X Marks the Spot

When staying in a guesthouse whose name is variously transliterated Xayamounghkhoun, Sayamungkun, Xayamunghkhung, etc., in a town where almost no one speaks English, and you do not speak the language, it is wise to make a note not only of the name, and, for that matter, the address, but also of the pronunciation.

Particularly since Lao contains no fewer than six tones, none of them easy for the Anglophone, and each capable of completely changing the meaning of a word.

We have been walking in circles in the general direction of Savanakkhet’s Catholic church, a substantial edifice, a block or two away from our hotel, in near-total darkness, when Z loses patience.

“Mum! You are leading me around like a blind person,” he says. “You have absolutely no idea where we are. Or where we’re going. At least stop and ask someone.”

Finding someone to ask after ten o’clock on a Tuesday night in Savannakhet, Laos, is not the easiest task. We wander down a dark and firmly residential avenue, setting off a veritable cacophony of dogs, until we hit a patch of dark water which is clearly not the Mekong but the town canal, and wander back.

I decide to stop pretending I have any idea where we are.

“Why don’t we just get a tuk-tuk?” Z suggests.

“I would, if I could see a tuk-tuk,” I say, bad-temperedly. “Can you see a tuk-tuk anywhere? When did you last see a tuk-tuk?”

He thinks better of responding.

A few circles later, a group of teenagers on motorbikes zoom out of the blackness. “Samounkoun?” I say, hopefully. “Samounkoun?”

They try and help, but are clearly not familiar with a guesthouse of that name. We continue our nocturnal ambulation.

Lights appear in the distance! It is a beer-and-painted-ladies shop. The pairing of mother and small boy outside said adult services venue attracts some amiable banter from the gentlemen outside.

Around the corner, two ladies are selling post-coital noodles. “Samounkoun?” I say. They look blank. It begins to dawn on me that I may not, in fact, know the name of the place we are staying. “Samoungkoung?” I try.

While Savannakhet is not, to put it mildly, replete with guesthouses, I seem to recall that many places here begin with with S and X.

The ladies are utterly delightful, and try their very best to help. Z watches balefully at my shoulder.

I rummage in my bag. No information. I pull out a notebook. I draw the church. I try to write down the hotel’s name, but realise that all I can identify with any certainty is the X at the beginning. I write down the church’s English name. It doesn’t help.

The ladies flag down a passing moto driver, and explain our predicament with some hilarity. I make rueful faces, shrug helplessly, write down “X….?” and draw the church a second time.

He draws a blank, then jangles his key at me.

I fumble for the room key, examine it, then hand it round the circle. All four of us scrutinise both fob and key in detail. It offers absolutely no information other than our room number, 105.

“Samounkhoun?” I bleat, cretinously. “Xun Khoung?”

The driver emits a series of ascending and descending hard and umlauted O sounds, a Lao “Aha!”. He writes “Houngt”.

I shake my head. I write “Xun Khoung”.

More O noises. He says something which sounds sufficiently similar to Samounkhoun, or even Xayamounghkhoung, to satisfy us all, and Z and I hop onto his bike, which audibly creaks under my weight.

We are making decent speed when I realise that we are going completely in the wrong direction and that I have no way of communicating this, and, indeed, no reason to, since I don’t know what the right direction is.

I go with the flow. We duly rock up outside a hotel which begins with an X and has a Khoung in the name, but is not Xayamounghkoung.

We hop off the bike. I enter the reception, trailed at a decent interval by Z, pretending he has nothing to do with me, and the moto driver, celebrating his triumph over cretinosity.

“X…. Khoung,” he proclaims, proudly. I shake my head.

“You want room?” says one of the guys on reception.

“No,” I say. “I have room. I look for hotel.”

It’s not, actually, a concept that is easy to explain in any language. Sir, I am in your hotel by mistake. I am looking for a different hotel. The name of which I, sadly, do not completely recall.

The moto driver emits a flood of tonal sounds. The older of the two gentlemen on reception falls about. The younger one looks solemn.

Z, slumped in the corner, staring at his feet, pipes up. “You should have given me the hotel card like you normally do,” he says. “If you’d remembered to do that, none of this would be happening.”

“Well you didn’t ask me for the hotel card, did you?” I say, rather unfairly. Public displays of emotion are not socially accepted in these parts, and with some effort I refrain from one.

I stare helplessly at the eco-tourism leaflets on the front desk. It seems ludicrous to be contemplating spending the night at a different hotel but we are, it appears, rather stuck. There is no internet here.

My eye falls on a scrappy piece of paper. It is a photocopied, hand-drawn map of town. Result!

The Catholic church is there. The main road is there. Our hotel is on the main road. Admittedly, spelt with an S and short two H’s and two O’s, from what I remember, but definitely our guesthouse.

I point happily to our hotel. The moto driver emits more O sounds. “XayaMOUNGHkhoun!” he says, guffawing at my stupidity.

We climb back on the bike, leaving a trail of merriment in our wake, and arrive at our guesthouse so late that our driver has to wake up the grandmotherly owner to unfurl the metal gates.

It’s a slightly uncomfortable entrance. Somewhere between that “dirty stopout” feeling when gaining admission to student halls of residence, multiplied by bad mother guilt, knowing that your nine-year-old child has been up later than 98% of the adults in town, and further enhanced by said child expressing all too articulately his opinions on your navigational aptitude and language skills.

We sleep late the next day.