After years of isolation, Laos begins to share its treasures with the world

By Larry Bleiberg
Assistant Travel Editor of The Dallas Morning News

LUANG PRABANG, Laos - Morning rush hour comes in a silent, orange blur.

On a street by the Mekong River, monks clad in saffron robes march in single file. Holding bowls, the men and teenagers with shaved heads pause in front of kneeling women, who contribute a pinch of cooked rice to each.

The ritual is a form of charity, a symbolic offering to Buddha that also feeds the monks. This morning, it's a spiritual act for all except the last monk in line. Just a child, he glances at his small audience of visitors and drops his bowl to the ground. The clang rattles through the air, and like a little angel who has lost his halo, the boy grins and rushes to retrieve it.

The dawn procession has changed little since it was witnessed 140 years ago by the first Western visitors to this lush, temple-filled city. But now Laos, as with the little monk, is stepping awkwardly into the future. The country remains a quiet, dreamy place that seems caught out of time.

Laos is a land the size of Great Britain that has only nine traffic lights. It's a swath of tropical wilderness punctuated by golden temples. The atmosphere is even more astonishing when you consider this about Laos : It's the most bombed nation on earth. And one of the poorest.

Since Communists took over in 1975, Laos has been mostly off-limits. The country first opened to tourists in 1989, and two years ago fewer than 20,000 Westerners visited. But now the nation is easing tourist restrictions and completing a new Japanese-financed airport terminal for the capital. In July, it joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and giant construction projects are planned.

In the meantime, a visit to Laos is time travel . While its neighbors - China, Vietnam and Thailand - bustle into the millennium with high-rises and traffic jams, Laos is still the Asia of a half century ago.

The former kingdom - once known as the Land of a Million Elephants, now the Lao People's Democratic Republic - is a quirky, forgotten place. That becomes clear at the currency exchange when visitors enter the country.

The largest Laotian bill is a 1,000-kip note, recently worth about 55 cents. Change a $50 traveler's check and you'll get a wad of bills several inches thick. Change a few hundred dollars and you'll need a shopping bag to carry your cash.

Even the country's symbol, an Asianized version of the Arc de Triomphe, shows how Laos can turn the familiar on its head. The concrete structure is the focal point of Vientiane, the country's capital. Decorated with Buddhist bas-reliefs and mythical figures that are half female and half bird, the piece is sometimes called the Victory Gate. It's an ironic title for a nation that hasn't won many wars. As a landlocked crossroads with ambitious neighbors, Laos has had uneasy relationships with foreign powers. But the monument does show how the country handles suitors. The structure is also called the Vertical Runway, because it was completed with diverted U.S. concrete, supplied as military aid to upgrade the city's airport.

It's possible to climb the monument for a view of Vientiane, a city of 450,000 - about the size of metropolitan Wichita, Kan. On a late afternoon, traffic is an occasional trickle with more bicycles and motor scooters than cars and trucks. Girls pedal bikes and hold parasols overhead. Families of three or four pile on a single motor scooter. There's also a view of the city's temples. One, Pha That Luang, is the nation's symbol and most revered Buddhist monument.

This golden pyramid, or stupa, dates at least 400 years and is said to resemble a giant lotus bud. On this afternoon, it's a shining vision, a 150-foot marker surrounded by tiers of walls topped with lotus-leaf designs. It's all set off in a compound of bright-green grass. When two orange-robed monks pass by, the whole scene gleams with Technicolor brilliance. The monks are as shy as their surroundings are bright. Speaking in a voice as soft as poetry, one young monk asks where I'm from. He's eager to practice his English and hear about cities on the other side of the world.

Later I encounter other teenagers, who wear jeans and shirts with faux designer labels. I meet them in Buddha Park, about 15 miles east of Vientiane. The park was built by an eccentric monk with a sense of the dramatic: The feel is roadside kitsch meets Zen Buddhism. Poised on the edge of the Mekong, the park is filled with hundreds of concrete statues depicting Hindu and Buddhist gods. But there also are giant crocodiles and a multi-story pumpkin-shaped ball meant to represent various levels of heaven and hell. We climb through the structure and sit on top. The afternoon is hot, and as sweat pours from my face, one of the teenagers offers a tissue and begins to speak.

I answer, and when his friends realize that schoolbook English really works, they giggle. I tell them about my family and the United States. One says he wants to visit. They were born years after the Vietnam War, but even among the adults - those who saw villages destroyed and tribes uprooted - there isn't a hint of anger.

LEGACY OF WAR

The full effect of the war is most visible on the eastern frontier. For nine years, the U.S. spent $2 million a day dropping bombs on Laos . On average, there was a bombing run every eight minutes - more explosives than dropped by all nations during World War II. At the same time, the area was overrun by North Vietnamese soldiers, committing their share of atrocities.

The main battleground was an area called the Plain of Jars, an archaeological curiosity that's the only obvious reason to visit this part of the country. The 2,000-year-old jars are just that: giant stone urns that lie scattered over the ground in several sites. Researchers can't agree on their purpose or origin. One theory is that the plain was nothing more than a giant distillery. The jars, it goes, were used to make vast quantities of rice wine to celebrate a military victory. Others claim the jars are really urns, noting that bones have been found in a few.

Wandering the plain, I find it hard to imagine the people who created these odd containers. The landscape rolls like a golf course and, because it's at a higher elevation, is blessedly cool in comparison to the Mekong delta. But the view is marred by an adjacent military airfield and the bomb craters that litter the land. The bombing was meant to stop traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam's supply line, which passed through Laos . The foot soldiers were CIA-trained men and boys, who came from tribes so primitive that when they first saw planes some are said to have looked underneath them to determine their sex. Laos was supposed to be neutral, so the fighting was kept secret from the world. But as the Vietnam War continued, U.S. involvement in Laos mushroomed. American fighters were technically civilians. Many pilots went through the motions of resigning from the military. Some even participated in the charade of purchasing their bombers for $1 apiece as government surplus. It was a surreal battleground with combatants dressed in cutoffs and cowboy hats. Fighters once dropped bags of Calgon dishwashing soap with the hope of making trails too slippery to use. Another time, they tried to unsettle Communist-held villages by blasting them in the middle of the night with recordings of Wagner.

And through it all, there was terrible destruction.

Decades later, the war hasn't gone away: About once a month, a villager, usually a child, discovers an explosive. Death or maiming is the usual result. I examine one of the devices - a bombie, as it's called. It's for sale for $6 in a display case in the wind-swept town of Phonsavanh. The defused explosive is the size of a tennis ball with fins on the side, and it looks like a shiny brass toy. I pick up the device and feel its weight in my hand. I unscrew it and the pieces separate with machine-tooled ease. Similar devices were once packed in clusters of 650 and dropped from a jet. Each bombie was supposed to explode on impact.

The one I hold didn't.

I consider buying it, a deadly souvenir from a beautiful country. But I put it down. The war had awful consequences for so many people - both in Laos and the United States. Best not to bring the bombs home again.

That afternoon, my small tour group travels along Highway 7, a somewhat paved road leading to Vietnam. The area is so remote that scientists are still discovering new species - in recent years an ox, a wild pig and a small barking deer.

About 55 miles from the border, we stop at a settlement with numerous chickens and even more children. We take a scenic 2-mile hike to a Hmong village, Ban Na Sala. Our guide for the day points to an opium plant on the side of the path. He is a handsome, friendly man, eager to please visitors. He was born in a cave and spent his first few years of life there, living in stone-age shelter to escape jet-age destruction.

In Ban Na Sala, we find a scene out of National Geographic: dirt roads, thatched huts and lush banana trees. There's no electricity or sanitation system. But the most astonishing thing about the village of 600 is the U.S. presence. War scrap, like deadly manna from heaven, has become a building material here. Bomb casings lie in dust, reborn as troughs for water buffalo. Others are elevated on stakes as small planters. One pasture is closed off with a half-dozen missiles grouped together nose first in the ground. A stenciled English message from the factory gives the pedigree of one. The Cycloto L bomb was packed in March 1971. Weight: 122 pounds. As we leave, a group of boys follows and calls to our guide: "We are following the giants." Only then do I realize how I tower over most everyone in this country.

Whether due to genetic stock or nutrition, in this land of wonders I'm a wonder myself.

Back at the road, the village children have discovered yet another wonder. Dozens stand on a dirt embankment next to our bus, gaping at the Thai movie our driver has popped in the coach's VCR. Like a Mississippi River showboat, our bus has become the village's temporary theater. Watching through the windows, the audience is transfixed, with faces lighted by the flickering screen.

SMOOTH SAILING

Except for the hardiest of travelers, moving around Laos is usually done by air on Lao Aviation. The national carrier, partially owned by China's Yunnan Airlines, is said to meet international standards. On my first flight from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, I'm comforted that my boarding pass is sponsored by Pepsi. If commercialism has reached this communist industry, so must have flight mechanics. Sitting next to me is a U.S. man who has piloted planes for more than 40 years. He assures me the pilot makes this run several times a day. When we begin to descend through cloud cover over mountains, my seatmate doesn't blink. We land without incident. And only when I'm leaving the plane am I conscious of a squeaking that has accompanied the entire flight. I peer behind a curtain and discover the source: boxes full of live chicken hatchlings.

In Luang Prabang, we're greeted with a new airport, built with aid from Thailand. It looks vaguely like a Buddhist temple. As we step into the lobby, Asian music plays soothingly in the background.

But Luang Prabang needs no soundtrack. Two years ago, UNESCO declared the entire town of maybe 20,000 a World Heritage Site, calling it one of the best preserved cities in southeast Asia. Its dozens of temples show Portuguese, French and Asian influences. They're uniquely styled with long sloping roofs that almost touch the ground.

Even as travelers on a whirlwind tour, we can sense the city's languid charm. Our hotel, the Villa Santi, is a French Colonial mansion that once belonged to a Laotian princess. In the evening we dine on the front terrace. The night is silent and nothing stirs except for children playing in the street, and tiny lizards crawling along the ceiling.

BEAUTIFUL BACKWATER

For centuries, Luang Prabang served as the kingdom's royal capital. That changed after communists took over Laos in 1975. The royal family was sent to a re-education camp and never seen again. The king, queen and prince are believed to have died as prisoners in a cave.

Still, in relative terms, Laotian communists have been moderate. The country never had the mass purges of Stalin or Pol Pot, although the Hmong, onetime U.S. allies, suffered under the new regime.

In the mid-1980s, leaders began economic reforms and courted Western investors. Now there's talk of building roads and railroads through Laos , missing pieces in a continental transportation system that would link Singapore with Beijing. Some plans have this inter-Asian highway passing through Luang Prabang, forever changing the character of this beautiful backwater. Until then, visitors pretty much have the town to themselves.

For many, the first stop is the formal royal palace, now a national museum. Visitors see a replica of a gold Buddha. It's a gift to Laos that marked the start of Buddhism in the country. The statue, known as a pra bang, was so important that it gave Luang Prabang its name.

There's also an ornate reception room and glorious glass mosaics depicting scenes from Laotian life. But the feeling here is sadness, not glory. Rooms are filled with present from other nations. A moon rock from Richard Nixon is on display, along with a pearl-inlay rifle from Leonid Brezhnev and friendship flags from China and Vietnam - all gifts that came with strings attached.

Among the few excursions from Luang Prabang are villages where textiles, rice wine, metal tools and paper are made by hand. The most popular trip out of the city is to the Pak Ou Buddha caves, a 90-minute boat ride up the swift-flowing Mekong River.

Late in the morning we climb aboard a long skinny boat powered by a car engine. As we chug up the muddy river, children wave from the shore and dive into the water. Farmers tend fields and thick clumps of bamboo dot the shoreline.

The caves are the closest the country has to a bona-fide tourist attraction. A few faded signs, funded by an Australian grant, help interpret the site. A lower cave is self-explanatory: an opening in the river bank filled with Buddhas that tier into the back recesses. The upper cave is another experience. Greeting us at the top of a long stairway is a watchman. He leads us into the darkness. A musty smell mixed with incense fills the air. Then, a match flashes and he begins to light candles. Thousands of Buddhas of all sizes emerge from the inky blackness. The floor is uneven and it's easy to stumble. The watchman mumbles - whether in prayer, warning or explanation, it's not clear - and then walks farther into the cave. The entrance is now a dim light behind us, and he steers us into a back cavern where more Buddhas await. When we return to the river, we're jolted back to the modern world by a woman selling Pepsi. Near her, a shoeless man uses toes and fingers to mend a fishing net, assuring us it's not the modern world we left at home.

OUT FROM THE SHADOWS

Back in Luang Prabang, I leave the boat and follow steps to Wat Xieng Thong (the Golden City Temple). The wat, or temple complex, is the city's largest and best preserved. With its sweeping roofs, golden carved doors and bright-red tile surfaces, it feels like the setting for a fairy tale. The most ornate building is a garage. It holds the 40-foot-tall, rubber-wheeled gold chariot that carried the body of a former king. His 1959 funeral was delayed for months until astrologers deemed the stars favorable. Then, a crowd of thousands packed a soccer stadium and watched as their ruler's body went up in flames, freeing his soul for reincarnation. Now, the afternoon sun is low and the buildings glitter. The wat is largely deserted except for a little boy who watches me. He begins to play a silent game of peekaboo, ducking behind walls and temples, then appearing a few feet away. I wave to him and smile, but the boy remains in the shadows. A moment later, he disappears.

Like his country, the child is curious about the outside world. But for now at least, he's still keeping his distance.

Date:12/21/97
Paper:THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Section:TRAVEL
Edition:HOME FINAL

Larry Bleiberg
Assistant Travel Editor
Dallas Morning News/Travel