Oh, we'll not soon forget you, Disco Bus. Marvel at the multi-colored siren-lights mounted above the seats on both sides of the bus from front to back. But the thing about Lao is that the bus will almost certainly break down (which it did), but meticulous care is paid to the maintenance of colored lights in the coach and to the upkeep of the 1,000-decibel sound system.
Of course, it wasn't air-conditioned and swarms of mosquitoes divebombed us incessantly, but, hey, it's AUTHENTIC, damn it. Sure, the bus only traveled 200 yards before stopping again -- to be repeated ad nauseam -- but, hey, it's AUTHENTIC, right? And who could complain about the ear-splitting Lao pop music which sounds, unbelievably, even more formulaic and predictably lame than even American top 40?
But the music video accompaniment was the real treat. Every music video, and I mean every one, featured a girl weeping. The entire time. Throughout the video. Broken up by moments of relatively mild domestic abuse such as shaking, pushing, and especially slapping. And the highlight was
that some of the videos ended in sudden violence and tragic death for absolutely no reason. Example: girl is crying, driving her car, tearing up pictures of the boyfriend who wronged her and throwing them out the window. She angrily takes the ring he gave her and throws it, too, out the window. But she has second thoughts, and after a a few overdone grimaces of regret, she pulls over her car, stops, and walks back down the road to retrieve the ring, which she does. She turns around just in time to see a truck about to flatten her like a crepe. Which it does. THE END!
Seriously, this type of thing happened in every video. Some of my favorite endings: weeping girl in an exploding car, weeping girl falls from a bridge into deep water and drowns, crying girl shot down like a dog by some pseudo-Fascist army lieutenant, and weeping girl eaten by zombies, bleeding from her arm-stumps, as she screams and weeps...
Then there was the screech-a-thon variety show featuring an old man dressed in drag along with some screeching children who were presumably singing. But they were really just screeching. And the old man in drag? Screeching, with occasional shrill laughter. It was a comedy show.
Lastly, we had our multimedia piece de resistance, a (very) B-movie entitled, "Supergator." Of course, it was a disaster from the start, but the thing that really got me wondering was this: why overdub the screams of terror? I can understand overdubbing the dialogue so that Lao folks can understand what's being said, but the screams? And really, the movie is mostly just screams. Doesn't it cost more to overdub screams than to just leave them the way they were? For Laotians, are Lao screams better than American screams? Because they sure didn't sound better to us. And why can't they at least use two or three different scream overdubs instead of the SAME ONE OVER AND OVER. These are questions which still demand answers...
To sum up, the bus ride ended up taking almost twelve hours and we ate potato chips for lunch and dinner, but we did eventually reach our destination. In the middle of the night.
The next step, after a few days in Savannakhet, is our final border crossing and our return to Vietnam. It is the denouement of our epic journey. We're hitting the beach.
And by the way, I can't stop giggling about a commercial I saw advertising diapers called "Goon."
Hee hee hee!
end transmission>>>>>>>
Copyright 2010
E.W. Borg
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