The flight from Siem Riep to Luang Prabang, the old original capital of Laos, was about an hour. A van to our small hotel, the Lotus Villa. Driving into LP it was hard to imagine this country had more tonnage of bombs dropped on it (during the Viet Nam war) than any other country in history. Quaint and tidy, pleasant. The temperature was warm, perfect in the shade. The Mekong River snaked alongside. One street up from the river was our hotel, a charming place built around a courtyard, with our spacious, comfortable room giving onto the courtyard on one side and the street on the other. Our room wasn’t quite ready so we had some tea in the courtyard while some men chopped down branches from banana trees. Small bananas, the size of a large thumb, tasty, a little more fibrous than the ones we buy in the store at home. In our room, as in most hotels, there were the rules of accommodation, check in times, etc., but here the rules included a proscription on unmarried couples engaging in sinful activities. Remarkable. I don’t know how they enforced it, or why they bothered with such a law.
Joan in a garden at a Wat in Luang Prabang
Later that night, walking along the Mekong, exploring, dinner at a restaurant about 15 minutes away, where the niece of the hotel owner danced traditional Lao dances. A delicious dinner. The next day, visiting the market, lots of fabrics, textiles, silver, regional herbs and medicines. A woman cooking a small fish, like a sunfish, on a fire made from sticks and other refuse she had gathered. Continued walking, a circuit of the town, practically, a large temple – wats everywhere, beautiful places, some in the process of restoration. The main museum a busy place, showing some of the belongings and furniture of the last king of the country, deposed during the 1960s. Like the rest of the crowd, we took our shoes off before entering. Some remarkable historical pieces inside, old colonial and pre-colonial artefacts, pictures. One can’t help but wonder how things would have been different in the world without the great sweep of empire and colonization that rolled out of Europe, and later, the United States, exploiting and transforming. Would these unfortunate countries have carried on their self-contained, independent paths, developing and changing as they intersected with other countries, or would they have evolved to a state of imperialism and colonization themselves? History suggests, I think, that greed would have driven them to grasp, to possess. Before the Europeans, there were other empires – Egyptian, Persian, Mongolian, and so on. You look at the museum in Luang Prabang, where the resentment of the oppressor running dog Americans is explicit but restrained; you think of the thousands of unexploded bombs still in north eastern Laos, you think of the gentle kindness of the people we meet in Luang Prabang, and earlier, in Siem Riep, and feel sorry, you can’t help it. But, it is what it is.
Restaurant at the edge of the Mekong River
Lunch and then, later, dinner, at one of the restaurants hanging over the Mekong. The night market, where Joan got a great price because she was the first purchaser of the night, and the first purchase brings the stall owner good luck.
Bamboo bridge over the Mekong
Back to Bangkok, the LP airport the only place where my white temporary passport raised any questions. The tuk tuk we had ordered to take us to the airport didn’t show up; as we were looking for another one the monks were doing their dawn rounds in the city, begging bowls in hand, local citizens waiting for them by the side of the street with their offerings of rice or fruit or whatever else they had. In the quiet of the dawn this activity was like a layer of another world, a different plane that intersected the more mundane, quotidian plane where we existed. In Laos, generally speaking, the better education is found in the precincts of the Wat; therefore many young boys are sent to the Wat to school, where, heads shaved and berobed in faded saffron, they learn what they learn. Boys only: although in some places Buddhism has included females, here it does not. In Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, the official mainstream Buddhism is less flexible than you find in any of the countries north of this corner – in China, Tibet, Japan, and pretty well the rest of the world, actually. Here, the Buddhism is more ascetic, more traditional, and, to their way of thinking, purer. Fortunately, the vast majority of people do not become monks; their lives are lives of warmth, good nature and a sort of raw freshness that has emerged from horror into a hopeful post-apocalypse; over these lives their Buddhism lies like a mist of tender or more rigorous order. We loved LP, its tone, its smells and softness, its subtle, slightly sweet food.
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