… continued from part 1
The owners of the hostel we were at obviously didn’t want to be involved. They kept insisting that it was after 12, the doors were supposed to be locked and there were no Chinese people living there – despite the fact that we were just sitting with the two Chinese people.
I asked Bei Tou Le to sit tight in the company of the other tourists, while I went back to our guesthouse to investigate.
As I entered our hostel, I saw some of the guests escorting Shen Jing Bing out of the guesthouse.
“Where’s the girl?” I asked, immediately concerned that she too might have been assaulted.
“I have no idea,” replied the guests.
I then noticed that Xiao Gu Niang had sent me a message asking where I was and that she was on the second floor. I missed her message while jamming on the ukulele since my phone was on battery saving mode.
I sought her out on the second floor and found her crying in the bathroom.
“I don’t understand how the vacation could turn out like this,” she sobbed.
“I don’t understand how the vacation could turn out like this,” she sobbed.
I put my arm around her to comfort her.
She then described what happened.
Shen Jing Bing had stormed up to the second floor with people she believed were local Lao people, and pounded on her door yelling “police”.
Believing the police who came to follow up on his police report from earlier on in the day, Bei Tou Le opened his door, only to get punched by Shen Jing Bing and his glasses flew off.
Xiao Gu Niang picked up his glasses and ran towards the bathroom. Fortunately, she had escaped being assaulted.
Upon hearing someone come back upstairs, Xiao Gu Niang handed me Bei Tou Le’s glasses and ran into one of the stalls and hid behind the door.
I spoke to the guest and inquired about the whereabouts of Shen Jing Bing.
“I told him I’ll stay in the room with him,” said the guest we’ll call Pele. “I put him in there, then I locked him in the room.”
Totally hilarious, and, if it was anywhere else but Laos, it might count as forcible confinement even though this guy was crazy.
I returned to the bathroom to tell Xiao Gu Niang that I was going to fetch Bei Tou Le back to the guesthouse. I reassured her that Shen Jing Bing was out of the picture and won’t be back to bother her.
I went back down the street to fetch Bei Tou Le, showing him his glasses as proof that it was from Xiao Gu Niang and that we were safe.
We then went upstairs to Xiao Gu Niang and Bei Tou Le’s dorm room, whereupon Bei Tou Le insisted that they must move out. He had feared for his safety with Shen Jing Bing running around.
He then started to gather his stuff.
“Where’s my phone?” he asked. He looked into his bag and said, “the remaining money has been stolen!”
… to be continued …