I
Chanya Savannaphoum was working as a chambermaid at the Villa Sivonxay Hotel in Luang Prabang for her third rainy season. The Villa Sivonxay had originally been a French trader's residence in this remote corner of former Indochina, and it retained something of the faded grandeur of that era. There were ten spacious guest rooms arranged in courtyard style around a modest swimming pool, and generous areas of green lawn dotted with scented frangipani trees.
Luang Prabang was once the royal capital of Laos, and the Villa Sivonxay nestled in the old centre of the town, an isthmus at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Nowadays the main draw for tourists were the Parisian-style patisseries, the ancient golden temples and former royal residences which dotted the isthmus, and the sedate night market along the Sisavangvong Road.
Chanya was a typical Lao girl in her early 20s with a gentle smile and an easy manner. Her seemingly laid-back approach to life concealed a quick mind and an active imagination. She had been a diligent student at school, and her command of English was superior to most of the staff at the hotel. It had not been long before the owner, Mrs Maisuk, began to trust her with additional responsibilities such as covering reception when the regular girl was indisposed. Chanya enjoyed these tasks, and the modest hike in pay and tips that went with them.
Chanya was a shade under 5' 2" and was blessed with a round pretty face, long black hair and a sturdy figure. Growing up on a farm, she had realised early that she would never be at the front of the queue when the royal ballet scouts came to call. But when she occasionally surveyed her body in the mirror after a shower in the maids' dormitory, she was quietly pleased with her glowing creme-caramel skin and taut feminine curves, without an ounce of fat. She felt mother-goddess-level fertile. Nang Khosop, the Lao goddess of rice and fertility, would surely approve. Chanya was too innocent to understand "breedable" as a fetish, but she would have known instinctively what it meant.
The maids at the Villa Sivonxay were familiar with the ribbing and raunchy innuendo from schoolmates and cousins who held down more ordinary jobs in the town. Surely, they would jibe, the constant stream of foreign tourists through the hotel must provide untold opportunities for sexual encounters of a varied and lurid nature? Protests that Mrs Maisuk ran a tight ship, and that any hint of impropriety on the part of a chambermaid would get her fired, fell on deaf ears. It didn't help that several of the girls would egg each other on with tall tales of frankly implausible exploits - Chanya took these with a large pinch of salt - but she was in no doubt that one or two were perfectly capable of it, given half a chance. That little slut Noy for example, forever hovering around the pool deck and unnecessarily straightening towels, while smiling suggestively at any male guest under the age of 60. And who could forget mousy Mai who would never say boo to a goose, but who had allowed herself to be filmed in a highly athletic threesome with two male French guests in one of the hotel's distinctive suites. She had left both her job and Luang Prabang very abruptly after a clip had gone viral on the internet, eventually reaching even the antiquated PCs of the district police office.
In reality the sexual opportunities offered to the maids at the Villa Sivonxay - if they could be described as such - tended to originate from male Chinese tourists of late middle age. They would engineer their wives' absence from the room so as to be "taken by surprise" with cock in hand when the maid would knock for room service. It was all rather predictable, and would happen at least twice a week. The maids were under strict instruction to avert the eyes, apologise and make a quick exit - however, not before making a sharp-eyed appraisal of the size and shape of the cock so hopefully presented. The deflated tourist would be further aghast if he realised that his intimate details would later be analysed, ranked and entered on a whiteboard in the maids' dormitory amid much hooting and hilarity. The cock ladder sat on the whiteboard alongside the daily laundry collection rota.
II
Chanya was not a virgin - she had a casual boyfriend called Niahuk who worked at the motorbike repair shop, and from time to time they would venture into the fields at dusk with a rolled-up mat, where he would grope her breasts and pound her pussy enthusiastically for 5 or 10 minutes before spurting his sperm all over her stomach. Condoms were available but were not particularly popular among the young Laos, who preferred the practice of pulling out to avoid pregnancy. For Chanya it was all pleasant enough, and she knew deep down that she would probably end up marrying him - he was a decent lad, and about as good a catch as she was likely to find in Luang Prabang. But he had no real idea of how to pleasure her, and despite occasionally sticking one or two fingers up her pussy and jiggling them around for a while, he would soon get bored and turn to something else before anything meaningful happened for her.
There had been an awakening of sorts a couple of months back when Chanya had enjoyed a few days hanging out with her older Thai cousin, who would occasionally venture across the border to stock up on cheap goods. Arriving in a bustle of knock-off designer labels and trailing a heady perfume, Nalin saw it as her duty to impress her less-worldly Lao country cousins. A vivacious divorced woman in her early 40s, Nalin had spent time working as a hostess in Bangkok to support her family. She had a soft spot for Chanya, and she felt that the younger girl's sexual education would benefit from hearing at first hand - and in graphic detail - all the things that men in the hostess bar had paid her to do. Chanya would sit at her feet and take it all in, open-mouthed.
One night they had both got drunk, and things had gone further. With both of them giggling, Nalin had sat Chanya on the table, unzipped her jeans and pulled down her panties, spread her legs and given her a masterclass in how a woman should be orally pleasured. For Chanya it had been a revelation - she had orgasmed quickly and hard, and for the first time at someone else's skilled hands. Chanya's sounds had made Nalin horny in turn, and she had gently but firmly persuaded Chanya to reciprocate. Chanya was initially reluctant, but quickly discovered that she liked the taste of her cousin's pussy - especially when she became bold and wiggled her tongue in as far as it could go. The taste was suddenly dark and sweet, and Nalin had gasped and clutched wildly at Chanya's hair. Recovering her composure, Nalin patiently educated Chanya in how to use her tongue, how to vary the tempo, when to push slowly and firmly on the clit, and when to make flickering butterfly movements across it.
Chanya was a quick learner. But something else had also stirred, something that left her confused and conflicted, but also aroused - a sense of shame and embarrassment that had dissolved gradually into graceful submission at the hands of this confident and dominant older woman. She had never thought of herself as a lesbian, and she still felt this was true. But she had loved the novel sensation. She might have talked about it with Nalin, but after they had gone to bed and sobered up, Nalin had apologised for letting things go too far, and assured her it would never happen again. Chanya respected her older cousin and felt it would be wrong to revisit the incident. She was left to deal with the feelings on her own. As the weeks went by, Chanya - ever the practical girl - decided that she was very unlikely to find herself in such a position again. But occasionally, late at night in the dormitory, she would revisit the encounter while masturbating herself vigorously, reenacting the details in her mind's eye with a guilty and secretive pleasure.
III
In Lao cosmology all foreigners were regarded as strange, to be treated with varying degrees of suspicion. There was a wary acceptance of the neighbouring Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese through long familiarity, but they were not Lao. Westerners were distant and largely unknowable, like Venus or the rings of Saturn. Nevertheless, like the weird kid who would pick up a telescope when everyone else had gone to bed, Chanya secretly enjoyed studying them from a safe distance.
As part of her duty rota Chanya would be on breakfast service for one week in four. She enjoyed this part of her duties, as she got to see new guests in person rather than trying to guess at their personalities from their luggage, their clothes in the wardrobe and the contents of their rooms. She would scrutinise the occasional Western guests surreptitiously from behind the coffee machine, while busying herself with straightening the cups. Her imagination would sometimes run away with itself, conjuring up jobs, relationships and backstories to while away the time. These scenarios were usually based on American and European movies she had seen on TV. She had particularly enjoyed the overdubbed US series "Mr and Mrs Smith", a comedy drama about two agents recruited by a shadowy organisation and instructed to act as man and wife while undergoing various action escapades. She didn't understand much of what was going on in the action scenes, but she loved the interplay, the chemistry and the sassy dialogue between the driven perfectionist Asian-American girl who played Jane, and the hip, slightly goofy African-American guy who played John.
It was on one such morning that she became aware of a new and interesting couple walking in to the breakfast room. The man looked European, maybe late 40s, strongly tanned and handsome in an intellectual way, with fashionable black-rimmed glasses. He looked like an architect or perhaps a banker, she thought. (She had only the vaguest idea of what such jobs actually entailed). The woman was a little younger and clearly Asian, but from somewhere she couldn't place - not Laos, Cambodia or Thailand, nor Vietnam. Somewhere a long way further south. Her features were darker and more angular, her eyes more rounded. She was also taller and her hips and breasts considerably fuller than Chanya's. The couple were well-dressed in an unshowy way, and had an easy familiarity with each other - Chanya noticed wedding rings. She was intrigued.
Just then the woman turned casually and caught her eye, and Chanya had a sensation of butterflies in her stomach. For a moment it seemed like there was no-one else in the room - there was in fact no room at all - only the stranger's steady gaze on her, confident and appraising, a touch of humour around the eyes. Chanya stood rooted to the spot, unable to move; she felt like a callow teenager. And then the moment passed. The couple took their seats and began to peruse the menu. Chanya covered her confusion by turning away and rearranging the coffee cups for the third time.
She became aware that the man was calling politely to her, and she approached their table. She studiously avoided meeting the woman's eye. "Yes sir?" she heard herself say.
"It's Chanya isn't it," he smiled, and she thought wildly that he must be some kind of sorcerer until she remembered that her name tag was pinned to her blouse.
"Yes sir," she replied.
