In the grip of dreams (Laos)

By John Keeble

It cannot exist: it is just a place of dreams and you know, deep down, that you will never find it, never taste the tantalising promise of stimulating peace and relaxation. But then, unexpectedly, it is there – still dreamlike but real, suspended between paradise and the modern world.
This is Luang Prabang in the north-west of Laos, a tear in the reality of a country of poverty caught for centuries at the nexus of international and regional greed and state violence. No theme-park design; no crude anything-goes-for-tourist-cash town. It has been shaped by Buddhist monks and kings as the City of Temples; by French colonialists, leaving architecture and baguettes; by Lao government hunger for foreign currency; and by the modern world’s tsunami of leisure travellers.

Timeless, apart from the occasional monk with a cell phone glued to his ear, and an old-fashioned charm masking its subtle, sophisticated efficiency in serving the needs of everyone from backpackers to the very rich.

I came to Luang Prabang – not for the first time – down the Mekong, two days in a slow boat with other tourists, stopping overnight at Pak Beng, a staging-post village that wakes with the evening arrival of the boats plying on the 500km stretch of river between Huay Xai (opposite Chiang Khong, Thailand) and the City of Temples. Even then the waking is short, intense, with a police curfew in place at 11pm and sleep, in the peace of the isolated, until the dawn of the port’s working spasm.

The silt-laden Mekong, which rises in Tibet and meanders more than 4,000 kilometres to the sea, is punctuated by rocks jutting from its bed, working silt terraces farmed and washed clean by monsoon floods and tiny sandy coves where local people travel, trade and live. It is home to the world’s largest fresh water fish and, further south where Laos falls off the edge into Cambodia, there are pink Irrawaddy dolphins, now said to be more numerous as their population recovers from the murderous attacks on them by the Khmer Rouge.

Luang Prabang announces itself with the cliff-face shrines at Pak Ou, where people worshipped the river spirits for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years before Buddhism edged into the metaphysical consciousness. Today, throughout Laos and Thailand, Theravada Buddhism is part of the living spiritual environment that includes spirits that protect or threaten the human world.

Maybe half an hour later on the slow, powerful flow, the town of Luang Prabang comes into view… a gentle wash of colour and shape as the evening sun lingers, lighting up the temples, looking strange as the boat heads into it after 12 hours travelling east before the river contorts to a confluence with the Nam Khan, boundaries of the old royal city.

The headline facts when anyone speaks of Luang Prabang are the 30+ working temples and maybe several thousand monks and novices, who take to the streets in huge phalanxes every dawn to complete their historic ritual and duty of giving the people an opportunity to make merit. At one time, only devout Buddhists were there, waiting in the cold to witness the bare-footed monks holding their bowls for tiny offerings… today, they are outnumbered, in the tourist season at least, by trigger-happy snappers from a score of countries, many kneeling in peculiar obeisance to get the best shot.

The private media frenzy can be so great that one prominent Laotian figure proclaimed that many visitors who go to Luang Prabang think they are on photo safaris – and the monks are the big game. There is some truth in that, but I saw generally well-behaved visitors and monks who had seen it all before and faced their ritual’s trials with blank indifference.

What is less talked about, but certainly appreciated, is the UNESCO world heritage town itself – the historic quarter between the rivers, with the residential and working areas stretching far out where visitors go by accident or pass through, eastwards, on the bus to the playground of Vang Vieng and on to Vientiane or west to Huay Xai and the ferry into Thailand. 

Luang Prabang gently gets a grip on you, slowing you, easing you into a relaxation with its pace of life, its temples, its places beside the rivers or in the town where you can drink coffee or eat wild dishes… sparkling, spicy noodle soup with peppermint and lemon tea for my breakfast… baguette with brimming filling and coffee for you?

You find yourself walking through the town’s quiet streets of French-style buildings, flowering trees and palms, dignified monks and smiling, welcoming, local people – everywhere you look, there is something of stimulating interest or beauty set in an aura of tranquillity.
And it finally dawns on you that you cannot stay more than four or five days. Or you may never leave again…


First published in VISA 101 (Feb 2012)