Page 11
The Land of Smiles
The discovery of Lao
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Page 11
The Land of Smiles
The discovery of Lao |
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Friendship Bridge WE DROVE FURIOUSLY from Penang through the length of Thailand to Vientiane, stopping only for one night. My friend, Fam, was in a hurry. And we were lucky in having at the steering wheel Yap, another friend from Ipoh, who staggered us with his amazing resilience, driving 15 hours without any signs of tiring. We stopped a brief moment, almost when we were about to leave Thai territory, at one of the roast chicken stalls scattered along the highway, to buy a roast chicken. It cost RM5 . I noticed with surprise that the stall-holder in this remote and lonely place had had her eyebrows plucked and replaced with two elegantly painted lines. The chicken was delicious. We finished it just as we got to the Nong Khai immigration office this side of the Friendship Bridge, built by the Australians. Passports were quickly stamped but the car took some time. Lots of cars are stolen and smuggled into Lao, we are told. The forms and long interrogation it appears are necessary to satisfy the border guards and frustrate the smugglers. A mechanical plough converted into a truck is the main means of transport 
We go over the Friendship Bridge where the railway line stops halfway,
because there are no Laotian railways to connect to. On the
Lao side the car import permit took time to negotiate. Obviously, the
Lao customs co-operate with their Thai counterparts. From a cyber café,
we learn that car smuggling is big business at the Chinese border.
The café was a surprise - it was something we did not expect to
find in Lao. Here we pick up our mail and read the news.. Lao does not
control the use of satellite dishes; where there is electricity the villages
sport enormous dishes as they do in Thailand and in Nepal. After immigration, it is a few minutes to Vientiane, the capital. But for the Isuzu pick ups and motorcycles you would think you were entering 1920's Pahang. It is the rainy season and we make a mess of the hotel floor with our shoes. This is because only the middle of the wide road is tarred, leaving both sides wet and muddy. The hotel is a four storey building built some years ago. The owner, an immigrant from China, had died of a heart attack a few months before we arrived leaving the widow and daughter and a son in charge. The 2nd floor, with a few air conditioned rooms, is used as a hotel. On the first floor is the hotel restaurant. The family occupy the fourth floor. The rooms cost only RM50 a night and are supplied with satellite TV. Gaping holes in the walls for electric wires and water pipes are left uncovered, a sign that skilled labour is in short supply. But everything is clean, which pleases us. The food served is reasonably good and is mainly Chinese. The bread is French and superb. In the major towns, baguette filled with beef and served with black coffee - the world's best the French claimed - make an excellent breakfast. The hotel coffee house sells cakes made by the shop owned by another son; eclairs are the favourite, as they are everywhere, on the ferries crossing the Mekong. |
| Cosy hammocks From my hotel room I can see the great Mekong River with Thailand on the other side. Across the road is a China doctor and next to him a car repair shop. Later, we take a walk along the river to discover a posh area with vast spaces of wat, embassies and restaurants. Women are planting rice along mud flats of the river, young priests are picking flowers with long poles, and a man is sleeping in his hammock, a favourite contrivance for an afternoon siesta on land or on a lorry. People are very relaxed here and we are tickled by the sight of men sleeping or relaxing in their hammocks in the middle of day. The men at our hotel seemed to do nothing but practice golf strokes and drink beer and wine with their friends. Golf is the latest craze. A luxury golf course is being built at the nearby man-made lake created by a huge dam which exports electricity to Thailand. Except in the motor workshops, women appeared to do all the work. At a roadside repair stall, we watched a woman fix a motor cycle puncture and with practicsed skill and speed. We made friends with her two attractive children, one two years old and the other four. We hunted around for something to buy for them but in this simplest of countries there was nothing for kids. Eventually we were able to buy some sweets at a coffee stall round the corner. Yap, who worked on a project here for one or two years, told us that the ngau lam (beef served with rice flat noodles) is super. We investigated and finally located the place. It is run by a Cantonese woman from Vietnam and she has many things to say to my co-travellers who are from Ipoh. She speaks to her daughter in Cantonese and predicts that her daughter's children will not know her mother tongue. Feeling very much at home after the ngau lam, we looked for a book shop. We found one that stocked Lonely Planet's "Laos" (still spelt the French way, with an "s"). We spurned the many second hand copies and bought the latest issue, which cost RM55, a fabulous sum to pay in Lao as we were to discover with growing experience of the comparative value of money here. Back at the hotel, a curious salesman from China questions us about Malaysia and sells one of the girls a computer games set. We buy a tube of glue from him which we later discover to be only half full. Chinese itinerant salesmen are everywhere. These tough men and women, mainly from Yunnan, China , a northern neighbour, trudge several miles a day carrying baskets of mirrors, pens, knives, scissors, watches, glue, even computer games to sell from door to door. Entry into the Republic seems to be unrestricted. On a lonely road going south , stopping to buy oranges, we discovered a tiny place that cooked excellent food. The owner turned out to be a Catholic from Ho Chi Minh City. In Savannakhet, a few hundred miles south, we stopped at a "Chinese Food" sign. The owner was from Hunan. He had come from China with his wife and 3 year old son and set up shop with the cook, a man from Szechuan. Coffee shops ( I call them coffee shops for want of a better word) and restaurants seem to be operated by Chinese or Vietnamese. The only native cook we encountered was a man in Luang Prabang who had worked in southern France for 14 years. We were his first customers. He served us excellent lamb and duck. |
| Mekong River
Dolphins The southern Mekong River is the sanctuary of the rare Irrawaddy dolphin, which is credited with saving the lives of numberless fishermen and villagers. So we drove south to Champasak where at Don Khon, we hoped to be able to see them at play, but it was the rainy season and the dolphins, preferring the clear waters of the dry season, stayed away. From Lonely Planet we learnt of Wat Phu and decided to visit its Hindu sculptures which date from the Chenla Kingdom (6th to 8th centuries) to the Angkor period (9th to 13th centries). The Japanese are funding the restoration work and are building a museum. Lao hopes that restored Wat Phu, their "Angkor Wat," will attract visitors. This country is poor and has to depend on foreign aid to preserve what is left of its past. This point was brought home to us when we visited the war museum at Savanakhet and found it closed. A nurse at the training hospital next door told us in good English that its doors had been locked a long time. Satay seller on the ferry 
On the way back, our cross-Mekong ferry is stuck in the mud; the workers signal that we and another car should get off to lighten the load. (The workers here don't shout as they work, they quietly signal one another with their eyes and hands). We obeyed and sloshed through the mud to await the next ferry. These ferries are fundamental affairs - two or three pontoons slashed together and pulled or pushed by a little boat. Most of the cars coming off the ferry are stuck in the mud and have to be dragged up the road with ropes. The driver of the car that was ordered off the ferry before us, a fellow better dressed than the rest, helped pull on the ropes, getting his shoes trousers and hands dirty in the process. On the ferry we asked him why he had helped the boat hands. He replied in hesitant English : "I, government officer. I, duty help." It turned out that he was from the ministry of agriculture Vientiane and had come hundreds of miles south for a conference. Lao suffered fearful damage during the USA's "secret war." Between 1965 and 1973, two million tons of bombs were dropped on this country, more than the total that fell on Germany and Japan combined. "The most heavily bombed nation on a per capita basis in the history of warfare," says Lonely Planet. Unexploded ordinance (UXO), left over from years of war , cause 130 casualties a year. A clearance programme financed by the UN is helping to remove the UXO. To add to the suffering, the Americans poured 200,000 gallons of herbicides down from the air along the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail near Sepon, Savannakhet But the people we met did not seem scarred by the memory of those terrible days, probably because they were only babies in 1975, when the present government was established. They had the untroubled calmness of the Nepalese and the look of innocence of things past. And they are a kind people. During the few weeks we were there we did not hear any sounds raised in anger nor did we see children being scolded or beaten. The warmth and hospitality of the people reminded me of the people I had met on the streets of India, Pakistan and Nepal. This old world "we are one family " embracing warmth, lost in Malaya, thrives here. Photograph any group and, if they are eating something, they are sure to offer you what they have. And that is how I came to eat a fingerful of fried hornets and grubs which were delicious, especially the grubs. I thought they should go down very well with beer (Lao beer is only RM1.60 a large bottle). And I can never forget that woman in one of the hotels who offered us a share of her breakfast while we were waiting for our scrambled eggs. Except for the policemen at a sentry post near the casino north of the capital and a traffic officer at Vientiane we did not come across any policemen. Perhaps that is because theft and robbery are unknown, so Mr Chan (from KL) told us. And he had been working in this country 12 years. Lonely Planet was right when it said, "Many visitors have found Lao to be the highlight of the South-East Asian journey" # Lim Kean Chye |
| ______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page Book Review Baba Sayings Cheng Ean 's Fist Kongsi Gates Laotian Visit Penang's Development |
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Editorial consultants: Mr and Mrs Lim Teong Beng Technical advisor: Tony Ooi |
| ____________________ The Penang File Issue 25 |
Image of Penang Island by Tina Choong