One Foot in Laos Read online

  DERVLA MURPHY

  ONE FOOT IN LAOS

  For Caitriona, John and Ruairi

  ‘The mountains that surround it on every side fortify the land marvellously against the enterprises of foreigners … Whole forests of full grown timber trees grow at the foot of these mountains seeming to have been planted intentionally to serve as a rampart against the great falls of rain which would cause great damage if there were not this natural obstacle. The Lao live at peace with all six neighbouring kingdoms, with the exception of Pegu [the Shan States of Burma], with whom they have been at war for a number of years. But the unnavigable rivers, mountains and forests intervening mean they cannot do each other much harm.’

  Gerritt van Wuysthoff, 1641

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Preface

  Historical Note

  Map

  1. A Glimpse of Thailand

  2. Vientiane Vignettes

  3. Erratically to Kasi

  4. A Circular Wander

  5. Limping around Luang Prabang

  6. Slowly down the Mekong

  7. Swiftly to Xam Nua

  8. Bicycle as Trolley

  9. Trapped in Xieng Khouang

  10. In and around Phonsavanh

  11. South to Tha Khaek

  12. Bicycle as Bicycle

  Afterwords

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  Preface

  It is sensible to let oneself be pushed around by Fate. I had already bought a guidebook to Sri Lanka when Catherine called; since our last meeting, in Tanzania, she and her husband had spent three years working in Laos. We lunched outside, in bright August sunshine, while Catherine’s boys – lucky lads, reared far from urban constraints – daringly climbed all over my roofs. And Catherine talked nostalgically of a mountainous country inhabited by gentle people, with a few tarred roads – a country as yet little touched, outside its two or three small cities, by consumerism and mass tourism. ‘But,’ she observed, ‘things are about to change.’ Already Thai television is watched along the western border – that is, on the left bank of the Mekong – many backpackers are arriving annually, motor traffic has increased since the opening of the so-called Friendship Bridge in April 1994 and developers are active. Soon the Laos she and Jan had known would be no more.

  I heard then what I think of as my ‘inner click’, last heard before my Cameroonian trek in 1987. It happens when for some reason I am suddenly determined to visit a country previously unconsidered. Within an hour, Sri Lanka had been shelved.

  Apart from Catherine’s information and Norman Lewis’s A Dragon Apparent – read soon after it was published, almost half a century ago – I then knew nothing of my next destination. A week later I was in London, buying a map and every available book on Laos; not many are available in English but quality makes up for quantity (see Bibliography). Settling down to a few months’ serious homework, I felt shamed by my ignorance. I had not realized the extent to which this misfortunate little country (in area the size of Britain, population 4.5 million) suffered as a victim of both Cold Warriors during the Second Indochina War – otherwise known, misleadingly, as the Vietnam War.

  Laos, the map revealed, is walking rather than cycling territory. As it is a hot country, even during its cool season, I packed three sleeveless shirts and three pairs of knee-length shorts before turning my mind to more taxing matters, like visa complications (formidable) and the appropriate malaria cure (elusive). Then someone warned me that bare shoulders and legs offend Lao sensibilities, as do grubby travellers. It didn’t take long to replace the unsuitable garments but the Lao aversion to grubbiness might not be so easily dealt with at the end of a sweaty, dusty trekking day.

  It seems odd that the wanderlust, unlike other lusts, does not diminish with age. As departure date approached my excitement level rose as uncontrollably as though I had never before left Ireland.

  Historical Note

  Francis Gamier, the French explorer, wrote during the 1860s, ‘A sense of history is absolutely absent in the Lao, their imagination is fired by fables and extraordinary legends, with no precise date, making it impossible to appreciate their historical value.’

  Not until the fourteenth century do verifiable characters and events emerge. In or about 1316 was born Fa Ngum, revered as the man who established the Kingdom of Lan Xang, from which the Lao People’s Democratic Republic is tortuously descended. Fa Ngum was only a little fellow when his father, Phi Fa, disgraced himself. Phi Fa, eldest son and heir apparent to King Phaya Souvanna-Khampong of Muong Swa (now Luang Prabang), enraged the King by seducing a member of the royal household – possibly one of the royal wives. His punishment was permanent exile and he was told to take his first-born son with him. At the Khmer court at Angkor King Jayarvarman Paramesvara made the exiles welcome and here Fa Ngum grew up, in due course marrying the King’s daughter. His father-in-law then put him in command of 10,000 men and he led them north, at the age of twenty-two, to assert his right to the throne of Muong Swa. A ten-year campaign secured him a far bigger kingdom, encompassing south-west Yunnan, north-east Laos, Xieng Khouang, most of the Korat plateau west of the Mekong and possibly Champasak to the south. During the siege of Muong Swa, Phi Fa died and in 1353 Fa Ngum deposed his grandfather and proclaimed himself King of Lan Xang. (‘Land of a Million Elephants’ – wars were fought with elephants so this naming of the new kingdom emphasized his power.) An administrator of genius, Fa Ngum established a civil infrastructure that lasted for more than three centuries. But it seems he eventually became too authoritarian, a quality deprecated by the Lao. At the age of fifty-seven he was deposed by a clique of noblemen and succeeded by his seventeen-year-old son, Oun Hueun Samsenthai. Five years later he died in exile.

  King Samsenthai was gentle, peace-loving and deeply religious. During his forty-three-year reign the Kingdom of Lan Xang flourished, many wats (temples/monasteries) were built and Luang Prabang became one of the region’s most renowned centres of Buddhist learning. Then began an enduring tradition. The Sangha (the Buddhist monks’ ‘Establishment’) became an ally of the kingdom’s secular rulers whose authority was reinforced by the Sangha’s approbation – and in turn the Sangha gained respect as the spiritual mentors of the rulers. At intervals, Laos’s chaotic history threatened this alliance, without ever destroying it. Gamier noted: ‘The influence of the monks is very strong; religious and civil power live side by side peacefully. Neither trespasses on the rights of the other. The neutrality of the monks in all political matters seems absolute.’

  A turbulent century followed King Samsenthai’s death. Too often disunity among the nobles, brought about by the lack of any form of primogeniture, left the way open for more powerful neighbours to make trouble. The scene was constantly shifting; areas belonged to the kingdom, then splintered off and formed other alliances or became independent, then were reabsorbed into Lan Xang or replaced by other areas.

  In 1563 King Xetthathirat, for reasons economic and strategic, moved his capital from Luang Prabang to Viang Chan (Vientiane), then a small fortified city with two wats – but a rich city, its wealth derived from the fertility of the surrounding plains and from taxes paid by traders going upstream. (Until very recently, the Mekong was this region’s only highway.)

  Under King Surinyavongsa, who won the throne in 1637 and reigned for fifty-seven years, the kingdom enjoyed a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, again becoming renowned both for Buddhist learning and for the secular arts of theatre, music and classical dancing. The monks who came from Burma and Cambodia to study in its well-endowed wats were ‘more numerous than the soldiers of the Emperor of Germany’. Tha
t was the astonished comment of Gerritt van Wuysthoff, a Dutch East India Company merchant who arrived in the 1640s – as, coincidentally, did Giovanni-Maria Leria. This Italian Jesuit would-be missionary stayed for five years and learned the language before accepting that he would never be allowed to proselytize. He reported home: ‘The population is a peaceable one and very little versed in the art of war. Hostility and quarrelling are banished from the land. Never has one of them spoken evil of another. They are of perfect sincerity, without deceit, humble and courteous, of unalterable trustworthiness, affable, accommodating and open to reason.’ Perhaps he had realized, by the end of his stay, that proselytizing would do more harm than good.

  Both those Europeans, the first to visit Laos, were astounded by the kingdom’s wealth and both deplored the proportion donated to the Sangha. After their departures, no other Westerners visited Laos for more than half a century and, in Martin Stuart-Fox’s words, ‘the country was almost as remote and mysterious as Tibet’.

  Sadly, the peaceable nature of the population did not protect them during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At various times the Burmese, the Siamese (Thais), the Annamese (Vietnamese) and the Khmer (Cambodians) attacked Vientiane. Already the international arms traders, dealing in improved military technology, were active, strengthening those neighbouring kingdoms. In 1778 Vientiane submitted to Siamese suzerainty after a four-month siege – then was sacked. The famous Emerald Buddha and other deeply revered images were carted off to Bangkok – as was King Nanthasen. Thousands of Lao peasants were forcibly resettled in the north-east of Siam and reduced to serfdom – a regular occurrence, following Siamese victories, which is why many more ethnic Lao now live in Thailand than in Laos itself.

  As Martin Stuart-Fox explains:

  Siam remained a Southeast Asian mandala, not a modern state. There was no centrally appointed administration. The larger principalities were entirely autonomous. Even smaller muang that progressively transferred their allegiance, under pressure, from Viang Chan to Bangkok, could collect their own taxes and enforce their own justice. Only three matters had to be referred to Bangkok: permission to raise the necessary force to discipline a recalcitrant vassal; nomination of high officials to rule the muang; and sentences of capital punishment … King Nanthasen was permitted to return to Viang Chan to rule as a tributary of Siam … Viang Chan was rebuilt and its population grew. In 1804 Anuvong succeeded his two elder brothers on the throne.

  In 1826 Anuvong made the mistake of trying to re-establish an independent Lao kingdom. This provoked the total obliteration of Vientiane and its entire population was ‘relocated’ west of the Mekong. The Siamese soldiers who sacked the city in 1827 were us-armed – which sale of weapons to King Rama III marked the first us intervention in South-east Asia.

  In the 1860s Louis de Carne described the ruins of Vientiane: ‘The vegetation is like a veil drawn by nature over the weakness of man and the vanity of his works …’

  In 1893 the French created an administrative unit named, by them, Laos – in area less than half the size of the former Kingdom of Lan Xang and with a far smaller population. They then reinvented Vientiane as the ‘capital’ of the least profitable and accessible of their Indochinese acquisitions.

  For the next fifty years the kings were allowed to reign in Luang Prabang, performing their religious duties but having no administrative power. The French treated Laos as a minor appendage of Vietnam, soon abandoning their ambitious development plans and leaving the Chinese and Vietnamese to continue controlling commerce and trade. During that period, a small French-educated élite emerged from among the aristocracy, men who in the 1940s sowed the seed of Lao nationalism – if that is not too hard-edged a word for the mild Laotian requests to be granted independence.

  In March 1945, towards the end of the Second World War, the Japanese took over from the French (pro-Vichy) administration. Within fourteen months de Gaulle’s troops, backed by Britain and the us, had forcibly reoccupied Vientiane. Then came the First Indochina War (the French versus the Vietminh, 1946–54), during which various offers of partial independence failed to satisfy the Lao.

  In January 1950 Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam was recognized by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The us was then urging the French to grant more substantial concessions to all the peoples of Indochina, to prevent their joining the anti-colonial Communist forces. On 6 February 1950 a formal transfer of certain powers to the Royal Lao Government was signed by the French but they retained control over the army, the administration of justice and the secret police.

  On 22 October 1953 King Sisavangvong signed a Treaty of Friendship and Association with France, reaffirming Lao membership of the French Union in exchange for independence.

  Martin Stuart-Fox explains that:

  By establishing an extensive ‘liberated zone’ in Xam Neua and Phongsali under protection of the Vietminh, the offensive of April 1953 effectively divided Laos both administratively and politically [the Pathet Lao from the Royalists]. For the first time since its formation, the Pathet Lao possessed a consolidated territory to govern [most of northern Laos]. The Royal Lao government vehemently denounced these developments. For the government the offensive was a Vietnamese invasion, and the Pathet Lao were but Vietnamese puppets. For the Pathet Lao the invasion had been a joint operation ‘in co-ordination with volunteer Vietnamese troops’. Neither version was accurate. The offensive of 1953 was a tactical episode in the First Indochina War between France and the Vietminh, a conflict from which the Lao could no more insulate themselves in 1953 than they could a decade later from the Second Indochina War between the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam and the United States.

  The

  US

  funded up to three-quarters of the cost of the First Indochina War and the French military command remained confident that they could win – until the Vietminh victory at Dien Bien Phu. On 8 May 1954, the day after the French garrison surrendered (a piquant coincidence), international delegates, co-chaired by Britain and the Soviet Union, met in Geneva to negotiate a settlement. Cambodia was to remain intact, Vietnam was divided into two separate political entities. Within Laos, the

  US

  -backed Royal Lao Army and the Vietminh-backed Pathet Lao were to disengage and all foreign forces to withdraw from the country – apart from 5,000 French troops. The

  US

  refused to endorse the Final Declaration of this Geneva Conference. The then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, argued that it did not meet the conditions necessary to prevent the spread of Communism and President Eisenhower warned: The United States has not itself been party to or bound by the decisions taken by the Conference.’ Part of the settlement included the Royal Lao Government’s declaration that it would never allow its territory to be used by another power for aggressive purposes or itself pursue a policy of aggression. The Agreement also prohibited the introduction of munitions and armaments to Laos except for ‘categories specified as necessary for the defence of Laos’.

  Between 1953 and 1962 three main political movements existed. The Pathet Lao, led by Prince Souphanouvong, controlled much of northern Laos. The

  US

  -managed, Vientiane-based Royalist movement, led by General Phoumi Nosavan, controlled central and southern Laos. The neutralist Royalist movement led by Prince Souvanna Phouma, half-brother to Prince Souphanouvong, repeatedly tried to mediate between the other two. Dr Stuart-Fox has described this prince as ‘a tragic figure in modern Lao history, a stubborn symbol of an alternative, neutral, “middle way”’.

  In 1957, after internationally supervised democratic elections, those three groups formed a coalition government, soon sabotaged by the

  CIA

  ; the

  US

  objected to the inclusion of the Pathet Lao. Prince Souphanouvong, who had won a higher popular vote than any other candidate, was then imprisoned with his fellow Pathet Lao political lea
ders. Two years later all those leaders escaped from prison, probably helped by sympathetic jailers, and joined their guerrilla army and their Vietnamese allies in the north.

  In 1961 the Secret War began. The

  US

  , unwilling to commit ground troops to Laos, used the Royal Lao Army, and Thai and Hmong mercenaries, to fight on its behalf.

  In 1962 a fourteen-country conference in Geneva led eventually to the Geneva Agreements which did no more than the 1954 Geneva Final Declaration to protect Laos from the Cold Warriors.

  In 1964 the

  US

  launched its nine-year air war over Laos in a futile attempt to destroy the Ho Chi Minh Trail, part of which passed through eastern Laos. That country then became the most heavily bombarded in the history of the world, receiving more tonnage of ordnance than Germany did during the Second World War.

  By 1973 it was clear the Americans could not win in Vietnam. During February a ceasefire was declared within Laos where a few months previously the Pathet Lao had announced the formation of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (

  LPRP

  ). In September a power-sharing protocol was signed between the Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government and led to another coalition.

  In April 1975 the Americans were run out of South Vietnam and Cambodia. A month later they and their Royalist puppets left Laos abruptly and the

  LPRP

  became the party of government. On 2 December the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao