Soaking in Luang Prabang

Benedict Anderson attends the Water Festival in Laos

In 1994, torpid Unesco awoke to the reality that Luang Prabang, the tiny royal capital of colonial-era Laos – core population about 16,000 – is the best-preserved, most beautiful old town left in South-East Asia, and so, the following year, solemnly declared it a World Heritage Site. ‘Besides, it’s true,’ as we used to say. The town is set on a remote bend of the legendary Mekong River, which runs almost 4500 kilometres from the Tibetan plateau down to the China Sea near Saigon, with only two bridges along its entire length. It is ringed with majestic, bluish tropical mountains that, when the burning swidden fields create the right pollution, seem to come straight out of the most bewitching Sung landscapes. In its heart is the hundred-metre-high hill of Phou Si, crowned with a restored Buddhist stupa (nicely floodlit at night) and an abandoned Russian antiaircraft gun. Below is a town that one can stroll across in 25 minutes but which has about forty elegant, modest Buddhist temple complexes, almost all warm browns, blues and whites, backed by huge bo trees, and opal-fired with the saffron robes of monks and novices. Here and there, one picks out former residences and office buildings of French colonials, which have by now acquired the charm of gentle provincial decay. Not a Hilton or Hyatt in sight: no Burger King, McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts. One BMW.

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Vol. 20 No. 12 · 18 June 1998 » Benedict Anderson » Soaking in Luang Prabang (print version)
Pages 22-24 | 3785 words

Letters

From Aidan Foster-Carter

The Lao way with water goes beyond the fun and games described by Benedict Anderson (LRB, 18 June). Soon after taking power, the Communist Government decided to erect outdoor loudspeakers, the better to harangue the masses. The proletarians entrusted with the task carefully tilted all the megaphones slightly upwards. At the first monsoon the megaphones filled with rain, drowning the propaganda for good. Since then the authorities have wisely left the people in peace.

Aidan Foster-Carter
Shipley, West Yorkshire

From David Mason

Aidan Foster-Carter (Letters, 16 July) is wrong about the Lao loudspeakers: they were still operating in Vientiane last year, providing a cost-effective version of a Walkman to those jogging along the banks of the Mekong in the early morning. They have not left the people in peace, nor do they ‘harangue the masses’. They relay state radio, leaving one wondering if the Lao news bulletins are preferable to the Radio One versions wafting across the river from Thailand.

In a country short on mass media (Lao, not Thai) public speakers provide some communication at least. The most interesting example of mass communication I came across – in a remote village – was a van with loud-hailer lumbering down a rutted road offering small fortunes for aphrodisiac lizard supplies.

David Mason
Tillington, Hereford

From Tim Sharp

Any guide-book would have told Benedict Anderson (LRB, 18 June) that the Lao festival of Songkran is a solar, not a lunar, festival. (It’s the only one in an otherwise lunar calendar.) The better ones also point out that the beauty contest to choose Miss Songkran (Anderson’s Miss Luang Prabang) is the oldest element of the festival, dating back to prehistoric fertility rites. It therefore follows that the contest is not ‘a commercial innovation of the late Sixties monarchy’. Grand father Nyeu and Grand mother Nyeu are indeed the original ancestors of the aboriginal peoples of the Mekong region and thus very ancient indeed, but they usually have their own festival and have nothing to do with either Songkran or fertility rites. As for the ‘corrupt, disliked traffic police’ of ‘many urban parts of Thailand … who, for the duration of Songkran, have to smile grimly as they are doused by all and sundry’, I have to say that in 34 Songkrans, I have seen lots of doused Thai traffic police but not one grim smile among them.

Tim Sharp
Chiang Mai, Thailand