Vicki assured us that the consular advice against flying in Lao mostly applied to the small planes ferrying travelers to the mysterious Plain of Jars, home to hundreds of huge and ancient stone jars. Certainly, our flight from Pakse to the capital, Vientiane, was uneventful. Even Jacques, a former pilot, seemed happy.
Vientiane may be one of the world's smallest capitals -- the taxi ride from the airport to the center took only 10 minutes -- but with plenty of expats and travelers around it was hardly sleepy, and provided plenty of good international food. The Scandinavian Bakery was popular, and some of the group ate Italian, but I went for French -- especially the wonderful baguettes. And the drinkable wine. And a delicious salad with warm goat cheese croutons...
The Lao food was also an improvement over that available further south. I enjoyed spicy papaya salad, and good lap chicken. For lap the meat is minced almost powder-fine with a big cleaver and mixed with lime juice, garlic and roasted and powdered rice. It's properly served with sticky rice, made from a particular strain of rice and steamed in bamboo pots. You pull some off the pile, roll it into a ball (right hand only, of course) and dip it in the sauce of the accompanying dish. The bamboo pots are available as souvenirs, but I don't know whether the rice is exported -- I'll have to ask the Lao woman who runs my favorite Thai restaurant.
In Vientiane I discovered that I was traveling with some serious shoppers. Eventually Anne-Marie would have to buy a big duffle bag to hold her purchases, and the Aussie sisters also bought a fair amount -- it's not just Americans who have the shopping bug. I was tempted myself by the hand-woven silk at Carol Cassidy's shop, but the prices were high enough to make resistance prudent. Carol has single-handedly revived the tradition of silk weaving in Laos, and employs a number of local women.
After visiting the market, shops and restaurants, I still had time for Vientiane's wats and monuments. The most recent monument is called the "vertical runway" because the funds used to build it had been intended for improvements to the airport. Modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, I found it worth visiting mostly for the view of the city from the top (188 steps).
Further north I found Pha That Luang, the immense gold stupa that symbolizes Lao Buddhism. I found the activity in the square outside the enclosure more interesting than the stupa itself. It seemed -- I never did get a clear explanation -- that an important abbot was being cremated. VIPs arrived and departed in limousines. The pyre, surrounded by elaborate flower arrangements, was flanked on one side by orange-clad monks and on the other by men and women in white. The flames rose high and were still consuming the decorations when I left.
My favorite place in Vientiane dated to 1818 -- Wat Si Saket, old, weathered and atmospheric. The cloister walls were riddled with niches holding over 2,000 small gold and silver Buddhas, while 300 larger ones rested on the floor and filled the ordination hall, surrounded by fading murals depicting stories from the life of the historical Buddha.
From Vientiane we took an AC bus north, driving up into the hills to reach the small village of Vang Vieng. With scenery somewhat reminiscent of Guilin in China, bicycle trips to caves, kayaking and inner-tubing on the Mekong, Vang Vieng has been well and truly discovered, and I suspect that backpackers outnumber the residents. My foot was bothering me again, and I found last year that I have forgotten how to ride a bicycle (yes, really), so I took a day off to drink excellent lemon shakes and admire the scenery from a riverside cafe. And watch more energetic types running their kayaks through or into the rickety wooden suspension bridges, or wheeling their bikes through the water where the bridges needed repair. The less energetic floated down river in inner tubes with bikinis and beer bottles. Hardly a tranquil scene.
The next day we headed further north and higher into the hills, through soaring limestone crags, forested slopes and other hillsides showing the effects of "swidden" agriculture -- slash and burn. We passed through several Hmong villages -- recognizable by houses without stilts and with thatched roofs sweeping almost to the ground. In some parts of Lao the war between the government and the Hmong rumbles on, in other parts the arrival of roads and schools is leading to some integration of Hmong and other hill tribe minorities into lowland Lao life. The potential loss of their distinctive dress and language could be balanced by improved living conditions and the abandonment of agricultural practices so destructive to the environment -- not to mention opium production, which the CIA helped develop into a significant business.
Eventually a fertile valley appeared below us, and a city enclosed by two rivers: Luang Prabang, once a royal capital, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site of temples, monks and markets, feeling far removed from the 20th, never mind the 21st, century. Thirty-three wats are still active in Luang Prabang, some smaller, some larger, each with responsibility for the immediately surrounding part of town, making it a collection of villages, each identified by signs at the borders.
With so many wats to chose from I could only visit a few, but some of the decoration I saw was truly remarkable: one wat was covered with paintings of the Buddha's life, another oddly decorated with Chinese figures, and the huge Xieng Thong wat at the point where the Mekong and the Khan rivers joined was covered in decoration ranging from naive blue glass elephants to gold on black knot-work reminiscent of the Celts. Twice I sat mermaid-style on the floor at the back of Xieng Thong's main hall as dusk settled over the Mekong, and rows of orange-robed figures bowed low to the Buddha. With the evening chant rising like incense around me, I felt oddly as if I belonged there.
One morning I watched all of Luang Prabang's many monks on their morning alms round, a long line stretching out of sight down the main street. Grouped by wat, barefoot, mostly young, the monks moved purposefully past the kneeling locals, the camera-toting tourists. Tourists were pounced on by vendors selling sticky rice so that they could give alms as well as take photos. The young become monks for schooling, hard to afford elsewhere after primary school. (Girls are out of luck.) Most of these novices will leave on graduation -- Buddhist monks don't take vows for life. I wondered how they found enough teachers.
It was in Luang Prabang that I was literally as well as figuratively sick when I heard the US election results -- it turned out that Beer Lao, in which we drowned our sorrows, didn't agree with me. So I spent less time than I might have done next day at the Royal Palace with its big but largely empty rooms. Once, Lao was known as the Land of a Million Elephants, and controlled territory that included part of what is now Thailand. I saw only two elephants, up near the Thai border, and after 300 years the empire fragmented into three separate kingdoms.
The history of Southeast Asia is depressingly reminiscent of that of Europe, with everyone fighting each other for control of territory. Even quite recently. Remember, Bangkok was founded in 1782 because the Burmese had sacked the previous capital. The Chinese invaded Vietnam in 1979 in the latest round of a territorial dispute that has lasted millennia, and the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in response to attacks by the Khmer Rouge that reflected an enmity nearly as old.
I loved Luang Prabang, a misty city spread between rivers and beneath a hill where, despite the tourist ghetto that occupied a few blocks on the main street, I could wander from wat to wat down sleepy streets of old French colonial buildings graced with flowers. It was also the place where I finally succumbed to the lure of Lao fabrics, buying a sim length of black silk with red and gold borders -- it was woven as one piece, with two bands of decoration in the middle -- from a workshop similar to that of Carol Cassidy's, but with more affordable prices. Then, on my last day there, in a silk-weaving "village", I found a silk/cotton fabric in my favorite dark green/blue, the color I had failed to find in the market.
We spent only two full days in Luang Prabang, but seemed to pack a lot into the time, including a visit to the beautiful Kuang Sii waterfall, with its chilly but lovely pale green bathing pools, and a wonderful French meal at L'Elephant, where I ate wild boar for the first time (delicious). I wanted to stay longer but we were headed still further north, by boat up the Nam Ou. Still, of all the places I had visited so far on this trip, Luang Prabang was the one I most wanted to revisit.
Originally sent from Hue, Vietnam, Nov. 29, about Vientiane, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang, Laos, Nov. 3-8, 2002
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