The Hash

Fear not, friends and family, we have not gotten ourselves into some "Brokedown Palace" (or "Midnight Express," for those of you born before 1975) situation with drugs and cops and dogs and prison. The Hash (or Hashing) is this crazy running club thing that we stumbled upon in the states and heard people do all over Asia. These runs tend to be full of old expat men who are at turns hilarious, intoxicated, and lecheruos, much to our amusement. When we got to Vientiane, we saw notices all over town for a Monday night run, the 1500th of the Vientiane Hash, so we thought we'd check it out.

The run itself is almost always interesting, because you weave through the back streets following a trail, and you see areas you would certainly never see on your own. This course took us to narrow alleys and across a stream, through a temple yard and past a night market, all to the delight of the local Lao people, who came out of their houses to gawk at the 50 or so mostly white falang (foreigners) running around. One literal girl taking a bath in a tiny tub outside her house apparently yelled to us (translated by a helpful runner), "Falang! Come swimming with me!" It was great fun made that much more difficult by all of the delicious food we've been eating in far too large quantities.

After the run, we went to the house of a British expat for the beer and food and sillyness portion of the evening. We met a lot of random people doing bizarre things all over SE Asia (from hotel workers to airline pilots to some guy talking about a haliburton contract), and some old guys with funny accents and stories of Lao before it was opened up to foreign visitors. Most amazingly, we met the American Ambassador to Lao, who is from Oregon! Since I had just been to the embassy that day to get new passport pages, we praised his well-run outpost and got filled in on some random pieces of news. Then we ate lots of delicious Lao food. Then we hopped in the back of a pickup truck and returned to our hotel, and now we are sore from the running and have sworn off exercising while on vacation. At least until the next hash comes up.