Globetrotter: Laos

By Paul Bate, MBA 2 (Click here to send an email to Paul.)

"La donna e mobile" booms Pavarotti's voice as we wash down spaghetti vongole and vitello tonato with cold white wine. The petite waitress smiles serenely as she waits for our selection of home made deserts from the trolley. "So the red prince agreed to allow his half-brother from the neutral faction to remain as prime minister as long as his communist forces could keep their arms?" "Yes," replies my companion across the table, "but their father, the king, was under pressure from the military to double cross the communists, otherwise the Americans would cut off all the military aid and the economy would collapse." "But I thought that the Vietnamese high command had agreed to support the neutral government as long as they could continue to use the Ho Chi Minh trail to send troops into the South," I asked. "Well, that was inevitable anyway, the government had no power to stop the Vietnamese.""So what were you doing at the time?" "Well, after finishing my education in the jungle school for the children of revolutionary patriots and then university in Moscow, I joined my father in the caves. He was the supreme commander of the revolutionary forces you know," she smiled sweetly. "The bombing was the hardest part, it was difficult to sleep." "You see Uncle Phao over on the other table?" My companion fluttered her eyelashes,"He was a commander in the Royal Army. When we came to the capital, he went on a seminar." I smiled at this euphemism for 12 years hard labour in the northern jungles. "Uncle Phao is now the deputy director of the state bank and his daughter holds the Mazda agency. She married the son of the head of political ideology of the party."

I pick up the tab and we walk out across the town square and take a seat by the fountain. In the distance the setting sun is fading below the coconut trees on the other side of the massive river, which is in the final stages of deep crimson sunset. We sit down for the inevitable evening of endless cold beer and conversations of political intrigue. "Khamsouk, the owner of the French restaurant - you know, the one who went to the Sorbonne - is trying to turn the National Library over there into a small hotel." I glance sadly over at the magnificent French provincial building imagining yet another piece of the heritage consumed in the new age of business, but then realise that it doesn't matter. They have already sold all the books. "But I do not think that she can succeed because she divorced her husband who is a high official, just because he took a minor wife. She will never get the approvals - doesn't have the money." "Here - take some of these spring rolls, they're good hot."

These tales of political conspiracy and incestuous business scheming are not from a fictitious movie script but from real life in a forgotten country called Laos. Torn apart by colonial fueding between neighbours and the European power of the "great game," split down the middle by the Franco-Siamese treaty of 1893 and 1902, Laos has spent most of its 1000 year history as a pawn in the game of geopolitics. Popular opposition to French imposed taxes, courvee labour and the French opium monopoly galvanized into a struggle for national independence after the second world war. Having finally succeeded after the Vietnamese humiliation at Dien Bien Phu caused the French to withdraw from Indochina, Laos was sucked back into conflict during the Vietnam war by virtue of the unfortunate strategic location of its geography spanning the territories of the warring Vietnamese factions. With 4.5 million people in a difficult, mountainous terrain within an area 2/3 the size of Thailand, Laos never succeeded in being a viable economic entity and remains an aid dependent subsistence economy ruled by a feudal minded political elite.

The country suffered the tragedy of being the victim of one of the least understood and most futile military campaigns in history. Between 1964 -1975, US aircraft dropped over 2 million tons of bombs, more than the allies dropped on Germany in W.W.II, on the Plain of Jars, mostly on remote farmlands and mountainous areas. This saturation bombing campaign had no effect on the Pathet Lao leadership, who remained hidden in vast underground limestone caves but it did displace 750,000 farmers from their homes and turned 25% of the population into refugees. The Ho Chi Minh trail was entirely unaffected. When Saigon and Phnom Phen fell to the communists in 1975, the military government leaders fled the Lao capital, Vientiane and the Pathet Lao communists just walk in.

After oppressive policies by the new government led to the flight of most of the remaining educated administrators and managers from the country, a disastrous attempt at agricultural and light industrial collectivization was abandoned. The Central Committee turned its back on ideological orthodoxy and began to promote productivity, profit and incentives, preceding Eastern Europe in the voluntary abandonment of communism by a decade.

Today Laos is serene and at peace. Her people exude charm and gentleness. People smile sincerely but forget their promises. It is a land where time has no meaning, letters go unanswered, officials take 2 hour siestas and public works go unattended. Even the scoundrels are charming. Her culture is deep but fragile. A changing economy will inevitably mean that Laos of the future will be very different from the peaceful, sleepy backwater she is today. Anyone who wants to visit a country which is just - well - nice, should visit Laos today.