SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?

The clock was ticking on my Thai tourist visa. 

I had one of the old double-entry ones, which gave you two runs of 60-days apiece, with the option to pay at immigration to extend each entry for 30 days. That's a total of 6 months in the Kingdom of Siam, where you only needed to hop across a border at the 90-day mark to activate the second half. But I'd already done that. My time in southern isles was coming to an end, and my options for returning were limited. A border-run by land would only score another two weeks. A cheap flight to Malaysia or Singapore and back would net a 30-day visa on arrival IF you didn't already have too many stamps in your passport. But I read on a nomad forum that there was one country close by with a Thai embassy that still offered double-entry tourist visas. Just bring the paperwork, a passport picture, and $60, and it'd be processed the next afternoon. Clickety-click, tourist trick!

By the following week I was in the grimy, bustling centre of Vientiane, the capital of the Lao People's Democratic Republic...comrade. I had already endured the bumps and diesel fumes of a $5 tuk-tuk to the embassy that morning, scarfed down three perfect croissants and macchiatos (hey...at least the French colonials left something good behind), and now I was watching the sunset turn the Mekong into amber fire. Travel guides had warned Vientiane could be 'sketchy' after dark, but as night settled in and I drained the sweet, yeasty dregs of a Gulden Draak in a Belgian burger joint on this infamous river, I knew something was missing...

'Hey mate', I said to the pub's anemic owner as I paid my bill. 'It's Friday...so...where's the local...scenery?' I arched an eyebrow and scanned a table of raven-haired beauties with big phones and tiny purses. He got my meaning.

'Yah...there's a place...you can walk there. Follow the river. Maybe 15min if you are slow. The buildings start to get taller. The place you want has 5 floors. You will hear music, and see lights on the 3rd floor. But don't go there. Go to the 5th.'

'Cool,' I said, checking my phone, and seeing it was only 8:30. 'So girls go out late here?'

The barman almost smirked as he dumped my change into an ashtray. 'Stay there until 10:30. You will see'

I did as he said. Walked along the Mekong for a kilometre and watched pinch-faced tourists barter with bored vendors for mystery meat on sticks. Soon I heard tunes and saw flashing lights and stepped into the front hall of what looked like a burned out office building. I climbed five long flights of stone stairs, footstep echoes sputtering behind me like car exhaust and dairy farts.

I reached the bar at the top, but it was nothing special — just a cavernous country-western themed joint with mismatched chairs and scuffed floorboards and a bunch of pool tables with the felt worn into grooves. I planted my ass at the bar, ordered a large Beer Lao (which is what you DO in a communist country with a single state-owned brewery), and watched some bloated and balding Brits play snooker. Badly. Two beers later and it was 10:25, I was bored senseless, and that high-season sweat that no air-conditioning can keep at bay was pooling in my shorts. I drained the bottle and asked for the check. The bartender, who had been silent up 'til now, made a curious grunt that seemed to ask 'Are you sure, mister?'

That's when I heard it. The clamour of high-volume speech, high-pitched laughter, and high-heeled footsteps coming from the stairway. I checked my phone - and the screen flashed 10:30. The wooden doors swung open, and a river of cheap perfume and lacquered hair and glossed lips and black-rimmed eyes flooded the room. Or maybe it was more like a migration. A clockwork flock of beautiful birds, eager to mate in exchange for shiny things to put in their nests.

And there was plumage for every taste. Plunging party dresses and painted-on catsuits and schoolgirls w/ Britney braids and daisy dukes so short and tight they must've worn them so deaf guys could read their lips. It was a goddamn high school fantasy parade and I was just drunk enough to feel the kryptonite. I stood there and took it all in, til a woman across the bar caught my attention — she had piercing eyes and a stylish bob and cheekbones you could chop down trees with. She smiled just enough, and raised her tumbler in my direction. I smiled back, miming a glass of my own, and tipped to her. That was her cue - she slid off the stool and circled the bar towards me, taking long strides while keep keeping her glass perfectly level. Her sleeveless dress was tight at the waist and fell mid-thigh, a crisp white with matching heels and faux pearls. It was like meeting a modern day Audrey Hepburn...you know...if Audrey Hepburn was Laotian...and a whore.