(Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of travel correspondence from Dan as he travels around southeast Asia. Click the “continued” link to read the full message.)

July 20, 2005

Greetings from Ninh Binh!

I’m fine. I’m not hurt. It’s only a scar. Turns out I was a bit mistaken about Vientiane being boring. After signing off last time, I went to the local Hash House Harriers hash. If you don’t know what this is, google Hash House Harriers. Their tagline is “A drinking club with a running problem,” which we adopted for the Grizzlies: “a drinking team with an ice hockey problem.” To be honest, I didn’t know how much running to expect, but I assumed that I could bow out if (when) I ran out of gas.

Most of you have heard my Urban Challenge stories…limping up hills, sprinting through traffic, celebrating with gusto. The Vientiane Hash House Harriers put those experiences to shame! First I had to find them. They placed an ad in the local English language paper, pointing to a bakery where they post their starting point weekly. I found the bakery still hungover, haggling with songthaew drivers (songthaews are taxis made from open-bed pickup trucks) for a ride, and finally walking over new blacktop that glistened in the heat, unable to dry. That pointed me to a bar near where I started. Time to walk.

Why walk? Maybe I mentioned this before (did I talk about my laundry?) but the Lao are terrible with directions. There are fewer road signs than Boston, and the street names change more frequently. At the bakery, I got a map and a lot of water. I walked up Vientiane’s Champs Elysees and past its Arc De Triomphe, getting to the bar in time for a glass of water.

The hashers were quite welcoming. The first man to introduce himself, Chris, goes by the race name of Numbnuts. Everyone had a race name, most profane. Virgins (I was a virgin) don’t name themselves. Running reception was a mother and daughter (50-ish and 20-ish) and the father was getting stretched out. The crew was a mix of expats and local Lao. A few people brought their dogs. I was the only interloper this week. Lee (Pommy Fag) and Chris took care of me as we ran.

The run (not a race: that’s a punishable offense) started easily, as I stuck with Chris. He’s in his late forties and a heavy smoker, but more importantly, he set the course. A Hash course is a meandering path through complex environments. Saturday hashes are in the jungle. Monday hashes are in town. In Vientiane, “in town” is a relative term. Within the first two kilometers, we had run through underbrush, vacant lots, and impoverished neighborhoods. I had already dunked my left shoe into rich green mud, all the way to my ankle.

The difficulty in the has course is its unpredictability. Before 10 am that morning, Chris walked the route, drawing dots every 50 meters on the ground in white builders chalk. Yes, we were in a communist, totalitarian city. Yes, he had to stop. When they caught him six kilometers into the route, he drew an arrow which said “this way home.” The dots lead to open circles. At a circle, paths lead in many directions. Dot, dot, X. Bad path. Backtrack the 150 meters. One path will run dot, dot, dot. That’s the real path. The leader yells “On on!” and the race continues. By standing next to Chris, I never took a false path. About half the 30 runners explored paths, the rest used my plan.

Every 2-3 kilometers, the open circle has an H in the middle. At this point, all halt. The run regroups, and there is a path home. So the hash has a Short, Medium, and Long run. Half the folks, all the children and puppies head back after the short run. I expected to run the short run. But I was standing there, muddy shoe, sweating, but just finished warming up. I decided to press on. The medium run took us along a rice paddy and back into the poorest urban neighborhoods I’ve seen. One-room huts, stacked up against each other, with dogs wandering through. Unpaved roads, refuse on what passed for streets. Children and adults alike watching us with wonder, often smiling, sometimes pointing and laughing at us. Chris reminds me that this is a part of Nientiane I’d never see, tour group or not. Backpackers would have no reason to go back there and race along canals and paddies…all within the city limits. Heck, within two miles of their Arc De Triomphe.

At the end of the medium run, I was ready to go back and drink. Both shoes are covered in mud, and it’s all over my legs. My hands are mysteriously black. Chris shrugged his shoulders and announced “Medium runners, I have no idea how to get you back to the bar. Follow us, and you can grab a songthaew from the main road.” Great. On on! And I huff and puff through the next kilometer, we come across another paddy. The ground dips sharply as we come to an irrigation runoff, just three feet wide. The ten of us line up single-file and jump it in turn. I’m next to last (a man, Knackered, with a dog is behind me). The man in front of me jumps, and as he stands, he stumbles. People laugh. I’m too focused on how he took off and landed…my legs are out of gas and I don’t want to get soaked again. I spring with both feet and land, then pop up and CLANG. I stagger back as the world gets wobbly. I catch myself before stepping back into the water. Regrouping, my head hurts and my hat is down over my eyes. My sunglasses are crumpled under the hat. I roll my neck to each side, realize that I’m alright, and almost bang right back into the tree that knocked me over. Knackered comes right over to ask whether I’m alright, then recoils a bit when he sees the cuts on my nose. Chris comes back to check on me, and asks whether I can finish the race. I buck up and keep running. I’ve taken hits that bad in hockey, but I could always skip a shift when I needed to. Here, I had to get myself back…at least to a road with a songthaew.

After a few minutes, I’m back to a reasonable pace, and my nose only hurts when I press on it. No break. We weave through more lots, and back to the “this way home” dot. Chris walks the last ten minutes with me, as we discuss his hashing experiences. My main question was whether he’s run into UXO (unexploded ordinance, bombs dropped from airplanes which did not detonate but which remain live to this day) on the jungle hashes. In ten years, he hasn’t. The hashes run along well-worn trails. On top of that, the locals work to have UXO defused, so they can strip the machine for spare parts and sell the metal and wiring as scrap. On the other hand, as a mine worker throughout Laos, he’s seen UXO dug up repeatedly. His company has a staff which scours the area for UXO before the construction team goes in. He’s in construction, and has watched the scouring team miss items….large Caterpillar trucks end up roto-tilling the bombs underneath them. He still hasn’t seen one explode. UXO are not landmines.

Returning to the bar, Chris cleaned up my nose with the first-aid kit. Four of my friends had arrived, as well. They meant to take pictures as I left, but the songthaew driver got lost. As the hashers circled up for the ritual drinking and hazing, they insisted that my friends join them. I learned, by necessity, how to chug beer. Thanks to my accident, they serenaded me while I chugged:

Here’s to the tree hugger, he’s true blue.
He’s a hasher through and through.
He’s a bastard, so they say.
Tried to get to heaven but he went the other way.
Drink it down, down, down, down, down.

Pictures to come. Same with more stories. I hope everyone is doing great.

All the best,
Dan