“Free Wifi” in Oudamxai

After the nine hour bus ride from Phongsali down to Oudamxai, we were pretty beat. We had heard of a good hostel to stay in but as our guidebook was a bit old and we were exhausted, Henry and I camped at a nearby café and each had a beer while Patrick and Paul went searching. They found one not too far away and we made our way over there pretty soon after.

Oudamxai was a weird town. Our guidebook said to spend as little time as possible there because it was a dirty, ugly town that catered to Chinese businessmen/sex tourists rolling through Laos. Well, the town actually seemed kinda nice. The streets were fairly clean, and new hotels and buildings were scattered around creating the atmosphere of a town on the rise. I think I remember hearing about a big stone quarry somewhere nearby too and, as the transportation hub for anyone going north of Luang Prabang, it was a must-stop for most people.

Our brand new hotel was one of the nicer places we stayed on the whole trip and at about eight bucks a room, it was a pretty good deal. The floors were tiled, we had hot water (that worked!) and HBO on the TV. Henry and I shared a room and we watched a little TV and relaxed a bit. At one point, I wondered if there was any wifi there, so I got up and opened the door into the lobby and asked the manager there if there was any free wifi. He was talking with a short woman who looked a little shy of 20. They kind of looked at each other questioningly and then looked back at me. I gathered that they had no idea what I was saying, so I tried asking if there was any internet. When that didn’t work, I mimicked typing on a keyboard and then opening and closing a laptop. They started rattling off in what I assumed was Chinese or Lao but could have been any language from the area. As I was about to give up, the guy abruptly walked away and the girl came straight up to me as I was standing in the doorway. She was standing uncomfortably close and I began to suspect that maybe something wasn’t going quite as I planned. I kept repeating “wifi” and “internet” as Henry giggled at me from the bed. After a few awkward moments, she entered the room and then just sat on the bed and looked expectantly from Henry to me. Henry immediately sat up and scrambled off the bed as I started saying “No, no. No thank you. Please leave.” or something to that effect. Well, the girl wouldn’t leave and neither of us wanted to get close to her to push her out of our room because, hey, prostitutes are people too, and what was probably normal at this hotel with other foreigners was just not what we were looking for. After about a minute of me motioning for her to leave the room and her looking very confused at us, she left. Guess I figured out what “Free Wifi” meant at this hotel.

Anyway, we walked around town to stretch our legs shortly after that and eventually came across the traveller’s hostel we’d heard about. It looked like kind of a crap shoot, but we still had some dinner and played some cards there. The dinner was pretty mediocre, a true falang restaurant—tamed down “Lao” food for foreigners. I definitely recognized some dreadlocked people at another table from a previous place we’d been, but from where? No idea. There was also a white man around maybe 45 with a much younger white woman at the table next to us who kept staring at our card game in a slightly uncomfortable way. Maybe they wanted in, maybe they wanted to chat, who knows. We were all a bit grumpy after the bus ride and didn’t feel like being too social. Later, we went back to the hotel watched a little TV and went to sleep (after the hot showers, of course).