Visit to Laos, 2016

First explorations in Laos

More recently I have moved to live and work in Lao PDR, and although I am supposed to regale you with tales about life in Thailand, every so often my Thai-language editor sends me so many messages in a row, that finally I break down and do as I am requested, and in this case, it was the suggestion of writing about Laos, in the present, instead of Thailand in the past. I won’t necessarily start with the present, I will talk about the past, and perhaps bring in a little of the present. Blame the editor if I am not going to tell you about life in the entertainment industry for another few weeks.

It’s strange, but despite all my travels around the world, I really have done very little traveling throughout South East Asia. Perhaps it’s this well-known phenomenon of “well, it’s right there, I can always go of a weekend”, and yet such a weekend or week never seems to materialize. Even so, I did make it to Laos once way back when in the early to mid 1990s, when then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien strongly promoted Canadian business investments in economies around the world through his “Team Canada” initiative. Together with about 15 Canadian business leaders, I traveled through Northeastern Thailand, hitting the cities of Korat, Khon Kaen and Udorn Thani, before crossing the border and moving on to Vientiane. In a small capacity, I served as the ‘translator’ for the Canadian Ambassador at the time who traveled as head of the business delegation.

Vientiane, 2016 – much has changed

Twenty years earlier

Laos, and Vientiane, in the mid-90s were very different from the present city and its surroundings. I can recall the trip and tour we took of the biggest company at the time in Laos, Lao Beer. Visiting the brewery was one of the highlights, and of course there was a need to try the product that very evening – for some there was a little too much testing – but it certainly tasted good as far as I was concerned. We spent a morning before the brewery tour listening to various presentations on the business climate and regulations in Laos, and from the Canadian side a few presentations were made on the capabilities and business ideas that might be introduced to Laos – the entire morning was quite a test and stretched my linguistic skills to the limit. I must confess, I have this very bad habit of trying to imitate people and their speech, so if I am with a crowd of Ozzies, I will start to pronounce words (very badly) with an attempted Australian accent; I do the same when I am in the southern United States, where I unconsciously start to imitate the southern drawl. Of course on official business, such things shouldn’t happen, but I caught myself a number of times diverging from Thai to Laotian, dropping the ‘ch’ sounds of the Thai language, and exchanging them for ‘s’ sounds, and inserting the word ‘bor’ at nearly every opportunity I could, but apparently it was all to the enjoyment of the audience.

A quiet retreat near Vang Vieng, Lao PDR

With the presentations done, and the tour of the brewery well behind us, the participants gathered at a restaurant around the fountain (this was a favourite hangout for most expats in Vientiane in the 1990s). The fountain still exists, but my first sight of it during the trip was much more impressive than its present condition. The road surrounding the fountain separated the restaurants from the fountain itself, and as such, the area around the fountain was much larger and more spacious than what it is now. It seems development has been allowed much closer to the fountain, taking away some of its erstwhile grandeur. Regardless, I went, I saw, and then I left, as I was not in the mood for fancy Italian or French cuisine, and I wanted to try the local food, and perhaps experience some of the local culture. I walked down the road toward the river, and made a right turn. The street lights ended in front of a temple, yet beyond that point, I could see plenty of candlelight, and umbrellas set up on the bank of the river. I wandered on for a few moments and was joined by a fellow Canadian who had a similar idea to mine – French food and Italian food was available in Thailand, we wanted local fare. Some grilled rice patties, a basket of vegetables, some grilled chicken, and several bottles of Beer Lao, was our repast, and we thoroughly enjoyed the river-side dining. Today, the river bank has been moved, with a new road having been constructed along the river’s edge. Gone are the umbrellas and bamboo tables with small chairs. For nearly a kilometer beyond the temple the road has brought changes, and it is not until about that 1 kilometer marker beyond the temple that river-side restaurants appear again, although now under much brighter and cleaner conditions. The food is still as good, the atmosphere still as friendly, but the prices have definitely gone up; what cost us the equivalent of 2 dollars that night in the mid- 90s, now will cost roughly 20 dollars – still not extravagant, but a change.

Lake-side dining, on route 10N toward Vang Vieng

Walking back that night from the quiet restaurant area, we walked through a small market area. On display were a variety of objects and trinkets, including watches, and I had told myself that I was going to buy some sort of memento of my visit to a communist country. There it was, a watch, plain face, but with a nice design of the hammer and sickle emblem. The back casing even had the point of origin, CCCP, and carries the year of production (1989) along with the actual number of the watch.  It was the perfect memento, and not very expensive, and became (for a few hours) a nice addition to my collection of different objects sourced from around the world – that is, until the next day when we were in the bus on the way back to Bangkok, and someone dropped the watch and cracked the crystal.