Chiang Khong
The view of Laos from our Thailand balcony
Chang Khong is a wee border town on the way to Laos (or on the way out, depending on your direction). Picking a guesthouse straight out of the LP lead us to Banrimtaling Guesthouse, and a room with such awesome views over the Mekong river and into Laos that I suggested we stay another night.
It was in Chiang Khong that we experienced one of the more perplexing moments of our trip thus far. A Songkran (still going!) concert was being held about 1km down the river, so with some newly made American friends and a half time Chang Khong local we made our way toward the music.
We arrive to find a huge open air stage – the back lined with musicians, the front featuring a few male singers and 8 scantily clad young Thai girls doing sexy stripper dances and grinding on amps. Occasionally a different girl would take the stage to sing by herself and had men groping and putting money in her bra and underwear. We still have no idea if this was part of the Miss Songkran festival, our local Thai friend’s English was limited when it came to us exclaiming “WTF”.
The audience in the field was made up of, almost exclusively, very very drunk Thai people. The males generally old and lecherous; some of the women found the tall white girl (me) quite an entertaining sight and gave me drinks and dried banana chips and danced with me.
Not being able to drink beer has been the biggest hassle of this trip. I’m sure weird stripper show would have been more fun if I was drunk like everyone else. But I think our friend D, drunk and missing his girlfriend, had a good enough time for everyone.
The rest of the night was spent circling our guesthouse trying to find a way to get back to it without passing the 3 barking stray dogs in our path. They were at every turn. Eventually we gathered D and our new friends, along with some bamboo poles, only for the menacing dogs to be gone!
After being smeared with talc and given whisky shots by locals
5 Responses to “Chiang Khong”
yeah, the dancing girls “coyote dancers” are pretty common at everything from weddings to funerals in thailand.
even to the point where in the Ubon Ratchathani province they brought in a local bylaw banning them from performing in Temples!!!
You look beautiful Kim, I hope you’re having an amazing time! (It sure sounds as though it’s interesting!)
In asia I would often carry a stone with me, in case some dogs turned up. I have little patience for their territorial barking and a stone or two puts them in their place.
Dogs hate stones. If you throw one slowly and inaccurately at them then they freak out and run away. Asian dogs have experienced fast and accurate stones often enough that the threat is plain to them.
If you come across some aggressive dogs and there are no stones around, bend down and reach as if you are picking up a stone. Then stand up and loosely clench your fist as if you just picked up a stone. Usually that tricks them and they back off. Obviously this only works in the daytime!
After this night we started carrying big rocks in towns with scary dogs. They don’t seem to be a problem till the sun goes down.
[...] Chiang Mai we bused to Chiang Khong and boated to the Laos side of the river and the town of Huay Xai. Considering we were crossing [...]
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