Friday, February 23, 2007

How Ya Like Me Lao?

This morning we happily put the city of Bangkok behind us, setting off for Luang Prabang, Laos. After a bumpy 90-minute ride on a prop plane, we gingerly touched down in the jewel of the Mekong. The harrowing flight did leave its' impression, however, nothing frays the nerves like turbulence in a cloud bank on a small, propeller airplane on a low-cost carrier from a foreign country. Give me Aeroflot any day.

Laos itself is gorgeous. Picture the opening sequence of the MASH television show (okay, that was supposed to be Korea, but you get the drift), with a snaking river winding through a thick jungle. Palm trees and banana leaf interposed with thatch roof huts. I had a bit of trouble unwriting the years of adolescent exposure to Vietnam war movies as we were making our descent, hearing echoes of heavy machine guns suppressing communists coming from an imaginary Huey.

The city of Luang Prabang (300,000) is a UNESCO world heritage site, the first for an entire town. It is home to many monasteries and is quite common to have monks walking to and fro in their bright orange robes. Makes for great photos, it feels a bit like celebrities being spotted around the Sundance film festival in Park City. The farmers in the surrounding countryside are burning off their rice patties in these months before the wet season, giving the air a smokey haze and causing tiny embers to fall from the sky. Snowing burnt rice patties. When the sun sets and the breeze dies down, wisps of smoke form intricate swirls in the still dusk air above the Mekong.

Tonight we went to dinner at the fanciest place in town, L'Elephant, which is french for 'the elephant'. Peggy had the five course set menu, which did not include any elephant. I went with the vegetarin fire. All were excellent and the total bill was, including drinks, only $30. C'est magnifique!

Unfortunately, the tourists like ourselves have really strangled this tiny town. The three flights a week from Bangkok, with even more from Vietenne and Hanoi are delivering the tourists in droves. We drew an analogy to Carmel or Santa Fe in the level of local versus foriegn. The town area really isn't that big, 3 blocks by ten blocks on a peninsula, but the juxtapositioning of toursit and local is really obvious. Every other house that isn't a monestary is a guest house or internet cafe. When we flew in, only white faces were on the plane, it didn't appear that any Lao were commuting from Bangkok or returning from holiday. Coming in the off-season might have been a better fit.

Continuing our trend of market tourism, we visited the night market this evening. So far in this trip, we've done floating markets, antique markets, flower markets, fruit markets and now the official night market. Actually, the quality of peddled handicrafts is much more tasteful here than in Thailand. You also don't get the aggressiveness in the hard sale and the haggling. Prices are gently discussed and there is not the twinge of a scam in every exchange. I'm still a bit bitter about the exploitive nature which we saw and experienced in Thailand. Much calmer here, not everyone is out to make a buck. Perhaps it is the communist or Buddhist influence that teaches constraint.

posted by ncawthon at 4:43 PM