Korean Town

3/2/2015                                                      Van Vieng (Laos)

"The Koreans are invading my hometown, you cannot understand, they are not only coming live there, but they are starting to have their hospitals, their schools, their supermarket, in areas where anyone speaks only Korean, it's terrible"

While i was traveling in Vang Vieng i met a really funny girl. 

Her name was Doris, she's from a "small" city in China, Quindao, the city it might be sounds familiar for who like me likes beers, but the brewery decide to change the name in Tsingtao for international customers.

We met in Vang Vieng as i was saying above, where i arrived after two day trip from Vientiane, the Lao's capital, if your'e wondering why i needed 2 days from Vientiane to Vang Vieng, only 108 km, is because my bad, i didn't mention the way how i'm traveling.

I decide to travel cutting the transportation cost and i decide to hitchhike all the way since Cambodia after the few experiences i had in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Thailand.

So sometimes you will just stop somewhere because you have the lift only for few kilometres and not all the way you have to do, but i'm going off topic and i will talk about this in others post.

Then i was saying i met her in a guest house, were me and my travel buddy decide to rest for the night after the various rides we caught since Vientiane.

Vang Vieng is actually  a small town in north Laos, but really popular for Backpackers who're traveling around this area and even people who're coming to Laos just in holiday.

What made Vang Vieng popular is the Tubing (big attraction that i will describe in the next post), where you've your "tube" and you will float on the Mekong River,  for few km, (but everything will become more interesting if you're drunk, so the setting up for this activity is made to "enjoy" the process while you stop in many bars on the way where you will drink alcohol).

People relaxing on the hammock in front of the Mekong River

Vang Vieng anyway is not only this and offer also many outdoor activity as Kayaking, biking, hiking through  beautiful landscapes exploring caves around the surrounding area.

For many backpackers Vang Vieng is only a place to chill on the daytime, watching many episodes of the sitcom "Friends" or enjoying another episode of "Family Guy" in a any restaurant of the town, while for others is just tubing and nightlife.

In fact it's really easy find drugs even in a restaurant where you can easy asking for a Happy Pizza or Happy Shake with the add of Marijuana or Magic Mushroom, just paying 10.000 kip (around 10 euro), and where you can easily find party as Full Moon Party, pure imitation of the real Full Moon Party of Ko Phangan (Thailand), where nowadays it's just synonymous of getting so drunk or so high to don't even remember what happen on Haad Rin Beach that night.

But coming back to us, that day of February while we were exploring the town, we realise the 60% of the people over there were Korean, and this was supported by many Korean restaurants and other things connected with the south part of the peninsula attached to China, who's developing really fast in these days.

When we met Doris again in the evening to have dinner together, we also talked about this, and that's why everything started, in fact, what we were able to feel and see in Vang Vieng was just a small thing compared of what is happening in Quindao.

She started to telling us about her hometown, with a really serious face, explaining how the Korean were invading the place where she's grew up.

"The Koreans are invading Quindao, you cannot understand, they are not only coming live there, but they are starting to have their hospitals, their schools, their supermarket, in areas where anyone speaks only Korean, it's terrible"

We were not able to understand if something like that was really happening or was just a movie made from our sick mind.
Was obvious for me, that she was not realising what she was telling about, yeah because everything she was saying to us was just a copy of what since many and many years, is happening everywhere in the world, but where were not the Korean to do that but the people from her country.
In fact, everywhere you go in the world, you will be easily able to find the China's town of that area, just walking in that district you will enter in a bubble, and you will feel like you're not in that country anymore but just somewhere in Mainland China.

And to every details she was adding i couldn't stop to laugh of what was just happening in the world, a Chinese girl complaining about the invasion of people of another country in her hometown.
I think is funny discover something like this while i'm traveling.
Issues that i would never imagine in the most remote part of my mind popping up just during a random chat in a small town in the north part of Laos.
Even the unreal become real, that is also why i love traveling, and this is just another piece of the puzzle to add of the meaning of of it.