Cold beer, smiling people, stable growth: where Gordon should have gone on holiday
Paul Theroux, in The Great Railway Bazaar, paints a louche portrait of the capital of Laos. ‘The brothels are cleaner than the hostels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco and opium is easier to find than a cold glass of beer,’ he wrote in 1975. When Theroux finally got his beer, the waitress told him sex was on the menu too. Gosh, if only I’d know about Vientiane in my gap year. It might have taught me more about the real world than three months at the British Institute in Florence and a lost week in Fez. These days, of course, Laos is firmly on the gap-year trail, but Vientiane (one hour from Bangkok by air or 11 by train) has cleaned up its act. If you want a cold beer and a smoke in a pristine hostel, it’s not difficult to arrange. If you want to relax in a brothel with an opium pipe, well, I suspect you need to know the right people.
Actually, the Vientiane of 30 years ago had every excuse to resemble a 20th-century version of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden Of Earthly Delights’. Laos was emerging from the horrors of the Vietnam war, during which America had inflicted a sustained and brutal bombing campaign on this defenceless country. If you subscribe to the theory that US foreign policy since the second world war has been dictated by naked self-interest tinged with evil, then the bombing of Laos provides compelling evidence. Quite simply, thanks to the Yanks, Laos has the distinction of being the most bombed country per head of population in the history of the world, primarily because the strategic Ho Chi Minh Trail ran straight through it. These weren’t ordinary bombs either: some were built to explode late, causing maximum damage to life and limb; others were designed like tennis balls so children would pick them up. They are still picking them up today.
That’s why any tour of Vientiane must include the visitor centre at the Co-operative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (Cope), where America’s legacy is exposed in chilling detail. Every year there are new casualties, mainly children, from unexploded bombs mistaken for toys or scrap. ‘Can you imagine the psychological damage that a sky permanently full of falling bombs could have done to the people of Laos?’ says the inspirational Jo Pereira, who runs the centre. ‘And yet they keep on smiling. They bear no resentment at all.’ The end of the Vietnam war was one watershed in the history of this former French protectorate. Equally important was the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991 the dead hand of communism was removed and Western influence and aid began to infiltrate. Suddenly billboards advocating the benefits of socialism were replaced by ads for PepsiCola. There are still (very wise) restrictions on some exports from the West (no McDonald’s, Burger King or KFC), but the government is intelligent enough to take what it needs from its friends, west and east. The result is that Vientiane enjoys the kind of enlightened socialism which would have existed in Animal Farm had Snowball prevailed over Napoleon.
Gordon Brown really should have spent his summer holiday in Laos rather than Suffolk. Here is an expanding economy, underpinned by strong investment flows and exemplified by new buildings (not apartment blocks that no one can afford to live in) springing up everywhere. After an excellent dinner at a Vientiane pizzeria, the owner proudly showed us the hotel he was building next door. This and countless other projects are sustainable because growth in Laos is currently 7 per cent and the country is surrounded by some of the fastest growing economies in the world: China, Vietnam, Thailand. Meanwhile, spending on infrastructure and public services has positive and discernible results. Inflation is under control, despite rising fuel costs, and the government’s insistence on tailoring expenditure to revenue means prospects are bright. Are you watching, Mr Brown?
If the heart of Vientiane is the Mekong, the fast-flowing river that separates Laos from Thailand, its soul is Wat Sisaket, the city’s oldest surviving Buddhist temple. When Thailand invaded Laos in 1828 the whole city was sacked, with only Wat Sisaket spared. Today it is home to more than 2,000 Buddhas of all shapes and sizes and a haven of tranquillity in a bustling city centre where there is at least one serious road accident every day. Meanwhile, half a mile from Wat Sisaket down elegant Lang Xang Avenue is the Victory Gate of Vientiane, a pastiche of the Arc de Triomphe which has been under construction since 1962 — a monument to hubris. Superb new offices for the prime minister are being built in its shadow, and one hopes history and hubris do not repeat themselves. The panoramic views from the top of the Victory Gate underline that fact that Vientiane, despite its building programme, retains green spaces and an almost villagey feel.
In earlier City Lives from Liverpool and Leeds, I was struck by the discrepancies between regenerated city centres and dilapidated, crime-infested suburbs. Croxteth and Beeston, Toxteth and Harehills, riddled with poverty and despair, had nothing in common with the glistening new shopping centres and offices downtown. This contrast was utterly absent in Vientiane. I spent a fascinating afternoon in one of the poorer areas of the capital, where a friend had a suit made for £30 by a smiling and accomplished tailor, and where the strength of the family unit was universally evident. Contrast that, if you will, with three generations of chronic family breakdown in Britain’s inner cities. On the edge of town, meanwhile, were the paddy fields, the engine of the old Laotian economy. T.S. Eliot wrote that the first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it. Well, Vientiane smells good. What’s more, even from the precarious vantage point of a tuk tuk, Southeast Asia’s ubiquitous motorised rickshaw, it feels good too.
For centuries, Laos has been the Poland of Southeast Asia, a country constantly at risk from greedy, aggressive neighbours. Now it is beginning to assert its independence — and how its friendly inhabitants deserve this new dawn. My stay in Vientiane culminated in a spectacular wedding overlooking the Mekong, where all cultures, classes and countries sang, danced and drank in blissful harmony. There was plenty of ice cold beer, but no opium. Paul Theroux would have approved.
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