…Some time in the next few minutes I am going to shit. If I don’t find a suitably private place to do it, it is going to happen in my pants, and I know from experience that when you feel this sort of urgency in the tropics, the results are usually liquid, and that means it won’t just be my pants that suffer, but my socks and boots as well…
Wednesday.
I’m not having much luck hitchhiking in Laos.
I set out early from my guest house and walk in the morning twilight up to the main road out of Houay Xai. The sun is barely over the horizon, but it is still hot and humid from the previous day, and there is a light drizzle of rain turning the dusty road into a bog.
I make a sign from a cardboard box, hang it on my backpack, and wait. It’s ten minutes before the first car comes by. I smile, take a deep breath and raise my thumb. I get a friendly wave from the driver, but no ride. Another five minutes and another car. Same deal. This pattern repeats itself for the next hour. Everyone who passes flashes their lights or waves, but no one slows down.
Two hours later and my optimistic attitude is in the same condition as my cardboard sign; soggy and limp. The rain is getting steadily heavier, so I decide to call it quits for the day, and start trudging back into town. I get half a kilometre down the road, and suddenly I feel an uncomfortable stirring in my bowels. I need a toilet – immediately. I’m on a narrow town road, and there are plenty of houses and small shops along the roadside. I duck into a small shop, and as politely as I can manage in the urgent circumstances, try to communicate my needs. I don’t speak Laotian, but most of the world recognises the word ‘toilet’. To ensure there is no ambiguity, I also make unmistakable mime gestures involving my butt and clenched teeth. The man in the shop looks at me askance and shakes his head. He gestures down the street. I don’t know what he means exactly, but it’s pretty clear he doesn’t want any damp foreigner using his privy. I don’t have time to plead my case, so I race walk in the direction he indicated, praying that there is some sort of public toilet or restaurant nearby. The pressure on my sphincter gets more intense with every step, and I am sweating with anxiety now as well as exertion.
The next little shop I pass also has tables and chairs out front. A wave of relief sweeps over me. If they serve food, they must provide toilet facilities too, I reason… but the place is closed. I start to panic. I know I haven’t got much time. Some time in the next few minutes I am going to shit. If I don’t find a suitably private place to do it, it is going to happen in my pants, and I know from experience that when you feel this sort of urgency in the tropics, the results are usually liquid, and that means it won’t just be my pants that suffer, but my socks and boots as well.
I feel a hot sensation in the region of my arsehole. I clench my butt cheeks together desperately. My eyes dart left and right. There are no more shops or cafes, or anything like that in sight.
I push through the gate of a private house and hastily bang on the front door. It’s a pretty nice looking house. The people who live here must have a toilet. I just hope they are at home.
A middle aged man opens the door, scratching his belly. I go through my mime again.
“Hi! Can I please use your toilet? I’m so sorry to bother you but it’s really urgent!”
There is an awkward silence. I can see he understands what I’m on about. He is clearly embarrassed by the situation, but he smiles at me in a friendly enough way.
“Hotel, hotel” he says.
I stare at him, incredulously.
“No time! No time!”
I am hopping from one foot to the other by now.
He gives me an apologetic half smile.
“Sorry, sorry” he says, and starts to close the door.
I have lost all pretence of dignity now.
“Please?” I gasp, “please!”
“No, no, sorry. You go to hotel in town.”
“Jesus Christ! I just want to use your toilet for a second! Please!”
I start to stagger out the gate into the street, clutching my arse. I can feel myself losing my temper.
“Sorry, sorry. You go to hotel.”
His blank half smile doesn’t falter. It’s infuriating.
“You want me to just shit in the street?” I yell over my shoulder at the guy.
I can feel tears welling in my eyes. Even at this moment, I know I’m going to laugh about this later, but right now, the frustration and humiliation are overwhelming. This is so absurd. I’ve been harassed by hustlers, chased by wild dogs, threatened by lunatics, and the thing that has finally brought me close to tears is a case of the runs.
I know my arse. I’m forty. I’ve had four decades of shitting experience. The sensation of heat and pressure I am now experiencing is terminal. I know I have less than one minute to resolve this crisis.
On the left hand side of the road, a narrow laneway leads to a used car yard. One corner of the yard has a patch of weedy plants on it. It’s now or never. I jog across the car yard, past the dudes washing cars, and plunge into the sparse weeds beside the fence. I yank my pants down, throw my backpack to one side and drop to a squatting position. I can feel the crap bursting out of me before I even get all the way down. The sensation of relief is almost as good as an orgasm. I say “holy fuck!” out loud.
It’s over. Crisis averted. My socks are still dry. I feel almost faint. I’m so grateful Laotians aren’t too fastidious about pulling weeds. As I wipe myself, I glance around. In my squatting posture, the weeds are about shoulder height, so I have a good view of the rest of the car yard. The car washing dudes are having a good laugh. I’m so relieved, I laugh too. Then I make another internationally recognised gesture at them, which shuts them up.
Thursday.
I spend the night in town, and set out again the following morning. I eat dry biscuits for breakfast, and take two diarrhoea tablets.
It’s a sunny, dry morning. I take a moment to think positive thoughts, and then face the traffic with a smile. It’s the same story as the previous day. Plenty of well meaning smiles, no rides. Laos is starting to make southern Europe look like a hitchhikers paradise.
I’m bored and frustrated, and sweaty, but at least my stomach is behaving itself better than yesterday. Occasionally I feel strange, bubbly, gurglings, like my stomach is full of creaming soda. But the diarrhoea tablets seem to be doing their job, and the cap stays on the bottle.
Two hours go by. Three. I decide to catch a bus. Just as I am about to pack it in, a white dude on a scooter pulls up.
“You going to Luang Prabang” he asks me.
“Yeah! Do you think you can give me a ride on the scooter?”
“Sure, why not” he says.
The only reason I can think of is that sitting on a bike saddle for two hours on bumpy roads might result in me crapping my pants, but I decide to keep that objection to myself. I get on the back of the scooter.
“I’m Ben” says my new friend.
“Hi Ben! Manny.”
Ben zooms off. We must look a funny sight. It’s a small bike, and Ben is nearly as tall as me, and I have a backpack strapped to me. There again, I routinely see up to five people squeezed onto a scooter in Laos, so I guess overloading is the norm here. Two days ago, I saw a pair of dudes on a scooter, and the guy on the back was hanging onto a back-to-front wheelbarrow, like a trailer.
We are passing through a small village, when a dog runs out into the street in front of us. Ben swerves to go behind the dog, but just as we pass it, the dog suddenly, inexplicably, decides to turn around. Ben doesn’t have a chance. The dog goes straight under the front wheel of the scooter. There is a sharp yelp as the wheel hits the dog. The scooter’s front forks jag left, Ben hits the brakes, the bike plunges right and I feel myself falling…
“Oh shit..!”
My temple connects with the back of Ben’s helmet. White flash. Blackness.
I’m on an island in the middle of the Mekong, in Houay Xai. It’s a cloudless, still day. I’m sitting on the sandy ground, but it doesn’t feel gritty. I look down. My movements are slow. I feel pleasantly dopey. I can see that the reason I don’t feel the sand on my legs, is because I am not touching the ground. My body is floating, hovering, two inches above the sand. This makes perfect sense, so I smile. It’s a beautiful day, and I’ve learned to fly. I grin. A low sided wooden boat slides past. There is a group of smiling people on board. They wave at me and flash their lights. I wave back and the action of waving unbalances me, and I roll gently in the air until I am floating upside down above the sand, and I start giggling as my blood rushes to my head, and the sun sets quickly on the horizon, making me feel sleepy and dizzy. The lights flash, flicker; brighter; white; blinding.
A hand takes my hand and shakes it. I feel foggy.
I open my eyes slowly. The woman holding my hand smiles at me. Her face is dimly lit by flickering firelight. I don’t recognise her, but I know who she is.
“Here you are!” I say.
My speech sounds dull and slurred.
She nods.
“I’m sorry I’m late” she says in a hushed voice.
Her face is beautiful in a way that makes me feel slightly awed. She has big, round, gentle eyes, framed by a cascade of curly brown hair.
She squeezes my hand.
“What’s your name” I ask her.
Her face becomes serious, and she looks away.
“Hey. I need to know your name.”
She turns back to me and shakes her head gently.
“No you don’t” she reassures me seriously.
Suddenly a bad feeling grips my mind. My head begins to ache.
“Where is this?” I ask her.
She laughs quietly.
“I don’t know” she says. She raises her eyebrows quizzically. “Do you know?” she asks me.
I shake my head. Sadness sweeps into me like cold water.
“It’s OK” she says. “I’m not going away.”
“Me either” I tell her earnestly, gripping her hand as hard as I can, but even as I say it I can feel myself losing sensation. I can’t feel the texture of her skin. The firelight is dimming. Smoke drifts between us.
“Wait here!” I tell her. “I’m coming back”
As I float away from her, I can see her nodding and trying to smile at me, but I can see tears on her face… and I’m gone.
The air gets turbulent. I’m being bounced around, thrown left and right. I gasp for air. My breath is being pummelled out of me. It’s dark and I don’t know which way is up. I’m being dumped by a big wave. My head swims, and I spin crazily through the darkness. I realise, dimly, that I am about to connect with the ground. Hard. There’s one clear thought in my mind;
“Oh man… I hope I don’t shit myself.”
My leg hurts. The world hurts. My head is bursting. I’m lying on top of a man’s back. There is something heavy and hot crushing down on my leg. What the fuck is going on?
Everything snaps into focus at once. I’m lying on top of Ben, who is lying face down on the road, and the scooter is on top of me.
I gather myself together and roll off of Ben. I can move. That’s a relief. If I can move, then I’m probably OK. I push the scooter off my leg, and stand up unsteadily, wincing. My left knee hurts like fuck, but it still works. I grab Ben’s shoulder and help him stand up also.
“Are you OK?” I ask him.
“Yeah. I’m OK. Are you alright?”
We move the scooter off the road. The dog is nowhere in sight. We inspect ourselves and are amazed to find we are both bloodied and shaken, but intact. The skin is shaved off my left knee, which looks like fresh hamburger mince. There is a growing lump on my temple and my head is throbbing. Ben has nasty cuts on both his elbows, and grazes on his chest and legs, but other than that, we are OK.
“Fuck man, I’m so sorry” Ben says.
“It’s OK mate. We’re OK. There was nothing you could do. That fucking dog was suicidal” I reassure him.
I get some antiseptic and bandages out of my bag (good thing I’m a boy scout) and we clean up our wounds as best we can.
The scooter is OK. There is a big scratch on the fender, and one of the handgrips is cracked, but otherwise, it is fine. Once we have sorted ourselves out and calmed down, we climb back on the bike and ride on.
“I hope that dog is OK” Ben says over his shoulder as we ride out of the village.
“You know, I hope that fucking dog is in a lot of pain” I yell back, over the sound of the engine.
We both laugh a bit too loudly, but it feels really, really good.
As we gain speed, I try not to think about what would have happened if a truck had been following us when we hit the dog.
I try to focus on the face of the woman with brown hair. I try to fix her face in my mind, so I’ll know her if I see her again.
This story is dedicated to my Mum and Dad, Stephanie and Duncan, who have always loved me unconditionally, no matter how silly I am, and whose excellent advice I should follow more often. Happy anniversary. I love you guys!
>> Read more about my misadventures in Laos.
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