Mr. Butterfly

He looked up at me from the street by the bus station as I was walking back to my hostel. I had just spent the afternoon at COPE, an exhibition which gave me a whole new perspective on the strength of Laos people, just in the fact that they can still smile when their kids are getting blown up by unexploded cluster bombs in the jungle. Much more on COPE soon. http://www.copelaos.org/

He had an elegant grey moustache that ended in waxed curls at the ends. He smiled at me with one tooth and “Hey! You want drink with us?” “Wow, thank you very much,” I said, sitting down at the table on a low stool, feeling a little out of place in my frilly floral dress and polka dot sun hat. A man with a large square face offered me a large chunk of red-purple meat-looking matter on a toothpick. I smiled politely and ate it, and the whole table laughed at me. It was very soft and tasted like pennies.

They were all motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk drivers. Butterfly spoke the best English. A man who communicated only with sweeping hand gestures since losing his voice gave me a small taste of Lao Lao to wash down the taste of whatever I'd just eaten. Lao Lao is fluorescent and delicious. The men took shots in turn, round and round the table. Five glasses later and we were all in fits of laughter. We ordered another bottle, and 5000 kip (20 baht, or 50p, or 75 cents) got us a glass Fanta bottle filled to the top, funnelled from a big jug by a tired-looking old woman. Clearly we were celebrating something.

Another plate of food arrived, though it was getting difficult to see in the dusk under the streetlamp. I could make out the glistening blue-grey tubes of pig intestine, which I had tried with Zippy in Chang Kong just after Christmas. Resiliently rubbery, fatty, pork flavour. Among the other shapes on the plate were generous slices of blood sausage, and more of the quivering red-purple block. Chilli sauce on the side.

A few people left, and the man with no voice was making gestures of “you” “me” “heart” “together” “good” so I decided to leave them to the rest of their evening. Butterfly gave me his contact number and he said he would take me out the next day.

We drove down to That Dam and had a big Beer Lao next to a blackened stupa that is said to house a demon who was captured and imprisoned 1000 years ago. Seems a little irrisponsible to keep a demon locked in the middle of the capital city, but it looks pretty secure.

Butterfly, or Papillon, or two other names he used to have, was a business man in Paris. He met a woman and they had a kid, but he came back to Laos after he was born. He is estranged from his family in Laos, vaguely referring to mental health problems, and now he sleeps behind the motorbike shop. He has a dragon tattoo winding up each arm, the heads meeting at his collarbone. He has them for protection. 

“Are you Buddhist?” I ask, having seen the stone serpents guarding the stairway entrance to temples.

“Yes I am Buddhist.”

“So what temple do you go to?”

He pauses only for a moment. “I don't go to temple, I never go there. I live every day Buddhism, in my heart I am clear, I don't go this way or that way, I stay direct.”

We get into discussion about staying happy, about cultures that smile verses cultures that don't take time to see what is around them. I approach the subject of the Secret War, and things get political. FACT: Laos people aren't that keen on American people.

A man from the table behind me gets up and Butterfly talks to him in French. The man is in his 60's, a German American, and he lost his right leg when he stepped on a landmine whilst on holiday in Cambodia in 2002. “My leg is robotic,” he says, proudly. “it mimics the rhythm of the other leg.” He rolls up his trouser sleeve to show us his badass prosthetic, and past the knee he's put on a nylon sleeve tattoo.

Everyone has their story.