No kissing, no touching

2006-06-15 09:14

Georgina Guedes

Granted, Laos isn't Iran, and women can walk in the streets in fairly revealing clothing, but for me, a South African woman, the ban on public displays of affection is more stifling here than the tropical heat.

My boyfriend Ter and I are used to being able to touch each other when we're out and about. Having been together for five years, we are no longer in the first flush of passion, and when in South Africa restrict ourselves to public handholding, brief kisses upon meeting and departing and the occasional cuddle of affection of amusement.

We started our travels in Thailand where a couple of guidebooks suggested that public displays of affection weren't really appropriate, especially in temples. However, what with transvestites and prostitutes flaunting themselves in most bars, it was hard to take this guideline too seriously.

The Victorian Lao people

On the other hand, when we arrived in Laos, posters at the border, illustrating "falang" (the Lao name for foreigners) as hairy, grubby, in various states of undress and locked in passionate clinches and requested that to avoid causing offence, travellers please refrain from any of the above.

Holding hands and kissing aside, I was embarrassed by the state of our clothes - we had crossed a border by boat after being on a bus through the night, we then went on a two-day hike and caught a public bus to our first populated stop in Laos. By the end of all of this, we were filthy.

We checked into a guesthouse after searching for hours of heavy-backpack hell for one with hot water, only to be greeted, reproachfully, by the same poster.

The guesthouse owner did look down his nose at us, but thankfully didn't turn us and our muddy boots away - the "falang" dollar is a very persuasive medium - however, the poster remained burned into my consciousness.

Given the lengths that the locals had gone to to let us know how not to offend them, I felt that it was only fair that we try to stick to the local etiquette. I had no idea how difficult it would be.

Keeping in touch

Ter and I communicate a lot through touch. We'll apply a gentle squeeze to the shoulder or waist to show affection, he'll sling an arm across my shoulders when we're appreciating the beauty of our natural surroundings, a squeeze to the upper arm will take the sting out of gentle teasing, and if, for instance, Ter has dropped a backpack off the top of a bus onto me, jumped off the roof of the bus, tripped over the fallen backpack and then yelled at me for not having moved it, for instance, he'll give me a particular kind of apologetic cuddle to show that he's sorry.

Strolling down the beautiful streets of Laos towns, we'll often find our hands straying towards each other's bodies, only to remember the local custom and snatch away as if burnt. What this has this effect of doing is making me feel as if I have offended Ter in some way, and he is accordingly withholding cuddles.

With so much of our unspoken communication done away with, we're both finding ourselves feeling insecure in our understanding of the affection of the other person. The best solution we've managed to find for this is to describe, in passionate detail, the details of how we would be touching each other if we could.

So, with all the lasciviousness of phone sex, we'll reveal how we would like to be holding hands, fingers entwined. We'll eke out descriptions of the tantalising ecstasy of running our fingers over each other's shoulders. We'll throw ourselves into impassioned portrayals of the delicate peck of greeting we'd like to give each other on the corner of our mouths. It's a substitute, but a pretty shoddy one.

Meeting in the middle

What with so much of the local economy hinging on the annual inflow of tourists, some Laos nationals have taken it upon themselves to try to understand the falang a little better.

In some places, it is understood that falang are different, and that their flagrant displays of touching are to be politely ignored, in much the same way as we are expected to ignore the rasping throat clearing and resultant spitting into the gutters of the Lao people - construction workers and delicate pregnant women alike.

In one restaurant, we were even ushered into what was obviously the falang area, a bamboo walled room with pictures of the beautiful scenery of Laos on either side of a poster of a white man and woman locked in a passionate, half-naked embrace.

Given that the girlie calendars circulated by the local beer company show Laos honeys frolicking in the ocean clothed from armpit to knee in modest silk sarongs, this attempt to be open to falang vulgarity was evidently a big step for the proprietor, and we made appropriate appreciative noises.

In a country where dancing in bars is illegal, small gestures like these from locals and foreigners alike are slowly eroding the cultural barriers. In another ten years, it's possible that holding hands while strolling on the banks of the Mekong River will hardly cause a stir.

Georgina Guedes is a South African woman travelling the world. In the searing heat of Laos, she's finding it difficult to keep her shoulders modestly covered.

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