Monks and Foreigners: Falang
“Sabaidee, hello! Teacher Nadia and Teacher Alice didn’t come? Only you by yourself?” the novice monk stood across from me, smiling and adjusting his orange robes. Neon garments fluttered around me, as exuberant eight-year-old novices raced around cleaning the pagoda.
The other older volunteers had remained in the hotel, sending puffs of suffocating cigarette smoke across the patio. I’d escaped them to observe Laos’s classic Buddhist chanting, eager to adventure alone, the archetypal teenager fleeing expectations but developing self-reliance.
“Sorry! Only me today. Teacher Nadia and Teacher Alice are actually at the hotel right now,” I answered, the reverie of my independent outing fading.
During chanting, my thirty minutes of peace had been hopelessly interrupted – the temple’s adopted puppy had nestled against me after a three-legged dog lurking in the pagoda’s shadows lunged at her. Ten shaved heads had turned together to identify the commotion, twenty staring eyes had landed on the gaping falang, or foreigner, in the back, and one exhausted boy had shooed the barking dog off the tiled floor. All the while, chanting had continued.
“Thank you for coming. It’s better if you go now; the head monk would like to say a few words to just us.”
Bowing, I slipped on my sandals and walked briskly through the green fields separating the temple from the main road. Alone at 8 P.M. No one else. Just me. I inhaled deeply, the cool air expanding my lungs. I still had the familiar walk back to the hotel to re-ground myself. A slight breeze brushed against me, as my eyes danced over the endless road, the fleeing sun, and the towering peaks.
But the spell of the mountains’ enchanting silhouettes broke as my vision snapped to the intense barking coming from a frayed fence up ahead. Through a gaping hole in the mesh wires, I glimpsed a pair of bloodshot eyes and a flash pearly-white teeth bared in more malice than the three-legged dog only an hour before. Two steps, three steps, four steps, I passed the fence –
Don’t stop. Don’t trip. Don’t fear.
– but it was already out, in a vicious barking fit spraying saliva against my heels. Keep walking. It’ll go away.
Five steps. Ten steps. Neither of us turned back. I, the intruder, was foreign and hostile, a threat that had to disappear. An acute awareness consumed me, and every inch of my body pulsed with adrenaline. Each limb felt flushed and heated, plastered against my damp polyester shirt and thick traditional Lao skirt. The formal scarf, which I had neglected to pin, fell to my shoulder, but I didn’t stop to adjust it. Instead, I feigned relaxation, swinging my hands, attempting to hide the guttural fear that had materialized in the writhing within my chest. My pace quickened, my every step a battle against the width of my skirt to distance myself from the dog’s accusatory growling; the ear-splitting barking crescendoed, drowning out the fatigued voice whimpering, “help.”
The confidence that had inspired the adventure had evaporated; there I was, naked to the world in all my fear, vulnerable and insecure.
Forty steps. Fifty steps. My eyes latched onto the dry mud road hiding the rocks that I had tripped on earlier that day. I knew that silent, dry dirt road like I knew the hallways of my house – to my right would be a stall with lychees, dragonfruit, and mangosteens, and to my left would be the soccer field of a Chinese-owned mansion; just a few meters ahead would be my hotel’s jaundice-colored sign. Sixty-seven steps.
The barking pierced my ears, my head throbbing from the anxiety. I risked a glance up, and like magnets, my eyes connected with a man on a motorcycle staring at me wide-eyed through a pale dusty blue helmet. Before my voice could reach my throat, the roar of his bike faded, leaving a silence interrupted only by my hiccuping breaths.
The motorcyclist’s passing sent waves of dust flying around me, and I felt a maddening desire for the swirls of smoke and the smell of cigarettes that accompanied the other volunteers.