A "South-American" Asia
Simone Mariotti
(Article published December 3 2008 on La Voce di Romagna in first page)
The prawns were crackling on the grill. We were pretty far from the river, almost to the first suburbs of the city, and around us the signs of the great flood of August were not as deep. The Mekong we had inside heavy, but after all is always
Vientiane somewhat 'like a sock turned to those of coarse wool, with all the frills that hang with caloroso disorder. They were only more wet than usual.
The chioschetto was on the corner of a road along a small canal. Little traffic, a few motorcycles. Phan's house was in the same building, a structure with a plan, with some rooms spread. He had a will, with a shared bathroom, but not sleeping there, not always. To pull on something, he rented his room to the workers who went to town, however poor people who needed a place just to sleep. Meanwhile he is appisolava the dorm, when not working, from 14 to 23 pm, and there where I met him on my arrival in
Laos. Then in the evening soup and a Beerlao, or even two.
Studied in the morning, when he could, who knows how and where and with what means. And find out where was the instinct to do so, at that casino of life that we found, was a prize for those entering in the small Asia still slow, that he knew almost of South America, so far away from the new eastern frenzy, and still garbled stifled by a tired and old, but that will not give up the socket.
But Phan quell'istinto him. Self-taught on everything, annaspava slow, 33 years and dreamed of having a family, to work on his own, perhaps to open a guesthouse in the house of his brother, who was in the countryside in the south of the country. But in that part of
Laos, there should be none.
"Portaceli you!"
"With what, with your freedom?"
The prawns were ready.
"Do not you want his?
"I do not know anything, you" joke seriously, "nothing. He studied the language php ', I pointed to even cook our twenties, "and that looks a little' you questions. I will do a site like yours ... seems strange right? After all I can do almost everything I want. "
"Then tell me what you think.
"I am just tired, and you? We still lack a po 'for' your 'things, not so much. And even some 'of our desire, in fact. Those imprisoned boys that I say ... I do not know, I think nobody knows, or almost. But after over ten years ago, here is another world, even compared to two. But you do not know anything ... Tu me speak evil of the Vietnamese, but we consider them to be real brothers ... "
'Elder brother, for your government ... let me lose. "
"From that I must return," he said smiling.
Climbed on his motorcycle. He was tired from the knock. All year that was going with me, and in three quarters of an hour would have started working. His colleagues in the hotel seemed groggy, he, on the day of my arrival, just discovered that I wrote, which in Italy was about to leave my book of narrative travel instinctively said: "Ah! Very interesting! Then you carry around in the morning so write to me also. " E 'quell'istinto that does not give you peace, but that makes you stand well in a dorm, if you can not feel excluded from what counts for you. I left it at the pump around the corner, next to the hotel. Its leaders were not to know who was working on ways to become a guide, who was looking for some 'publicity and that in exchange for just a little' gas for the bike, some beer and some 'shrimp more. Wanted a percentage on those. We would have seen for a small dinner at the food market at night, the most pleasant you have ever eaten.
The Mekong calm had returned. The food stalls along the bank as teeming with campaign could only happen in the biggest village in Asia, with its simple dirt roads near the center.
Vientiane was so beautiful, almost cool. I had no desire to move.
The prawns are still there, in quell'Asia sudamericana, which is not about food. Phan And ultimately, what I want I want all that, maybe a little 'less casino, which still have too many, with an increasingly low dose of serenity and an instinct that fortunately still bites you.
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