Vientiane
Entranced by communism
Michael Sheridan
The sceptical traveller can become weary of miracles. For those fleeing the capitals of the Asian miracle — all exhaust fumes, construction noise and the constant electronic whirring of credit-card machines — the opiate reverie of Vientiane at dusk is a gentle balm. Around a fountain at the centre of town, a few foreigners linger over their yeasty Lao beers. Along the Mekong riverbanks the local drinkers, clad in tunics of people's liberation green, are making merry in a few makeshift bars set on stilts. An occasional whore makes a charmingly half-hearted attempt at banter. Much vodka was once downed in these decrepit establishments. But the vodka-drinkers long ago boarded the last Ilyushin-62 back to their dreary homeland and the Lao do not seem to miss them. Your typical Lao tippler always preferred Thai whisky to Russian firewater.
In theory one could approach the Lao embassy in Bangkok for a visa and await its pleasure for a week or two. In practice it is easier to make an overnight journey to the go-go Thai border town of Nong Khai and engage in negotiations in a bar run by an Australian gentleman. The customers, mainly American, are well stuck into their second or third Singha beers at nine in the morning. Most are of an age that suggests they came to this part of the world courtesy of Lyndon Baines Johnson and never went back.
This is the unlikely setting for arranging guaranteed admission to the Lao People's Democrat Republic — guaranteed, that is, by a large amount of Thai baht stapled into a folded official form. It works too, and by noon you have crossed the only bridge on the Mekong and are heading for downtown Vientiane, a mere 14 miles upriver. There is no need to alter the time on a watch after leaving Thailand. It is the calendar that must be adjusted to about 1979. Vientiane's leading hotels, mostly of an unmistakable Soviet variety, all turn out to be full of official delegations. Gigantic hoardings instruct the peasants and work- ers in the appropriate methods of following
TRAVEL
the Lao path to socialism. There are no taxis. There are no foreign newspapers apart from carefully vetted copies of the Bangkok Post, a journal less diverting than its title might suggest. Cyclostyled daily bulletins are available from the state news agency. These prove most informative about which party leaders have received the aforementioned official delegations or conducted inspections of rural improve- ment projects. Since the Lao government has no money, the Lao news agency has no foreign correspondents. Fortunately it has a fraternal contract with the Chinese agen- cy Xinhua, whose reports from the outside world are reproduced at length in French, so the reader never lacks up-to-date infor- mation on the verbatim proceedings of any meeting, anywhere, by any Chinese digni- tary. After all this it comes as a tremendous disappointment to discover that in some hotel rooms it is possible to receive CNN, although reassuring to know that the Lao are almost certainly not paying for it. The currency, which is called the kip, turns out to be non-convertible to any other on earth, not even the fraternal Vietnamese dong. The faded trappings of communism are only part of the charms of Vientiane. Not a single high-rise building violates its tranquil skyline. French colonial era houses and apartment buildings preserve a façade of elegance, even those crumbling under the assault of time and humidity. The city is adorned with numerous wats and temples, where cheerful worshippers come and go from dawn to dusk, bearing propitiatory offerings of fruits and flowers. It is perhaps the most welcoming Asian capital for any- one in search of a pre-globalised world. It suffers from neither the brash vulgarity of Saigon nor the pervasive air of tragedy that besets Phnom Penh. 'I asked one of the members of the government if Laos was still a communist country,' says one of the few resident foreign diplomats, `and he smiled and said, "Well, we are a Buddhist country." ' There has been very little foreign invest- ment in Laos. Chiefly, one suspects, this is because it is hard to see what the globalis- ing legions of merchant bankers and MBAs would make of the place. Laos simply does not fit into what a New York Times colum- nist recently christened the Paradigm. It has had enough dogma and displays little interest in the dogmas of management con- sultancy. The IMF has a couple of people housed in a white mansion in Vientiane, but the central bank appears to be asleep for much of the day. The principal export is opium. It is all irritatingly languid for the international dealmakers and, besides, Lao Aviation has never heard of frequent-flyer miles.
So Laos slumbers in comparative peace, a last unchallenged outpost of that other class of global expatriate, the aid worker. Foreign aid dollars are helping to keep up the excellent standards of French and Ital- ian cuisine in Vientiane. The cheerful Roman proprietor of the Opera restaurant, which occupies a prime site, is convinced he will make a fortune when a tidal wave of Thai money cascades across the Mekong. Perhaps. The Lao are wary of the predato- ry nature of Thai capitalism, which they can view every night on Thai television.
It is a useful clue to the nature of Lao communism that few people could name its principal architect. The late Comrade Kaysome Phomvihane, however, is com- memorated at a decaying museum of revo- lutionary struggle, located near the mansion where the men from the IMF sit pondering their unverifiable statistics. Comrade Kaysome was a puppet of the Vietnamese who conducted his class war for several decades until victory. His life is illustrated by photographs ranging from the era of rural insurrection until the happy times when he could mount the podium at assorted party congresses throughout the vanished communist empire. An enormous quantity of weapons, many of them, it is said, fired by Comrade Kaysome himself, are on display. So are Comrade Kaysome's coconut-shell rice bowl, his overcoat of banana palms, his knife and fork and his telephone. Pride of place, however, is reserved for the rusty chest-expander with which he toned his muscles for the revolu- tion. Any giggles at this exhibit draw a mys- tified stare from the official guide.
Laos may not have adopted the Paradigm, but at least its temples and restaurants are thriving while Comrade Kaysome and all his works are where they belong — in a museum. I hope the new masters of our universe leave its trance undisturbed for a year or two yet.
Previous page
