Playing soccer in Laos

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It’s 5:30 AM… why am I doing this? I ask myself this question every day on my way to work. So often I wonder if I made the right decision taking this job 8,000 miles from home. Sure, my work involves my passion,–soccer, or “tae bahn” as it is known here–and sure, I interact with wonderfully pleasant Laotians who enrich my life in countless ways, but getting up before 5am every day sometimes seem like a sacrifice that outweighs every possible redeeming factor.

Francis Taylor works as a project manager on a sports video digitization project in DDD’s office in Vientiane, Laos. Since he arrived from Boston, in the US, almost a year ago he has immersed himself in a new Lao life – including a side career as a professional soccer player.

It’s 5:30 AM… why am I doing this? I ask myself this question every day on my way to work. So often I wonder if I made the right decision taking this job 8,000 miles from home. Sure, my work involves my passion,–soccer, or “tae bahn” as it is known here–and sure, I interact with wonderfully pleasant Laotians who enrich my life in countless ways, but getting up before 5am every day sometimes seem like a sacrifice that outweighs every possible redeeming factor.

But this isn’t a blog post about DDD, my primary work—no, I’m talking about the second job I’ve taken on, as a player in Laos’s top professional soccer league on the Lao-American College team.

I know it is a cliché, but the life of a professional soccer player isn’t as easy as it seems. Yes, you do get to live like a rock star — audacious parties, attractive women, lucrative contracts and modeling cameos are all mainstays of the average professional soccer player’s life. The Lao football (soccer) league is just like this but…less. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid probably takes his weekly 300,000 USD salary to the hottest club in Madrid to buy champagne for everyone in the bar whereas I, moments after putting pen to paper on my $50 a month contract, headed to a bar where my coaches drank Beer Lao and sang karaoke to Thai songs.

Still, I decided to dedicate myself to my burgeoning professional soccer career—after all, Laos is probably the only place in the world with a soccer league whose teams are enough in need to seek my employ. For this reason, I resigned myself to waking up in the wee hours of the A.M. to run concentric circles around the parking lot of Laos’ main Buddhist Monastery, the That Luang. I tried to explain to my coach that no amount of Buddhist meditation would save my meniscus and knee ligaments from the pounding on the unforgiving surface, but my Lao is a “work in progress”, and I am as likely to have prophesied a zombie apocalypse as to have informed him of my swollen knees.

But after hours of sleep lost, miles of circles run and cases of Beerlao consumed, what did my dedication earn me? A swift kick in the tuckus and assistance in finding the door. Lao American College discontinued my services with the arrival of four Nigerians. League rules mandate that only four foreigners may play on each team… I was unlucky number 5.

However, I was determined to continue my career. So which team would I sign for now? Would it be MCTPC, team of Lao National superstar Lumnao Sinto? Or would it be for the perennial powerhouse that is Army FC? No… it was for Lao Football League cellar dwellers City Copy Center, the Vientiane version of a Kinko’s sponsored soccer team.

Eventually, the inevitable match between my old team, Lao American College, and my new team, the vaunted City Copy Center, took place. Surely I would make it clear to them that they had made a serious mistake when they terminated my contract. I would vindicate myself. My triumphant return would prove to all of South East Asia that Americans CAN play footy. But instead…I helped my team dribble our way to a trouncing 6-1 loss. Maybe I should stick to digitization.

1. HP says:

   July 29, 2010 at 6:29 AM

   Ive seen you play and seen you tag soccer — stick to digitization!
2. vilouth says:

   July 30, 2010 at 7:16 AM

   He’s good about football i like him so much! francis you’re very good