Old School Hash

Hey here's a good story from about a month ago in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I've heard about this group that's in most major cities in South East Asia called the Hash House Harriers. They call themselves "drinkers with a running problem" and are some sort of social club that organises runs around the city or countryside once a week with an inevitable piss-up afterwards. Now I've been schlepping around running shoes for the last 5 months and going for a run pretty much every day when I can, so I thought it might be fun to do the group thing for a change. And I noticed that we were in Vientiane on the very day the run was on - how fortuitous.

It was the hottest day on record, we nearly melted struggling across the road and running was the last thing on my mind, but at about 3.30pm I wandered over to the central fountain in town to meet up with the crew. Once everyone had arrived we all piled into vans and cars and took off to a secret site in the bush 45 mins outside town. Ok so here's the dynamic. A dozen Lao women all decked out in the latest athletic gear, trainers untouched by a speck of dirt and spotless white headbands. They sat around and drank beer for a couple of hours while the rest of us ran. Then there were about six men in their late forties to fifties which I guess made up the core of the club. They walked at a sedate pace. Finally there were us four "virgins": Aaron from the US just travelling through and a guy and girl who'd just arrived and were teaching english in Vientiane.

Anyway off we went on a great run through the bush, down false trails and back, ducking under barbed wire and leaping rivers. Awesome fun. About half an hour after we'd finished the actual HHH members strolled back and set up "The Circle". Oh my god it was the most surreal experience I've ever had. Imagine a fraternity set up by a couple of middle-aged men and you're close. We stood in the circle and the guys would get up one by one and start a long, rambling and pointless speech that nobody was listening to (and which three-quarters of the circle didn't even understand), at the end of which they'd summon up people at random, ask them stupid questions like "What's your favourite farm animal?" and then sing a drinking song to make them skull a beer. And it went on... and on... and on.

Finally they got out a crate, put sacking on top and covered it with ice cubes. Then one by one they made us sit bare-assed on the ice while they started more long and rambling speeches until our balls were popsicles and our arses snap-frozen. Then we had to skull another beer. By this stage it was past 8.30pm and then they drove us to some random restaurant in the middle of nowhere to have a meal together. Well we'd (as in the newbies) all had more than enough by this time so we ran off and grabbed a random tuk tuk for the haul back into town where we arrived at 9 o'clock. The whole drive I swear I could hear Sarah back in town sharpening knives - I'd told her at 3.30pm "No worries babe, the run will take like an hour or so, see you at 5pm!"

From then on it's been solo runs or nothin!