the incomparable mr. kow, part two: his distinguished friend mr. lek

The next destination on our Southeast Asian adventure was Laos. I mentioned earlier that our Thai friend from Koh Samui, Mr. Kow, urged us to visit his friend when we were there.

Mr. Kow wrote a note to his friend who, he said, worked in the Thai Embassy in Laos. The note he wrote is pictured to the left, but he was so excited in his Mr. Kow way that it is a bit hard to read. In both English and Thai he wrote this to his friend:

2, FEB,08
DEAR my friend MR. LEK!
TAKE CARE & Look out my Friends in
Lown. PLEASE!!! (AMERICAN)
FROM,
[Mr. Kow’s name in Thai]

A very nice note and as you can see, he included a little map of how we should cross the border from the Northern Thai town of Udon Thani into Laos.

Armed with a map and a note from our friend, we felt more than equipped to cross the border (with our visa, naturally) and make our way to the capital. How could we pass up an opportunity to meet a friend of a friend?

And so, in a moment of great frivolity we marched up to the Thai embassy in Vientiane, Laos and explained to Mr. Lek’s assistant over the guard’s phone that a friend of Mr. Lek’s had asked us to deliver a note to him. The assistant politely explained that Mr. Lek was in a meeting and was very busy. We were disappointed and turned to leave, when Eileen pointed out that we could at least leave Mr. Lek a note with Mr. Kow’s business card. So, we scrawled this note (to the right. Note Mr. Kow's business card. The photo is around 20 years old.).

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but before we knew it we were escorted into the embassy and offered coffee. Our clever plan worked! The assistant, a very nice soft-spoken man, sat and spoke to us while we waited for the meeting to come to an end. It turns out that this Mr. Lek we were trying to meet was an important minister of cultural affairs or something to that effect.

When his meeting was over, Mr. Lek greeted us in a kind, distinguished way. In spite of what Mr. Kow had assured us, the man didn’t speak a word of English. His assistant served as our interpreter. Mr. Lek read Mr. Kow’s note and said with a smile that Mr. Kow “is a very happy man”. Indeed. He graciously took a very official-Thai-embassy picture with us and he had a driver send us to our hostel in one of the embassy cars.

We drove away convinced that we had just done one of the more ridiculous things we had ever done.