Ghost stories from Luang Prabang

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

I’d had the best night’s sleep ever. The bed in Room 17, Hotel Villa Santi in Luang Prabang, comes with a mosquito net. I went to bed feeling safe and secure in its embrace. ??I had woken at 5.30am to the sound of gongs from the temples and given some alms to the monks during the “takbak” ceremony.

You could almost see the halo on my head as I sipped my coffee and munched a croissant at breakfast. I was full of goodness and cheer for the world.

The young Thai girl sitting across from me however looked terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot. She had huge eye bags that made her look like a very tired panda.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she grumbled.

“Why? Me, I slept so well. I just crashed,” I said.

“How you can sleep?” she whined.

“Why not? The beds are comfortable. I love the nets. Don’t you?”

She looked at me as if I were mad. “You not scared?”

“Scared of what?”

She looked around the breakfast room, and whispered, “Old hotel, many dead.”

At first, I thought she was referring to the mainly elderly French and Japanese couples having breakfast.

“Them?” I gestured towards our fellow guests.

“No,” she screeched. “Them,” she rolled her eyes and gestured towards the ceiling.

I looked up. All I saw were two lizards. Then it dawned upon me that she was referring to other worldly dead beings – ghosts.

And there you have it – the main reason why most Asians do not like old hotels and why most of my Asian girlfriends wonder how I can do what I do – sleep alone in strange beds in strange hotels in strange countries.

“Aren’t you scared of ghosts?” they ask. ??I suppose I would be if I thought about it but, truthfully, I rarely give it a thought. I figure if there are, there are and there’s not much I can do about it. Plus, being an optimist, I reckon they’re all friendly, anyway.

My girlfriends, though, have ghost-scaring tactics. Some always leave a light on – they think ghosts only come out in the dark.

Some put a pillow under the covers to give the illusion there’s someone else in the room because they believe ghosts do not like twosomes. Some walk into a room and if they get “the feeling”, they will ask for a new room.

So hoteliers, now you know, when someone asks you to change room, it’s not because the toilets are dirty, it’s the room aura that is.

Over the years, I’ve heard many hotel-related ghost stories.

Flight stewardesses, I’m told, are the best sources of the scariest stories. There’s one story of a stewardess who dreamt a man was attacking her in bed and she couldn’t move for the life of her.

When she finally woke up and fought her way out from under “the man”, she ran to the next room where her colleagues were and they promptly told her they’d both dreamt of her being attacked in bed by a man…

I could tell you more but I would run out of space.

Anyway, one reason I am talking about ghosts is because I just read a survey that said that ‘lack of home comforts’ (27%) and ‘loneliness’ (25 %) were the worst aspects of staying in a hotel.

I think that if the British folks that did the survey had asked Asian travellers, their answer would be “ghosts”.

I don’t know why we Asians seem to have more of a thing about ghosts than do Westerners – the biggest-selling genre of fiction in Singapore and Thailand, I am told, is ghost stories – but after her third sleepless night, I felt so sorry for my young Thai friend that I suggested she went back to Bangkok a day early.

It was either that or looking at a ghost every morning. She was beginning to look like Casper.

READ more of Yeoh Siew Hoon at The Transit Cafe – www.thetransitcafe.com