Par-tay Laos

Up the street from my guesthouse, the local folks were having something like a block party. I had to pass through the throng on my way home, threading through the tables piled high with food and BeerLao. Lots and lots of BeerLao. It looked like a spectacular Laotian food fight had gone down, and now the drinking and karaoke phase of the afternoon was kicking in.

My attempts to be respectively unobtrusive were for not. People started waving me over to sit down, and, to prevent my escape, delegates, very inebriated delegates, we're dispatched to head me off.

"You come drink alcohol with me!" was what I heard as my elbow was locked by friendly Laotian hands and I was, almost literally, dragged back to the party.

These nice folks were hammered. As Tiny Freeman always said, "There's two things I can't stand, drunk people when I'm sober and sober people when I'm drunk."

Not wanting to appear ungracious, I was plied with beer and food, partaking only of the later. This seemed ok with my hosts, albeit puzzling. We used up our ten common words of English and Lao, smiling and waving our hands all the while. The conversation then switched to Lao exclusively, which left me at a slight disadvantage but we plowed on anyway.

After a half-hour, I carefully extricated myself with no ill will, and made my escape to waves and goodbyes and those Lao smiles.

Party on Dudes!