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Vientane, Laos

 

(Pause - because I'm taking a break from updating and so I'm also throwing in some disjointed random thoughts before I forget)

 

I understand why people like the Lao. They pretty nice, friendly, easygoing folks, and they don't try to cheat you or steal from you to the extent that some other indochinese succumb to temptation.  Plus they are very low pressure at trying to sell/hustle you.  Even the hookers here are sort of meek about soliciting you on the street (I would describe them as "laid back" but that's probably a bad choice of words).  The capital, Vientane, is about as unassuming as they are.  Not a lot of traffic, or people, or tourist sights as Vientane has been looted and sacked repeatedly by Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese invaders until the late 19th c. when the French moved in and stablilized the borders, to the temporary joy of the Lao. (however, it is absolutely overrun with backpack laden travelers coming over the Mekong from Nong Khai Thailand and hence finding a simple guesthouse bed is a real bitch)   

 

This laid back-itude can lead to some complications though, especially since the infrastructure here has simply not caught up with the massive tourist influx due to Lao being the hottest thing going in Queensland these days. Hence my arrival in Vientane was a bit delayed after the express bus ticket I bought was overbooked and U was relegated to the regular public bus.  The public bus  looked like a model that was donated/scrapped/sold to them, as it had korean writing all over the inside - I'm still debating whether it came from North or South Korea, every time we changed gears it made noises like an 18th century blacksmith shop was operating under the drivetrain.  Needless to say it was crammed with every Lao that could possibly fit as it stopped at the first 57 rattan huts we saw in order to load more people (some with AK-47s who I assume (hoped) were soldiers), rice sacks, poultry, furniture, etc.

 

That said the drive would have been pleasant, had it been less excruciating. Mind you, I'm not blaming the Lao here, I'm blaming the 18 zillion tourists that are overrunning the infrastructure, which I am doing my part to limit by getting the hell out in a few hours across my second Friendship Bridge in the past week. This bridge, one of the few across the Mekong was interestingly funded by Aussies, which is no coincidence as they probably use it the most since hordes of them pour over it every single day in search of the cheapest possible guesthouse in which to act obnoxiously.

 

Back to the drive, the scenery is pretty cool, simply because there just aren't many people here, only like 5-6 m for the whole country (compare that with 60m Thai, 70m Vietnamese in areas not that much bigger and 12-15m Cambodians in an area much smaller).  THere's a few huts and small settlements here and there but the off the highway the Lao highlands are pretty much absolutely deserted, just jagged limestone cliffs, lots and lots of vegetation, and clear blue skies (and unfortunately, in the eastern half of the country lots of UXO (unexploded bombs) left over from the war era, courtesy of the USAF and Air America).  Few places that i've been to inthe last few years are as isolated, maybe Mongolia, parts of the Tibetan plateau and the Talamaklan Desert, but even there you're not far from grazing animals and oases - here it's just trees (and tigers, bears, gibbons, etc).  So it's easy to see the appeal of Laos in that sense, and if it were a few months ago and I were less tired and had more time, no doubt I would have bounded into the jungle like Dr. Livingstone in spite of the barely there tourist infrastructure.

 

Tomorrow I'm taking a bit of a breather insofar it's back to the 5-star life with pre-booked hotels, flights etc as one of my best comrades from NYC flies into Bangkok.  WHich is great, because I am really tired of eating alone in restaurants.  Usually I take a book so I will at least not look like a loser, but finding books that don't suck is sometimes a problem here (though that hasn't stopped me from reading so many I've lost track, I believe the number is over 30 by now, I stopped counting after 20 and that was months ago.) The selection of English books usually sucks.  The other night I had to trade in Graham Greene's "The Honorary Consul" (which was very good) for a pirated, xeroxed version of "American Psycho" (which was not but it was the only non-Clancy/Brown book there - it was a book based solely on shock value that droned on with the same schtick for 400 pages when 150 would have done nicely).  The worst thing is they made me  pay an extra 2$ for it - I tried to explain to the Lao bookseller that Graham Greene was a vastly superior writer to Bret Ellis and that the literary value was much higher, but American Psycho had a glossy cover, and the Greene book was an old Penguin paperback, so that didn't really work out. Oh, and on the subject of mass murder, if I hear either the original or muzak version of Richard Marx vomit inducing ballad, "waiting for you" one more time...

 

On French Indochina generally, since I'm leaving it soon - a few thoughts:  It's a profoundly interesting area (moreso, IMO, than mainland china nearby) because of the huge variety of influences here.  Each country has it's majority group (Khmer, Lao, Viet) but that group was profoundly influenced by Indian and Chinese culture and blends both although the degrees vary.  Add in substantial indigenous minority group populations (save in Cambodia), longtime trader colonies, and then on top of that, add in a century or so of French influence (which results in fantastic pastry, btw)  and the results are compelling.  

 

I should also say that the results historically  have been very violent, not just with the last century's bloody wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, but historically the states and kingdoms in the region have been invading each other and been invaded by the Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, for centuries.  I have to think it's population pressures and scarece resources that motivate a lot of this more - looking at Laos, it's the most sparsely populated (though very ethnically diverse), and while it too had a violent civil war, the scale of bloodletting afterwards was comparatively mild , there were no mass murders and the transfer of power to the Pathet Lao was peaceful.  Contrast this with more ethnically homogenous (yet far more densely populated) areas like Cambodia and the carnage that ensued. 

 

That said, it's a great place to visit, and I hope to  return before there are 7-11's on every corner like in Thailand.