U.S. are completely different.”

“Totally! Oh my God, so different.”

It was all I could do to keep from turning and scoffing in their faces. “You’re in LAOS!” I wanted to rail at them. “LAOS. And you think that the U.S. and Canada are ‘like, completely different’? They’re basically identical cultures! You want to see ‘completely different'?? Look around!”

I didn't say any of that, of course. The kids jumped onto the computers and started comparing facebook pages, and I paid for my time on the internet and went back to my hotel for a nap before joining my Dutch friend Monique for dinner at the open-air market. 

And now, years later, I've moved to Canada. And it isn't “totally different”, of course, in the hyperbolic terms of the backpacking babies. But it has surprised me in ways that are subtle and endearing. It is, as it turns out, a different culture. How about that.