On my last full day in Vientiane, I visited a phone repair shop.
I already had a few items in my bag that needed repair, but the phone was the one I didn’t want to wait any longer.
The story would be completely uninteresting, but life always gives you an experience, even with the most seemingly insignificant events.
The phone that fell on its face
In the post “Five days, 500 km on the roads of Laos”, I wrote that my phone thought it was an airplane at a certain moment. I also wrote that “The only problem was that the glass covering the cameras shattered, but luckily this didn’t affect the pictures I took”
I was wrong here.
The pictures of the past few weeks have been of pretty poor quality. There was no choice but to admit that the motorbike tour had its victims.
This week I had already been to the brand service station I found in Vientiane. I was surprised that it was open, because many shops were closed this week for “Pi Mai Lao”. The lady only told me to come back in three days, because the service person would be working then. After all, holidays are just work!
Friday came. On my way to Starbucks, I stopped by the shop again.
The mechanic was a nice man. He spoke a little English, so we discussed the basics in person.
He assured me that he could help. He didn’t have the parts for the repair, but he would get them. I told him that I was leaving town tomorrow, and luckily he agreed with what he had said: the phone would be ready by five in the afternoon. We also agreed on the price of the repair: 900,000 LAK (13,000 HUF, 43 USD).
I turned off the phone and left it with him. We agreed that I would come back to the store at five.
And this is where I started writing this story.
The man thanked me for bringing him work. He was nice all the way through, and at the end it turned out that he was grateful that I had him repair my phone. In fact! He could even express it.
The Last Starbucks Day
I’ve been routinely using Starbucks as my office for days now. The chairs are comfortable, the tables are at a good height, the wifi is excellent, the air conditioning is good. And the coffee is delicious.
Yesterday I sat there for 10 hours. Today only 8.
One of the interesting things about this workplace is the daily trust game.
Someone sits next to me. I look at who they are. I get an impression, a feeling of how trustworthy the person is. If we sit next to each other for a long time, trust builds faster.
Then comes the moment when I have to ask them to take care of (all) my things while I go to the bathroom for 3 minutes.
I thought today too, how big a risk it is when I ask a complete stranger to do this, that I’m entrusting them with all my belongings. And I even tell them that they have three minutes to disappear.
I haven’t been disappointed yet. It’s a tough one, by the way, because I either solve the bathroom this way or pack everything up, go out, and come back. It’s tricky.
Today, an Indian guy was working next to me. I asked him out, as I have asked others. It felt good when about an hour later he asked me to look after his stuff while he went to the bathroom.
My phone is ready
Around three o’clock, I saw someone standing next to my table out of the corner of my eye. I saw someone’s feet.
As I looked up, I saw a familiar face, but I couldn’t place it. Maybe he was like that too, because he asked if I recognized him. He said he had a hard time recognizing me either, because he didn’t remember my hair, and he didn’t remember my earrings either.
I recognized him after a few seconds.
It was the service guy!
The store is a few hundred meters from the coffee shop. For me, it’s not even about the distance. The fact that in Hungary, for example, such an experience is definitely not worth it if it’s a few hundred meters seems almost certain to me.
This man didn’t just walk after me. I told him that I would be working at Starbucks all day, but he didn’t need to be sure of that. He didn’t remember me, so he just stared at the people in the coffee shop for a while.
I was so surprised by this kind gesture that I didn’t know what to say to him at first, other than that I was very grateful.
The phone was in excellent condition. The shiny glass of the camera was covered with a film. I tried it, it worked great.
And – although I didn’t want to accept it, saying that I wouldn’t use it anyway – he also gave me a protective case. He asked me to use it because it was safer that way, even though the phone is shockproof.
The man asked for so much money that, as we agreed, he didn’t charge me for the case.
So now I have a case on my phone.
And I have a very fond memory of a repairman who came after me, doing more for me than I expected.
Fortunately, the phone’s fall on its face was not followed by my fall on my face during the cafe’s game of trust, from which I left with a seriously grateful face turned to the sky.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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