Best Local Beer (or should that be Bia?)

Don't take my word on the goodness.

TIME Magazine agrees with me. At least, some guy who wrote for them back in November 2004 agrees with me.

I especially like how the writer doesn't just write 'beer' but instead does the transliteration of the Lao word 'bia'. Gives the writer some street cred with the backpacker set, probably.

The types that look at you askance if you pronounce the name of the country Laos rather than Lao, because that is somehow being culturally insensitive, because the Lao people call it Lao. Of course, they are speaking a language in which the country is called Lao, while those of us speaking English are perfectly correct in saying Laos.

Try telling that to a white, dreadlocked 22-year old recent college grad with a double major in Anthropology and Philosophy, an infected Tattoo he got in Patpong, and the moral superiority that somehow only comes from spending less than $4 a night on lodging.

These are the people who travel in packs of 2 to 14 from backpacker ghetto to backpacker ghetto, watching pirated movies in pizza restuarants by night, and eating banana pancakes for breakfast (yes, tasty), all the while trying to outdo each other on how cheaply they accomplished something, as if that gives them some unique insight into the culture which they know little about and have experienced hardly at all, and making grand pronouncements on "what the Lao need to understand*" based on their 10 days in country hanging out with each other swapping stories about cheap places to stay in Bali, and who came closer to dying in Nepal while trekking the Annapurna circuit.

I've actually never run into someone who has corrected me on the pronounciation of Laos, but 5 minutes on the lonelyplanet.com website will show you that they are out there in hordes, and I'm really just waiting for that day to come. Oh, how I will relish it. I hope I'm wearing a suit at the time.

Sorry. Most backpackers are quite nice, and fun to talk to. For example, as my dad was sleeping off our 2 days on the river, I had a long talk and shared a soda in Nong Khiaw with some lovely newlyweds from England who had chucked it all and gone on a 1 year honeymoon. They were only 6 weeks into it, but still happily married, so that is a plus. There are just some that for some reason get under my skin. Can you tell?

*shoutout to Geoffrey K. He can do that very well with a British accent.