Week 3 - Lao

Michelle mentions below how Vientiane has progressed since our last trip ten years ago. As progress is generally measured in terms of economic growth, this is certainly true. A boom in tourist income, continuing foreign aid and increasing foreign direct investment, particularly in minerals and energy, have firmly make their mark.

The new guest houses, pubs and restaurants are the most obvious signs but we saw extensive Chinese sponsored flood defenses on the Mekong, a beautiful Korean sponsored play ground, a Japanese sponsored road and an Indonesian sponsored world peace gong in Patuxai park. New office blocks, government buildings and foreign banks on Th Lan Xang and That Luang smack of foreign investment and the improved power supply, new shopping mall, roads, pavements, hospital, school and housing developments all point to an economy on the move. Having quietly adopted the Chinese/ Vietnamese model of "free market" communism and with a border with both, Lao could be a country to watch.

It is a far cry from the Lao of the late 1970s and 80s. A travel agent of about my age described hiding in her basement as a child as machine guns on the roof shot at incoming helicopters, endless bombing raids, FBI informants, executions in the streets... She described how in her opinion communism brought peace, stability, law and order to her teenage years; how cheap Korean motorbikes (more than half the price of US bikes) allowed them to upgrade from bicycles; and amusingly watching foreign traveller in tears as machine gun touting immigration officials cut their long hair before letting them into the county; "you not girl - you want see my country you look like man!" (apparently they didn't come back...).

As for "sleepy" - I can see where that is coming from. In Luang Prabang this is literal - tuk tuk drivers snoozing in their vehicles, guest house staff heads down on reception desks, restaurant staff nodding off on their tables all add to the pace of this charming French colonial town. Sleepy indeed!

But I think there may be a deeper meaning behind this observation. A few points made by our landlady in Luang Prabang during a long lazy afternoon chat stick in my mind. She asked me; "what do we need that we do not already have?" Adding; "the more we have the more we want, there is no end to it. We need to be content or we will never be happy." She goes on to say; "we could die any time so why worry so much about the future?" Who can deny the wisdom in these words and how does a thousand years of such thinking manifest itself? This view seems to pervade the heart of Lao and if "progress" here is to be tempered, it is this that will probably do the tempering. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing.


- Posted by Dave using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Luang Prabang, Lao