In any foreign place, a compatriot, or at least someone who speaks your language, can save your sorry ass. Traveling through Siam, Laos, Cambodia and Cochinchina, Mouhot routinely relied on white missionaries, though it must be added, local dignitaries often treated this farang with tremendous hospitality.
Still, a man who had willingly left all that's familiar to lunge into the unknown couldn't help but be moved by each reminder of his heritage. One example, "The sight of the Cross in foreign lands speaks to the heart like meeting with an old friend; one feels comforted and no longer alone."
In Vientiane, I would run into many more Vietnamese businesses, two large Buddhist temples and, most remarkably, one devoted to Tran Hung Dao, a 13th century military hero worshipped for repelling two Mongol invasions. The profound depth of history is a comfort progress devotees can't fathom.
Having traveled 350 miles across Laos, I haven't seen one tusked animal, just a million statues of elephants. They guard gates, flank elevators and dangle their trunks from walls. I even ran across one with a buxom mermaid on top. I must say that the Lao landscape is much cleaner than Cambodia's, however, and perhaps even Vietnam's, not that's saying much.
There is enough trash, but they tend to be clear plastic bags. Degraded and murky with time, they lie still or gaily skip across the countryside. Maybe Laos don't even see them, or consider this garbage a kind of modern foliage.
If I was the President of Laos, I would decree that clear plastic bags be outlawed, and replaced with bright orange ones, so that they'd resemble leaves on the ground. Tourism will spike with this new slogan, "Laos, where it's always autumn!" Or better yet, "Laos, the eternal Vermont."
Compared to Vietnam, Laos has many more cars and trucks to motorbikes, but this can be attributed to the much lower Laos taxes on vehicles. A Vietnamese who does a lot of business in Laos, with about ten trips here yearly, has this explanation, "The car is a much bigger status symbol here. Unlike us, they would buy a car instead of improving their house. A rich guy in Vietnam might have two cars, but you'll find many Laos with three or four cars, and they don't put them to work, like we do. If we have several cars, they must make money for us, but here, they just use cars to drive around, for leisure."
He told me that on the Savannakhet/Vientiane bus. It appeared there were only Laos on it, yet here we were, two Vietnamese who quite by chance sat next to each other. A foundry owner, he's also from Nam Dinh, my ancestral province, so we even talked with the same accent, more or less.
In the mid 19th century, Laos was terra incognita to the West. Mouhot in 1860, "During the last twenty-five years, only one man, as far as I know, a French priest, has penetrated to the heart of Laos, and he only returned to die in the arms of the good and venerable prelate, Mgr. Pallegoix. I know the discomfort, fatigue, and tribulations of all sorts to which I am again about to expose myself; the want of roads, the difficulty of finding means of conveyance, and the risk of paying for the slightest imprudence by a dangerous or even fatal illness."
The first Westerner to reach Luang Prabang, Mouhot himself would be killed by this land he so adored and venerated. Buried in a nearly inaccessible patch by the Nam Kan, his grave is continually assaulted by the jungle, just like the Angkor Wat he so famously described.
It's eternally resonant, "One of these templesa rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelomight take an honourable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged."
So even the mightiest of civilizations can rapidly be reduced to destitution, squalor and ignorance. One day, you cockily and effortlessly build pyramids, the Taj Mahal or innumerable atomic bombs. The next morning, you're panhandling outside the Japanese-owned 7-11 or sh*tting on the sidewalk.
In 1975, Laos had just three million people, and it's up to 6.9 million now, an astoundingly low figure compared to adjacent Vietnam's 97 million, Thailand's 70 million, Myanmar's 54 million, Cambodia's 16.6 million and, of course, China's continent-bursting, globe-popping 1.4 billion. You can see where this is going. Laos' underexploited space and resources are being eyed by its neighbors, plus a few others. Leading the pack is China, by far. It has huge construction projects all over Laos, with thousands of its own workers brought in. China's also building a rail line, Lao's first, from Vientiane to the Chinese border. When it's finished next year, everything Chinese will be funneled into Laos at an even more accelerated pace. With its unprecedented demographic pressure, China has a plan to infiltrate everywhere.
Vietnam, too, has designs on Laos, I'm sure. Always have. Mouhot wrote about Luang Prabang in 1861, "Were they not restrained by fear of the Siamese, and their horror of the jungles so prolific of death, this principality would soon fall into the hands of the Annamites, who now dare not advance nearer than seven days' journey off."
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