Maya - Illusion. Owen Jones

telling the taxi driver the name of the hotel, which was situated on the ‘Water Front’ in the centre of Vientiane.

      They were stripping off, going for a shower in their room at ten a.m. After a journey of five hundred kilometres which had taken thirteen hours. Craig was shattered, but Lek was starting to come down. Craig decided to leave the visa for the following day.

      They were both tired, hungry, thirsty and inquisitive, but they settled for setting the phone alarm for one o’clock and taking a nap. However, when one o’clock came, they were both raring to go outside and see what Vientiane was like. Lek had some preconceptions of Laos and had met many people from there, but Craig had no idea what to expect. Their first impression as they left the hotel was that it was very clean.

      Old but clean, in the way that proud, poor people might wear old clothes and even have an old car, but keep them in the best possible condition. A lot of the street signs still bore their old colonial names in French, although Laos had been communist for decades. Lek was amused by the way Lao used the Thai language. She kept pointing differences out to Craig, who knew enough Thai to understand what she was talking about.

      The only thing that Craig remembered about Laos was that it was the most bombed country of all time and that its mostly rural population of about six and a half million were still regularly finding landmines and packets of cyanide dropped by the Americans in the Seventies, so he was surprised to hear so many American accents there.

      There were also a lot of French people, presumably tourists. Lek chose a restaurant-cum-bar within a hundred yards of the hotel and they sat down. Lek took the menu and made noises as she read it, Craig ordered a Beer Lao, which he had never tried before and a spa for Lek.

      “I have no idea how hot this food will be, telak, so I will order two Thai dishes and some spare ribs for you. OK?”

      “Yes, that’s fine. Do you want to try this Lao beer? It’s quite nice.”

      She took a sip and agreed.

      “I’ll wait for tonight or I’ll be asleep again soon. I can’t drink in the afternoons anymore. It makes me too sleepy.”

      “You’re getting old, that’s what it is.”

      She knew it was true, but did not want to hear it.

      “You can get a new lady if you want. Maybe a Lao lady and stay here...”

      They both regretted it. It didn’t take much to cause an argument these days. They both found it hard to talk together for more than fifteen minutes without one of them passing a snide comment or getting angry over the smallest thing. Conversation was like picking your way through a minefield. Craig often didn’t say anything at all for fear of the consequences.

      He wondered if Lek was going through an early menopause. He had heard that hormones in food were causing girls to become fertile earlier and women to become menopausal earlier too. Or at least, he thought that he had read it. He couldn’t remember at that precise moment. Perhaps he had dreamed it. It made sense though. If women were born with all the eggs they would ever have and they started using them earlier, the supply would run out earlier too. It sounded feasible, but he had no idea really.

      Maybe they had a million eggs and could never use them all up.

      Or maybe they went off.

      Lek was hoping that this vacation would be a second honeymoon. She didn’t like to suggest it, but she was hoping that Craig would try to make it something romantic, something special. They had not decided how long they would stay, but they had both forgone birthday parties that month. Craig’s on the 14^th. had not been important, but Lek’s fortieth on the 12^th. had been a milestone.

      It was just that the atmosphere had not been right, although the family had urged them to have a joint celebration, like they usually did. Thai Mothers’ Day is also on the 12^th, but they didn’t even do much for that – just a small meal at Mum’s. Surely everyone knew that they were going through a very rough patch.

      The Seven-Year Itch a year early.

      They had plenty of time – they could stay away as long as money allowed, but then they were sort of trying to spend less money, although they were not trying very hard and Craig had not mentioned being frugal on holiday.

      She made up her mind to try to be extra nice to him and not find fault with everything he said. She looked up from the menu and smiled at him.

      “I will have a glass of beer with you darling. Thank you.”

      She called the waiter and placed the order while Craig poured her a drink.

      “Cheers! Have you noticed that they don’t say ‘Sawasdee, ka’ here? They say ‘Sabaidee’ instead. I have noticed that they don’t say ‘ka’ or ‘kap’ very often at all.”

      “I hadn’t noticed the ‘sabaidee’, but I had noticed the ‘ka’ thing, because Thais put ‘ka’ or ‘kap’ on the end of most sentences...”

      “That is because we are polite. There is nothing wrong with politeness...”

      “I didn’t say there was, did I? I just assumed it was a regional practice, like in the UK, Londoners say ‘sir’ more often than we do in Wales. It doesn’t make them more or less polite. It’s just their way. Maybe the communists made them drop ‘ka’ here because everyone is supposed to be equal, whereas in Thailand they are definitely not. You have a class structured society, like the UK does, with royalty and all that, but communist countries don’t.

      “Their class structure is built on party membership and having a good job in the civil service”.

      But Lek had already stopped listening. She didn’t waste any time at all worrying or even thinking about things that didn’t concern her or her family and she certainly didn’t care about the social structure in Laos. She just could not understand why Craig was interested in just about everything, it seemed such a waste of time.

      “I emailed my brother last night and asked him to put my flat on the market. If I am lucky, the tenant will buy it, so there might be a quick sale. Well, quick for Britain. British solicitors are not known for doing anything quickly. It could still take two or three months.”

      “But, I thought that you were keeping that for when we are older.”

      “Look, if I don’t have money to eat and drink, I won’t get a lot older, will I? Yes, I wanted to keep it for another ten years or so too, but things haven’t worked out like that. I didn’t create the recession. I couldn’t predict that people would spend less on the Internet or that the Thai baht would become nearly forty percent stronger or that inflation would hit Thailand as it has. Even you say how quickly prices are rising in Thailand. Food has shot up, hasn’t it?”

      “Yes. I know it is not your fault. It’s just that I thought we would have the house to sell when we are older... Now we will be poor when we are old. That is not something nice to look forward to. I will have thirty years to think about how poor I will be when I am old.”

      “And me! Not only you! I used to have a house and in three months I will not. Jeez, woman listen to yourself... I, I, I, poor me. What about me? It’s my house you will be eating for the next ten years, don’t forget that. Don’t be so bloody selfish.”

      “But you can go home and the government will take care of you, my government will not take care of me. I will be working until the day I die. It is something that I have wanted to talk to you about for a long time, because it worries me.”

      “Did you think of that when you were playing cards all day?”

      And they were fighting again already. Both seemed to realise it at the same time, because they both fell silent. Craig pretended to read the label on the beer bottle and Lek looked around the walls. The waitress bringing the food broke the awkward silence, giving them a chance to try again.

      “One more beer, please,”