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He could now see at a distance the bald muddied area of the bus terminal with its dilapidated secondhand buses that, according to the travel guide, had been given by the Japanese government to the retarded capital as a gesture of friendship, buses that would take them outside Vientiane albeit for him without any good reason for except for this sharp prodding feeling of needing to be with someone.
"I don't know. Too much trouble to do it I guess. No passport. No particular wish to see people who are poorer than here." "I see. Well, I need to make a left I guess and then walk straight ahead for a while. Will Vientiane be to the left or the right?" "Right." "Can I walk there?" "To the border yes, but you will need a taxi to get anywhere else."
I haven't seen people pay money to feed them in Vientiane, if they do, but that doesn't mean that they don't. But it would make more sense doing it in someplace where the people are filthy rich, and I guess seeing large literal animals is a bit of a novelty in cities like Bangkok where they are so used to the open exhibition of the figurative breeds.
A lot to think over." "You broke up with her or she broke up with you?" "Maybe the other way around. Anyway the better half is gone." "Where are you going?" "Well, I am debating that actually. Nongkai has a Buddhist sculptural garden, doesn't it? Vientiane too." "I guess so. I've never been to either one. Never stepped into Laos." "You never wanted too?" "Not really." "Why is that?"
To some degree he was like those who in the monotony of their circuitous movements around material possessions and a preoccupation with them came to remote areas like Vientiane to find more to themselves than the accumulation of money and objects, but his retreat was more from the loss of people than the dismissal of material possessions, and his departure was not out of choice but the circumstances that had brought about the need to extricate himself from inordinate pain.
Giving a thousand baht would imply having a lot to give and giving nothing would imply snobbishly holding back from giving what little he could, so he handed the man a hundred baht. "I can spare this. Keep it as money for transportation when going back to Vientiane." "Sure, why not, thank you" said the man. Nawin felt satisfied by his decision to give little.
Only if he were to ignore the illustrated signs of a man being electrocuted that graced the whole of Vientiane, and grab a low electrical wire would an end come to him there.
And vacuity he pondered unceasingly for, in this train, emptiness rode in him as he was riding in it. Vientiane, he derided, was not a destination any more than the Buddha's Lumbini forest.
Maybe I'll take you to a few temples and stupas in Vientiane La Prabang even before you return to Bangkok." "It's okay, I don't mind. Seeing sites it's not what I'm after." "What are you after if you don't mind telling me? Why did you want to come Vientiene, anyway?" "That's Complicated," he said ineffably for how could the wish to escape inordinate grief be expressed?
If any light came to him now or had emanated heretofore, he was not aware of it. The border leading back to Thailand seemed a dark and opaque one-way journey sealed off to retrospective deviants. Thus, he was stranded in this swamp of Vientiane, Laos, without any chance of return.
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