Travelling in Laos is a tiring experience. Long distances, narrow roads, old vehicles and the most rustic accommodations assure the moment will arrive when a traveller will exclaim: "Enough!"
Luckily, Vientiane is never more than a couple of days away. The town allows restoring energy with excellent French meals and Laotian coffee, meeting other travellers and locals capable and willing to speak with foreigners.
During my stays there I found several of those, but two of them had exceptional stories and a friendly attitude. I won't name them, but the descriptions would make recognizing them an easy task. Each one of them illuminated a different angle of this complex country.
The first is the owner of a chain selling foreign second-hand books. A chain of shops in a Communist country? The story was intriguing enough for a hot-pursue. Strangely, the mogul's story began during royal times. Back then, he was a military policeman which enjoyed a scholarship in Washington for studying English. He returned to Laos just to find a new regime who wasn't hiring people belonging to the old one.
He became a tuk-tuk driver but his English skills helped him getting a strange job from the local English-books store: he gave the English newspapers to the embassies. Soon - in a move that was never fully explained to me - the bookstore owner left Laos and gave the shop to his tuk-tuk driver. Since then, two other shops were added in the capital and one in Vang Vieng; all the branches' staff is family members of him.
This awesome flip of the coin may be explained by his over-friendliness with tourists. During my many visits to his main shop - where he can be easily spotted - I watched with awe how he addressed every tourist entering the shop and obtained skilfully and non-violently all the information regarding their trips until they reached Vientiane and their future plans.
As always in such cases, my recommendation is never give accurate information and if possible change topic; the local baguettes and coffee provide suitable excuses for that.
The second may be described as belonging to the actual oligarchy. He is the son of Communist Party members and a party member by himself. During the Vietnamese-American war, they were in Xam Nua - in the far northeast - living in caves with most of the future leaders of the country. From there, they were part of the network providing communications between Laos and Hanoi.
Once the war was over, he was sent to Moscow, where he finished secondary school, and then to Cuba, where he studied architecture. He found himself back in Laos when the country was opening its doors to tourism, and was awarded with the first dormitory guesthouse in the Laotian Capital.
He used his education for restoring the old colonial building and manages it since then. Even now, the place is occasionally visited by Russians and Cubans adding thus an intriguing angle to such a visit. He speaks Spanish and enjoys practicing it with the guests.
These - and other - people enriched my visits and added a human angle to them which would have been impossible to get unless actively seeking contacts with those rare and often unobserved denizens catering for tourists.