Landlocked in Laos
The country of Laos sits right in the middle of the southeast Asia peninsula. To the north is China and Myanmar to the south is Thailand and Cambodia and to the east is Vietnam. This is a landlocked country that is not really an organically grown entity, but is rather the construct of the French colonialists who decided that in between all of those countries there was still room for one more official country, so they decided to rather randomly throw three groups of Lao people together to form a country and called it Laos by adding an S at the end of the name the people called themselves. So Laos is a fictional name for a fictional country which some Europeans decided would be a good idea. During WWII, the Japanese occupied Laos, but didn’t find it important enough to govern, so they allowed the country to be self-governing or a puppet regime of Japan. When the war ended, Laos was given its autonomy but it didn’t formally form a recognize country until the early 1950s. Needless to say, the Vietnam wars (Indochina War and the American “police action”) put Laos into an economic standstill as they were buffeted by the forces of North Vietnam, China, Russia and the United States. After the US withdrawal from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, the US sort of forgot about Laos and Russia stepped in to fill the vacuum. They modestly helped the country sort itself out in those post war years, focusing on two things: 1. Building a rail system to connect this landlocked country to all five of its surrounding neighbors to encourage trade, and 2. Building out, hydroelectric power using the country’s most plentiful resource, which was its rivers to generate far more electricity than the country itself needed. Laos now sells electricity to all of its surrounding neighbors. This has caused Laos to grow at a very respectable rate over 7% per annum in GDP making it one of the more productive and growing small economies in the world.
Last night we took a sunset cruise on the Mekong River and immersed ourselves in what very much felt like the true and ancient serenity and beauty of the Asian countryside as well as Laos’ lifeblood of its river system. This morning Kim got up before dawn and went to the front of the hotel we are staying at to participate in the alms-giving ceremony that occurs every morning where monks come by with their buckets to have them filled with food and other alms.
Today we are going on an extended tour of Luang Prabang. We will start at Riverview Park, where we had a brief introduction to Luang Prabang in the grand scheme of Laos and SE Asia, standing where the Nam Khan River meets the Mekong River. From there, we walked to the famous Wat Xieng Thong temple. Wat Xieng Thong was considered the ceremonial gateway to the city and was the arrival and departure point for foreign dignitaries for centuries. We walked up the stairs to the main gate and entered the temple like ancient dignitaries (and me with my walking sticks held like a scepter). Wat Xieng Thong, once known as “The Temple of the Golden City”, holds great cultural, historic and architectural importance. It is serenely situated near the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers, with a grand staircase leading up from the Mekong River.
Then on to the Royal Palace, which is today the national museum and was built by French colonialists between 1904-09. The museum displays a lovely collection of the artifacts reflecting the richness of Lao culture. All of these temples and palaces have a no shoes rule and I wore my tie sneakers so I used that as my excuse for sitting reflectively on a stone bench under the shade of palm trees. It is warm here in Luang Prabang, but much less humid than down south, so it is actually quite pleasant outside and not at all stifling. I am thoroughly enjoying sitting and absorbing all the calming spiritual energy of these tranquil places.
We will end the morning with a climb up Phousi Hill which rises 450 feet in the centre of town (Kim, who is a bit tired today, and I are sitting this one out at the hotel, with me getting a nice foot massage). The others enjoyed a spectacular 360 degree view across the city and its many temples as well as over the surrounding landscape to the mountains in the distance, as we saw from our river cruise.
The afternoon involved a visit to Kuang Si Waterfalls, which is several miles away. We then stopped on the way back at Wat Phra Bat Tai at a Hmong resettlement village (Ban Naoun village near Napho). This was a small village, but we got a very nice and thorough tour of the lifestyle led by these rural mountain people. It’s fair to say that their tools, musical instruments and weapons are rather primitive. The interesting tripwire crossbow used to shoot local wild pigs and fowl were particularly ingenious. It was also interesting to note that their agricultural tools with metal cutting or digging parts all were forged from French and American ordinance casings, which still litter the countryside and occasionally go off and harm common citizens and children. This short stroll through the village and glimpse into the life and culture of the Hmong people, who originally lived in the surrounding highlands was one of the highlights of our trip. Kim bought a Hmong colorful pleated skirt for $20 and I will be curious to see where she chooses to wear it.
We have almost a full day in Luang Prabang tomorrow before our flight to Hanoi on Lao Airlines and we will probably use it to give Kim and the others the chance to walk through more of the local markets. There are plenty more temples we could visit in town, but even our tour guide said they are all pretty much the same as what we have seen already. I liken this town to a visit we made several years ago into the highlands of Guatemala with CARE. We spent time in a quaint colonial town called Antigua. It was set in similar topography, was about the same size and was very similar in giving us a window on the tradition and typical lifestyle of the indigenous people. Luang Prabang is just the same and we feel it has given us not just a window on how Lao people live, but perhaps a broader image of what SE Asian people in general live like. Our prior stops were all big cities and Hanoi will be the same. I suspect that Siem Reep may be a bit like Luang Prabang, but given that the tourism draw of Angkor Wat is so strong, I suspect that town is far more modernized and touristicated (new word alert) than Luang Prabang. They say the population of this valley has grown from 200,000 to 400,000 in the past three years, and judging by the number of visiting Europeans, Americans and wealthy Chinese, I’m sensing that Luang Prabang may not stay so nice and typical as it now is for much longer. But then, our guide told us that the 1995 UNESCO World Heritage Site designation and funding that accompanies it may very well keep it more authentic than it might otherwise become.
No matter how landlocked Laos (or any country for that matter) may be, I think the modern world, as exemplified by the internet and smart phone will eventually change everything. On the street last night where the poorest residents have their children selling bananas, it was hard not to notice the little girl playing on her iPhone while she scraped for a few Kip for her bananas.