Laos 2000-2001

Some Thoughts Provoked by a Visit to Laos

December 2000 – January 2001

Just before Christmas 2000, David and I left for a visit to Laos, in southeast Asia, with a brief stop before and after in Bangkok and environs. David is writing a meditation originating from that trip. I suspect that some of what he has put down on paper reflects many of my own observations. But in addition, the trip caused me to focus on some elements not strictly touristic in the travelogue sense – but it is one of the great benefits of travel (I think) that its purview does not need to be limited or narrowly defined. It can shed light on any area of one’s life and thought.

The Vietnam War

One of my very first sensations upon arriving in the country, which never quite left me, was the connection with the Vietnam War. For anyone who was around and conscious while that war was on, even if they were not in the military, there are a wealth of memories and images that flash in the mind. So, to then be in a country for the first time that was enmeshed in that war has to set off certain mental connections. They come upon one without even realizing it The look of the countryside – the houses on stilts, the lush, dramatic mountainous scenery, rice paddies (looking very different from the ones we saw in India, but very much like the news reports from Vietnam 30 years ago), women with the traditional conical reed hats, bicycles everywhere, it all washes over you.

Except, of course, there is no war. The memories, all the same, linger. Presidents these days rarely seem to say much that is very profound, but one brief remark of President Clinton’s, on his visit to Vietnam last year, kept ringing in my head, and I thought it was remarkably insightful – he said that we have to stop thinking of Vietnam as a war and begin thinking of it as a country. One could say the same about Laos.

The U.S. never openly acknowledged its “secret” bombing war on Laos – the Ho Chi Minh Trail exited North Vietnam and went down the eastern side of Laos for quite a ways, before turning back into South Vietnam. The trail was heavily attacked from the air – but war was never declared on a country that at the time was basically too weak to control its territory. We dropped more bombs on this small country than were dropped in all of World War II – according to what I have repeatedly read. That is a pretty sobering piece of information.

Most of us around then can remember the newscasts and the newspaper pictures – often horrible, creating disbelief at what we were doing. Frightened villagers, livelihoods totally wiped out, napalmed, orphaned children, and on and on. I kept being aware of two things mostly – that what I was seeing today – people, villages, natural setting – was very reminiscent of the mental pictures created from the war period. Secondly, the gentleness and kindness of the Laotian people, and the sufferings they had been through, yet the lack of any observable hard feelings. Of course, this is a country with a fairly young population, most of whom would not have even been born then. All the same, I found it very impressive that there was no observable animosity that came across to us.

The Globalization of Travel

One of the major motivations for selecting Laos to visit was hearing from European friends, and reading articles, that the country had not yet been “spoiled” by mass tourism, the global village sameness of much of the world, of still feeling off the beaten track. Our European friends advised us to get there soon, because it would only be a few more years and it would all change – and that always means, from a travel standpoint, for the worse.

In many ways, the observation was right. Laos does feel very, very different from most of the places we visited. After arriving in Bangkok, one of those mega-sprawl cities of noise, pollution, traffic jams, hurry, ramshackle aping of the First World, Laos definitely represents a dramatic turning of the clock back a ways. There is no Starbucks, McDonalds, Borders Books and Tower Records, though the Communist Lao People’s Democratic Republic has seen the light, and so Pepsi is sold, as are Toshiba and Mitsubishi, etc. products. But this is still a country on a small, low-key scale, and this is a quality increasingly hard to find.

On the other hand, though the tour buses filled with Germans, French, English, etc., are not yet rolling through, pushing aside the individual traveler, Laos has definitely been “discovered.” While there were very few Americans we met, Europeans were not uncommon, along with Australians and Japanese.

I’m not sure why Americans don’t seem particularly adventurous travelers alongside the Europeans. In part, it has to do with Europeans routinely getting 6 and 7 week vacations, whereas we mostly get 2 or 3 weeks. In part, Europeans (and Australians) go on these monster wanders – for 4 months, 6 months, a year, and the ones therefore who go to Laos, are also going to the north of Thailand, the beaches of southern Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, usually Cambodia (just to see Angkor Wat and perhaps Phomh Penh), China perhaps, and then on to India and Nepal (or vice versa).

Although by American standards, we felt we were on an exotic, and decently long vacation (3.5 weeks), we were probably amongst the 5% of those who were away for a “short” trip. By American standards just being there made us unusual, and certainly we missed very few of the “must see” stops in Laos. But there was a part of me that wishes I were younger, less encumbered with responsibilities, and once again doing a long wander, when time seemed close to limitless. (On my 1969-70 10-month European grand tour, I remember getting depressed at the realization that there was only 2 months left!).

But back to the topic at hand. The point is, even Laos is fairly well-known at this stage. When you have a choice of at least 4 guidebooks written in English just on Laos, that already tells you you are not one of the first there! After making stops on the route virtually everyone there visited – Vientiane (the capital), Vang Vieng (magnificent mountain scenery) and Luang Prabang (the old Royal capital and a UNESCO “world heritage” city), we then proceeded to explore a bit of the far south – the islands of the lower Mekong River, right at the Cambodian border (this region is known as the Don Khong, or “Four Thousand Islands”) and a wonderful Khmer ruin, Wat Pu, near the Mekong River town of Champassak. This area got us considerably more off the Laotian standard route, but all the same, it was not devoid of visitors – in fact, we had that experience all such travelers have – someone you briefly get to know in one place shows up in a completely different place.

Increasingly, the “explorer” mentality which the travel magazines and programs still push – the next great thing, the next undiscovered place –doesn’t exist. Pretty much everywhere has been discovered. There are almost 7 billion people in the world now but physically the world is no bigger, so there are lots more people who can travel, and many of them are looking for a secret place no one else knows.

It is all now a matter of degree. There is no absolute undiscovered place, or so few, that unless you are willing to travel in a most unusual manner, there are relatively few populated places that the outside world has not penetrated. When we stayed in Muang Khong in the Don Khong region, a Belgian couple arrived at our wonderful inn, Villa Khang Khong (yes, mentally I kept calling it King Kong!), where a night’s stay came to $3.50 – they were bicycling from the far north of Laos, up by the Chinese border, to the far south, where we were.

Until about 50 miles north of Luang Prabang, they were going through villages that rarely saw Westerners and they were a true novelty. These were not places that had any obvious “tourist appeal” other than they were unknown to most tourists (and vice versa). But this was one hell of a tough trip. They had topnotch mountain bikes and had to be compleat mechanics, since not only was there no expertise in repair, but no parts to be had. They biked along mountainous, pot-holed roads, carrying a decent amount of weight, and yes, they had some pretty exotic experiences, but that’s what it takes. What we did was interesting, and we enjoyed it, but we would be kidding ourselves to think we were being all that venturesome.

I think even for the fairly intrepid, travel has become by and large a much less demanding experience. Even in Laos, everyone who had to deal with travelers could quote the cost of things in English (simple hotels, restaurants, drivers of tuk-tuks, diesel-belching motorized rickshaws that are the most common kind of “taxi”), there were signs to help one out in the Latin alphabet, etc. We had medicines to keep disease at bay, and there are all kinds of hang-outs where other travelers gather (including Internet cafes), food and music that cater to their desires, occasionally even CNN playing on the TV of an appliance shop.

We really had a wonderful trip, but it is foolish to think we had totally escaped from the world we know. Travel has changed.

Other Travelers

One thing I enjoyed about Laos, once you get over the idea that you have really gotten off the beaten track, is that it is still a destination that draws reasonably interesting fellow travelers. This was particularly brought home to me after we returned to Bangkok, where we stayed in the part of town popular with young (20-somethings) travelers. The location met our needs in a number of practical ways, so we didn’t agonize about staying there instead of some little known neighborhood. In Bangkok, most of the travelers you would overhear were reminiscent of being on the beach at spring break in Ft. Lauderdale 20 years ago. In Laos, in contrast, a high percentage of travelers we would talk to were interesting to talk to.

You certainly get the impression that Europeans are far more geographically conscious than the average American. They’ve done their homework and they are aware of the kinds of places that still call for a modicum of effort.

There was a nice kind of helpful fraternity of travelers – folks helped each other out, freely shared, rather than hid, useful information. Conversations were relaxed but stimulating, and the people you would meet had interesting lives back home. Most enjoyable along this line was an Italian couple we met walking in the scenic beauty around Vang Vieng. He (Giovanni) was a composer of film music, with assignments all over the Western world, his ex-girlfriend (Barbera), who still travels with him, a dramatist. We all wound up on the same bus up to Luang Prabang, arriving on New Year’s Eve day -–the town was filled with tourists, and we could not find a hotel room. They had friends they were meeting there – again interesting – he (Pedro) a young Spaniard who could have stepped out of a Velasquez painting, she (Monica) an Italian artist living in Barcelona with Pedro, making regular culture trips to New York. Eventually, we all found a place to stay, and wound up meeting for dinner one evening, made a joint excursion to a magnificent tropical waterfall 30 km outside of the city. We could talk to them about all manner of films, music, books.

I became aware, more so than ever before, that to travel away from one’s home country you now must be fluent in English as a second language (or third or fourth). There is no choice. English is now the international language, and everyone accepts that. Laos was a French colony, so how humiliating (perhaps) to the French that the one language someone else would understand, even Laotians, is English. I stopped asking Europeans if they spoke English as my opening question – I simply assumed they did (even the French!), launched into a question or conversation in English, and indeed, they understood perfectly. And, inevitably, they spoke back to me fluently. As an American I feel a bit cheated that I can travel and get away with not having to be good at another language to survive outside my country.

The only aspect of European sophistication, vis-à-vis our fellow Americans, that mystified me, was that close to 100% of the Europeans smoked, and smoked constantly. For the life of me, I cannot comprehend that the word on the insanity of smoking tobacco is unknown in Europe. So why does everyone, and I mean, everyone, from hippie-traveler type to world weary rich sophisticate, smoke? Go figure.

All my musings on how travel has changed (globalization, lots more people seeking a special place) and travel in my younger days made me realize that I’ve slowed down quite a bit. I’ve also become less of a risk taker. While still relatively adventurous, at least when gauged against my fellow Americans (most people in the U.S. thought we were definitely going somewhere quite remote and it had not occurred to many others to even consider a place like Laos a “vacation” destination), once we got to Laos, I certainly felt my travel style was at the conservative end of the spectrum compared to most of the other travelers we were rubbing shoulders with.

My countervailing thought is that even 100 years ago, most people stayed close to home, and one in a million headed out on a real adventure into unknown territory. What constitutes a true “adventure” has changed now, but there still are some special experiences to be discovered by a few imaginative types.

What Was Memorable

After all that, you might wonder if the trip was a positive experience. Well, it was – far more so than I ever imagined. I leave it to David to bring out some of the salient elements, but I’d like to mention a few that particularly got to me.

More so than just about anywhere else I’ve been, this simple, poor country, gave me a glimpse of a world largely vanished – a world where many things are still made out of traditional natural materials, most particularly, bamboo and reeds. One could go many miles in the country and see scenes that did not seem to include the 20^th century and its pervasive bright plastic and metal. Instead, garden fences of bamboo, bean poles of bamboo, houses of wood, bamboo and woven reed walls, cages for the ever present chickens of bent bamboo, carrying baskets, and perhaps what sticks in my mind most, a beautiful cradle, with a little baby in it, being swung on the veranda of a small, traditional house in a little village. It was woven of natural fibers and had to be the loveliest swinging cradle I’ve ever seen. It was a real time warp to be in a world still so relatively unaffected by the convenient but often soulless comforts of our day-to-day lives.

There are no big cities in Laos, Even the capital, Vientiane, is only 150,000 people, and feels like a sleepy, small town. There are few private vehicles, though lots of bicycles, tuk-tuks, and motorbikes. It’s all relatively quiet, slow-paced, and totally unaggressive.

There were lots of smiles and very little hustling, begging, or all the other aspects of Third World travel that become a part of what you resign yourself to. From little children to old adults, everyone either initiated, or responded to the all-purpose greeting, Sah-bah-di (hello, how are you? spoken with the voice descending and the first two syllables drawn out) Everything felt relaxed, and our Western impulse to maximize the use of time and monetary profits, seemed absent. One sensed very viscerally that there is more than one way to live a life. As I’ve hinted at before, I am troubled by many of the directions our country seems to be headed in.

Perhaps a lot of our positive impression came from the superficiality that is endemic to most travel. I dipped into a book by the Third World travel writer, Dervla Murphy - an Irishwoman whose most recent travel book is about Laos, and it is clear that there are some serious problems in the country, a many of them resulting from the corruption that was fostered by American aid (as well as bombing) during the Vietnam War. But it is all relative, and I find it hard to believe that none of our impressions had any basis in fact.

The politeness, the outward gentleness of people in Laos, and to a lesser extent in Thailand (Laotians and Thais are ethnically very close and can understand each others’ language) lowered our aggressive, hard-driving approach to things. This was brought back to me when I overheard gratuitous nastiness between fellow passengers on the leg of our return trip, from Los Angeles to Albuquerque. In Laos, one never raises a voice, shows anger and the like – it is considered a grave social sin to do so.

The word for their country is Lao, not Laos, and even in that, there is a gentleness that is lost in the harsher “Laos.” Like a warm sun penetrating to one’s tired bones, the gentle, low stress environment penetrated to us as well. We talked softer, walked more slowly.

While the cultural riches were plentiful, there was always lots of time in the interstices, to relax, take it slow and easy, and just let the unpretentious magic of the place get to you. Some of this must have to do with Laos being a Buddhist country. It also must have to do with it being the least densely populated country in Asia. Compared to India, which is both crowded and Hindu – a seemingly much more hard-driving religion, I think the Buddhist tradition is a very influential element in how life feels in Laos.

Whereas entering a Hindu temple in India, I usually felt a bit unwelcome and fearful of doing something offensive, in Buddhist temples in Laos, one felt little concern about violating religious conventions. One felt peace. The temple complexes (“wats”) were utterly peaceful, set in tidy, uncluttered gardens. As soon as I entered the complex, I could feel things become quiet, beautiful, uncomplex, and meditative.

Another amazing element was the many simple pleasures we could have and the absence of local people realizing that and then milking that knowledge to maximize profit. An example – in Luang Prabang, truly a very special small city, eating establishments (restaurant is almost too grandiose a word) spread out along the ramparts of the Mekong River, would set out a few tables and chairs at the low stone wall along the river, lightly fence it off, put out some pots of flowers, and when someone noticed you were there, eventually come for your order. Prices were not jacked up because someone realized that they had created for us one of the loveliest settings imaginable – our fresh pineapple shake was still only 25 cents, U.S., or a beer (BeerLao comes in bottles twice the size of ours) only 75 cents. In this country we would pay royally for such a privilege.

Lovely sounds would waft our way all the time. Both folk and popular music is gentle, so that even on the long, usually uncomfortable bus rides, we didn’t terribly mind the driver pulling out his various cassettes, because they were the least obtrusive of any we’ve been subjected to on Third World rides. The gongs at temples being hit, the chanting of monks at prayer time, were part of our quotidian world. And then there was the “chick” factor. I think a criterion of a place that has not gotten overdeveloped is that chickens and their fledgling chicks run about in the heart of the towns and cities. On that “chick” index, Laos more than qualified.

As a gardener I was intrigued with the resourcefulness of little vegetable gardens. Everywhere along the banks of the Mekong, people had laboriously created fastidious little plots, with each plant (lettuce, mustard, green onions) an intense, healthy green. Using watering cans fashioned from recycled food cans, and filled at the river’s edge, they carefully watered their lovely plants (this was the dry season, so the river’s lower banks were exposed, and rich with deposited sediment, but the plants needed regular watering.) We also saw little gardens (3 feet by 6 feet maybe) planted on a wooden bed filled with soil and raised up on 3 or 4-foot poles.

There was a mix of all the things I find pleasurable in travel – the sense of a “real” place, wonderful food (always cooked from scratch), good but incredibly cheap beer, in lovely but unpretentious settings where we could unwind and enjoy the undemanding world around us. Warm but dry weather (it was not the monsoon season, needless to say). Sounds for the ears, bright colors and handsome shapes for the eye.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. And even if we were not the first ones to discover it, I think we felt very fortunate to be able to spend some time in such a lovely place. If nothing else, it gave us pause to think that there is more than one way to live.

Take care,

Ken