You know how sometimes when you are in a small, quaint place and leave for a day to camp or hike outdoors, you return and find the village's hustle and bustle overwhelming? This is not true for Luang Prabang.
Yesterday Susanna and I rented mountain bikes -- single-gear mountain bikes, good for flat mountains -- and pedaled furiously but slowly out of town. It seems the main sights around Luang Prabang are a waterfall and caves; we opted for the waterfall. Thirty-five kilometers away, at the end of a dusty road, it turns out to be your basic waterfall with a few small swimming pools at the bottom. There are also bears and tigers behind bars. Susanna and I bailed into the swimming pools, but not the animal cages (deterred by the sign -- translated only in English, natch -- advising onlookers not to put their fingers in the tiger's mouth.) We also hiked up the slope and took a nice walk up the mountainside, which is maintained by a stooped over man with a bristle brush, assiduously sweeping the dirt. It seems the definition of a Sisyphan task. When we returned to Luang Prabang via tuk tuk (it turns out our mountain bikes' chains balk at hills), the city looked no less sleepy or charming.
The best way to describe Luang Prabang's almost-comatose pleasure has to be the disco. The disco, a nightly event that closes at 11:30pm, is about two kilometers outside of the city center, situated behind a restaurant and flanked by bantam-weight bouncers wearing white leather shoes and welcoming smiles. For an entrance fee of US$2, we were ushered through quilted red doors into a hall that is some combination of 1950s prom, community hall wedding reception, and 7th grade Catholic school dance. The live band played Thai and Lao traditional music on instruments plugged into amplifiers, so it seemed like pop but without the kick -- like flat Coca-Cola. Balloons decorated the stage. Every couple minutes, one would pop; Susanna suggested that when all the balloons popped, the dance would abruptly end and everyone would go home. The seating was half-circle beige nagahyde benches, as if we were going to watch a lounge act in a diner, and co-ed groups sat politely sipping Beerlao (alcohol content approximately .02%; apparently there is a Beerlao Lite, which I can only conclude is the native word for "water") and watching the dancers.
The dancers. The dancers! Susanna's and my jaws literally dropped when we saw them. What does it say that the only thing more shocking than prurience is chastity? Young men and women in modest western clothes -- jeans and cotton Gap-ish shirts -- walked in a solemn circle, with whole feet if not yards between them (I am reminded of the nuns saying, "Leave room for the Holy Ghost"; these couples had room for the Trinity, all of the disciples, and several centuries of popes). There was obviously a dance step pattern, but it involved rather more plodding and synchronization than wild abandon -- a Communist horah. The song ended, all dancers immediately cleared the floor, in five seconds a new song started, and the dance floor was flooded again, this time with dancers diligently walking a circumscribed box step, a Macarana for the anesthetized.
This is not to say the disco was not an absolute blast. Susanna and I quickly left our Beerlao and joined the fray (by "fray" please understand "group of gently swaying individuals"), Susanna doing a much better job than I of figuring out the line dance pattern. We were with our friend Jason, an American from Texas (and hence a natural line dancer) who's lived in Luang Prabang for a year or so and goes to the disco every few nights. He's very tall and handsome and white and bald, and he kind of hovered above the rest of the crowd like a benevolent spirit, floating gracefully through the steps. The music changed again, and we all "fast-danced" to "La Bamba," although without any use of hips, hands, facial expressions, bodily contact, or general recognition that we were sexual beings in proximity to other sexual beings. Even our Lao companion wearing black leather pants (it remains a mystery where he managed to buy them) looked more like he was submitting to a dentist than getting it on with a bunch of tipsy girls in a late night out. It was trippy.
Home at 10:30 (the band takes a break at 10:30, only to return again for a twenty-minute finale to wrap up the evening in plenty of time for people to get eight hours sleep and be alert for work in the morning; I drank Beerlao for six hours straight and didn't have a trace of a hang over) and asleep by 11, only to be woken up at 4am by rhythmic gonging outside our window. It seems a fife and drum is the standard wake-up for the monks; only, the monks seem to exercise the "snooze" option, because the gongs went off about every half hour til 6:30, when the monks finally roused themselves for the morning alms-giving.
Minus the early-morning symphony, life remains gorgeous in Luang Prabang -- lulled by two rivers, a tropical sun, a socialist work ethic, a Buddhist belief in infinite second-chances, and a French colonial legacy of chocolate croissants for breakfast, a nap at lunch, and evening gin and tonics on the veranda. In dramatic contrast, the new airport at Bangkok is predicated to burst into flames at any moment; happily for us, Susanna and I may be stranded in Laos indefinitely...
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
I am writing from Luang Prabang, which, as my friend Greg says, sounds like magic words, as in,
"Copperfield covered his outstretched hat with a handkerchief, said the magic words 'Luang Prabang' and, poof, disappeared, leaving only his hat."
Luang Prabang IS magic. Nestled between the Khan and Mekong Rivers in north-central Laos, it is a gentle, sun-drenched place, with old, squat French buildings and slender teenaged Buddhist monks in orange robes.
My friend Susanna, who's visiting from New York, and I had lunch today at an outdoor cafe overlooking the river. There were some terraced farms on the far side, and two little girls fording the river. One of them had a silver mylar balloon that she lost hold of; fortunately, it didn't have enough air to float away, but unfortunately, it was swept downstream on the current. She bailed in after it, and sure enough, in about three seconds both little girls were swimming like otters, drenched and squealing.
We came up yesterday from a border town in northern Thailand. Since Luang Prabang is truly in the middle of nowhere -- bordered by Myanmar, southern China, and northern Vietnam, all places that aren't exactly world hubs [on a side note, the Bangkok Airport may be closing for repairs, and Susanna, worried about her return trip, and I tried to make contingency plans. It's pretty bad when your plan B is an international flight from Burma.] -- it's expensive to reach by air, far and somewhat treacherous by road, but accessible and pleasant to reach by boat, as long as you don't mind a long day on the Mekong. A long day on the Mekong! Although I can see that might not be appealing if one is engaged in a land war in Asia, to Susanna and me it sounded charming. We left at dawn, picking our way through fog-shrouded roads in a mini van, with a pink almost-Vermont light on the hills, shivered for thirty minutes at the border (the Lao and Hmong wear fur lined hats, hand-woven scarves, and Western t-shirts; they look like every hipster kid at NYU, only with soft, broad faces, the old people's worn smooth like pennies), then climbed onto a covered wooden boat about 100 feet long with seats that looked like they'd been retrieved from a defunct airplane. Apparently concerned we would starve, Susanna and I had brought a grocery bag of cashews, Thai fruits, granola bars, pretzels, and Pringles, and we spent most of the dribbling crumbs down the front of our shirts while we read. At sunset we had a Beerlao and watched the fishermen pull up their nets from the banks. Not much is happening along the Mekong in Laos, save for the fishermen, some bathers, and a few naked kids; is it CCR that points out that life on a river is the same everywhere? The most remarkable thing is really how peaceful it is, with clean air tinted by the smell of harvest fires, and shifting sand banks, and soft pock-marked rocks, and some sort of Lao cow grazing in the woodlands. (Our guide helpfully told Susanna, "Cows eat grass." "I guess it's hard to gauge foreigners' knowledge," Susanna reflected afterward. "I mean, if I don't even know how to say 'hello,' it's possible I don't know cows eat grass.")
Now we are enjoying a few days in town, eating French pastries for breakfast and Lao catfish salads for lunch. Tomorrow we'll rent bikes and try to find a waterfall. What a miracle to be so far from anywhere and yet feel so much at home.
"Copperfield covered his outstretched hat with a handkerchief, said the magic words 'Luang Prabang' and, poof, disappeared, leaving only his hat."
Luang Prabang IS magic. Nestled between the Khan and Mekong Rivers in north-central Laos, it is a gentle, sun-drenched place, with old, squat French buildings and slender teenaged Buddhist monks in orange robes.
My friend Susanna, who's visiting from New York, and I had lunch today at an outdoor cafe overlooking the river. There were some terraced farms on the far side, and two little girls fording the river. One of them had a silver mylar balloon that she lost hold of; fortunately, it didn't have enough air to float away, but unfortunately, it was swept downstream on the current. She bailed in after it, and sure enough, in about three seconds both little girls were swimming like otters, drenched and squealing.
We came up yesterday from a border town in northern Thailand. Since Luang Prabang is truly in the middle of nowhere -- bordered by Myanmar, southern China, and northern Vietnam, all places that aren't exactly world hubs [on a side note, the Bangkok Airport may be closing for repairs, and Susanna, worried about her return trip, and I tried to make contingency plans. It's pretty bad when your plan B is an international flight from Burma.] -- it's expensive to reach by air, far and somewhat treacherous by road, but accessible and pleasant to reach by boat, as long as you don't mind a long day on the Mekong. A long day on the Mekong! Although I can see that might not be appealing if one is engaged in a land war in Asia, to Susanna and me it sounded charming. We left at dawn, picking our way through fog-shrouded roads in a mini van, with a pink almost-Vermont light on the hills, shivered for thirty minutes at the border (the Lao and Hmong wear fur lined hats, hand-woven scarves, and Western t-shirts; they look like every hipster kid at NYU, only with soft, broad faces, the old people's worn smooth like pennies), then climbed onto a covered wooden boat about 100 feet long with seats that looked like they'd been retrieved from a defunct airplane. Apparently concerned we would starve, Susanna and I had brought a grocery bag of cashews, Thai fruits, granola bars, pretzels, and Pringles, and we spent most of the dribbling crumbs down the front of our shirts while we read. At sunset we had a Beerlao and watched the fishermen pull up their nets from the banks. Not much is happening along the Mekong in Laos, save for the fishermen, some bathers, and a few naked kids; is it CCR that points out that life on a river is the same everywhere? The most remarkable thing is really how peaceful it is, with clean air tinted by the smell of harvest fires, and shifting sand banks, and soft pock-marked rocks, and some sort of Lao cow grazing in the woodlands. (Our guide helpfully told Susanna, "Cows eat grass." "I guess it's hard to gauge foreigners' knowledge," Susanna reflected afterward. "I mean, if I don't even know how to say 'hello,' it's possible I don't know cows eat grass.")
Now we are enjoying a few days in town, eating French pastries for breakfast and Lao catfish salads for lunch. Tomorrow we'll rent bikes and try to find a waterfall. What a miracle to be so far from anywhere and yet feel so much at home.
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