Elephants in Laos

Tag : Handmade Cotton

Strangers talk to one another here, people who'd never strike up aconversation when touring London or Rome. It's one of those cluesthat tell you this Mekong River town in northern Laos is an outpost. The atmosphere is part"Star Wars" bar, part "Casablanca." Backpackersdescend from the surrounding mountains or step ashore off slowboats, clutching tattered Lonely Planet guides. Europeans,Australians, Thais and a few Americans wing in on prop planes.Members of ethnic hill tribes, particularly the Hmong, appear atsunset, spreading their wares along the street. And everywhere youturn there are Buddhist monks in blazing-orange robes.
My husband, Paul, and I have stopped in for five days because LuangPrabang is a UNESCO World Heritage site -- and because Laos still holds enoughmystique to offset the escalating buzz from media must-visit listsand tourists seeking the next hot destination.
A town of 26,000, Luang Prabang is shaped like a tongue, formed bythe Nam Khan River as it curves to meet the Mekong. The waters ofthese two rivers are dense with mud, as if history were dissolvedin them and were flowing relentlessly, opaquely past.
In 1353, this lick of land was the seat of a kingdom known as LanXang, or the Land of a Million Elephants. It also was once theLaotian capital, losing out to Vientiane when France took over thecountry in 1893. And it was home to the royal family until 1975,when the Pathet Lao communists gained power and, it is said,banished the royals to a cave.
We're in cozier quarters: a thatch-roofed bamboo bungalow set on ahigh riverbank outside town, overlooking the Nam Khan. There is noTV. From our balcony, lazing against triangular bolsters, weshamelessly gaze down on our neighbors across the river with thatfascination modern urbanites have for the simple life. The far bankis patchworked with small plots. Men hoe vegetables, women scrublaundry in the dingy water, a fisherman checks his bamboo traps,kids turn a washbasin into an impromptu boat and skid away fromtheir soap-wielding mom.
The vast majority of Laos's population is rural, but 10 minutesaway by tuk-tuk, the bargain-priced motorcycle-powered open trucks,Luang Prabang bustles. In 1988, the year Laos reopened to tourists,only 600 of them visited the entire country; there are probablythat many trolling Luang Prabang's streets today alone. We seebamboo scaffolding where repairs are being made to colonial-erastuccoed homes with mossy tiled roofs and sagging shutters, effortsto meet the growing demand for guesthouses.
Luang Prabang's architecture catapulted it onto the World Heritagelist in 1995. The sublime mix of old Laotian wooden houses,half-timbered buildings, stalwart French structures and ancientBuddhist temples can be found nowhere else, UNESCO says.
But these days, to spot them on some streets, you need to lookamong swaths of telephone and electrical wires, restaurant signs,shops stocked with chorus lines of Buddha statues, fume-belchingtuk-tuks and tour agents' placards with long, handwritten essaysadvertising offerings in fractured English. ("If you areinteresting please contact us inside.")
It's hard to appreciate -- or find -- Luang Prabang's charms on ourfirst day. Drenching rain falls nonstop. And this is supposed to bethe dry season.
We scuttle to the Royal Palace Museum, where more than a hundredsoggy, muddy shoes cluster around the main entrance. Etiquetteforbids footwear inside most buildings, though shopkeepers oftencall out "Shoes okay!" to tourists. The parked shoesprovide an instant tip-off to who's inside. (That comes in handyone day when I misplace Paul and track him down by spotting hisbattered size 13 Nikes.)
Exploring the royal palace is a bit eerie because the governmenthas never revealed the fate of its former occupants. Theearly-20th-century building is a mash-up of Laotian and westernarchitecture, highlighted by a throne room crusted with royalbling: thrones, swords, regalia, the monarch's howdah (a chair forperching atop an elephant) and spectacular mosaics of multicoloredpieces of mirror set onto deep-red walls. The royal bedrooms areaustere, furnished with drab, vaguely deco furniture. Backstagelife in this monarchy had all the appeal of a two-star hotel room.