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Luang Prabang: Heart of Lightness
by Iwata Jun'ichi
Airy, delicate, feathery and weightless; synonyms of lightness. Luang Prabang is also fragile. Dainty, delicate, frail and breakable; synonyms of fragile. It is no accident that the old royal capital of Lane Xang, literally Million Elephants, its Lao heart light but fragile, is about to be placed on the World Heritage List.
Having not seen Luang Prabang for 25 years, a recent visitor, a professional western woman, was overheard saying in Vientiane, the Lao capital since 1545, "Much to my relief, Luang Prabang hadn't changed one bit."
Luang (great or royal) Prabang (large holy image) was the northern seat of monarchial power until the Pathet Lao pushed their revolution to victory in 1975. Since then, while the rest of the world prepared for the approaching 21st century, time has stood still in seemingly secluded, landlocked Laos--"A largely theoretical place from the Lao government's point of view," commented one resident and veteran of the Second Indochina War.
Land has kept a lock on Laos in general, but on insular Luang Prabang in particular. Flanked on all sides by mountains 1,000 (or more) meters high, pierced by a river that is too shallow too many months of the year to achieve effective transport, its centuries-old subsistence commerce has made external trade beside the point. Yet it is precisely commercial trade that encourages and even spins off the movement of people.
Enter 21st-century David G. Auty, a hotel and tourism development (key to the lock called growth) consultant for the World Bank. The Dusit Thani, the prestigious Thai hotel chain, in league with Vinay Inthavong, the Lao president of VICO (Vientiane International Consultant Office), has asked the World Bank for loans to construct hotels in Vientiane and Luang Prabang.
"As the World Bank sees it," said Auty, "tourism development in a landlocked country like Laos is immediately related to the growth of its civil aviation sector. Right now there aren't enough hotel rooms to service the two airlines that currently fly into Vientiane regularly, let alone Luang Prabang." Lao Aviation, Thai Airways and Vietnam Airlines, all regular fliers to Laos, have the potential to deliver 1,400 tourists per week to Vientiane already. "But there aren't half that number of hotel rooms in the whole country!" exclaimed Auty.
"What Luang Prabang doesn't need," said Wayne Arruda, "is farang kii nok" (literally "foreign bird shit" in Lao and Thai). Hailing from Massachusetts, Arruda, a five-year resident of Chiang Mai in neighboring Thailand, is scouting around for an unobtrusive site to situate 40 to 60 bungalows. Ivanhoe, a Canadian mining company, would like to build and operate such a resort on the banks of the Mekong opposite Luang Prabang.
Questioned about the prospects of Ivanhoe succeeding, Khamphao Bounnhong, Luang Prabang branch director of the National Tourism Authority, admitted that securing the land was a "big problem because 8 or 9 families own it. So we have invited Claude Vincent, director of Vientiane-based Sodetour, to make a comparable proposal in an abutting district where the district itself owns the real estate. That way we can move much faster."
Claude Vincent is the successful operator of a resort in Champasack province, a region all but adjacent to northeastern Cambodia and the site of Wat Phu, actually a classic Khmer ruin. But for either resort to succeed, Ivanhoe's or Sodetour's proposal would have to bear the expense of getting all utilities--electricity, water, telecommunications--across the river. Thus the aim of the local government is to get any foreign investor to underwrite this charge 100%. And there is no bridge, nor will there be any. Municipal ordinances also prohibit the cutting of trees on both banks. Building height is limited to the height of aged (2-story) temples--they number between 60 and 70.
"Farang kii nok is frequently used by the locals when referring to culturally insensitive tourists who are often identified by packs on their backs, Lonely Plant guidebooks in their hands, and clothed like hippies," explained Arruda. He adds, "These people have absolutely ruined Chiang Mai in only 10 years. Thank god the travel agents on Khao San Road, Bangkok, are still insisting on US$80 for a Lao visa. This is keeping them out of undefiled Laos." (According to the Lonely Planet guide, accommodations on Khao San Road go for as little as US$2 per night for a single.)
Arruda also likes to tell the story about a potential investor who asked the Luang Prabang municipality for permission to open an outdoor cafe "Mediterranean style" replete with colorful umbrellas and jazz music. "The guy was given a polite No," said Arruda, "unless he was willing to locate it 5 kilometers out of town where the only customers would be water buffalo."
Santi Inthavong, the proprietor of 11-room Villa de la Princesse, whose wife is the daughter of the late Lao crown prince who resided in Luang Prabang, is about to open a secluded, 14-room (2-story) hotel on an adjoining family property. So certain is its profitability that the Bank of the Lao PDR, the state bank in Vientiane, has loaned him 75% of the project's total value. (It's a well-known fact in Laos that all banks--there are 12--are awash with cash and far too few places to put it.)
Inthavong's success as a hotelier has enabled him to establish himself as the general manager of the Luang Prabang branch of Lanexang Travel & Tour Company, one of three premier travel companies in Laos. The branch itself was established in 1992, and was the first branch office of any Vientiane travel agency be established in the former royal capital.
Diethelm opened its branch last year, and Inter-Lao Tourism will open its branch in October. This dramatic increase is in variance with what is happening in Vientiane, 400 kilometers away. There, approximately a dozen agencies have failed to re-qualify, leaving about the same number in place.
"We don't have enough rooms or restaurants," complains Souk Rasmy, director of Luang Prabang Tourism, licensed by the Luang Prabang municipality in 1989, the year the country officially opened its doors to tourism, "and our only acceptable restaurants [for foreigners] are those in the better hotels. Besides arranging tours, Luang Prabang Tourism is a 20% investor in the Souvannaphoum Hotel with a new 20-room annex booked full for three months beginning this August. The Hotel also has a French partner in addition to Vientiane's Inter-Lao Tourism.
Pierre Mainetti, general manager of the 65-room Phou Vao Hotel, perhaps the most deluxe in Luang Prabang, says there are "too many rooms, presently 204 as opposed to approximately half that number a year ago." But if you count small guesthouses, the true figure is 404 said Bounnhong. The Phou Vao Hotel is owned by PANSEA, a 5-star group from Hong Kong with properties in Bali and Phuket. Phou Vao's first-year occupancy hovered around 45%, and as it enters year two, 55% is the target. "Our staff of 60 at US$40 per month can be expanded to 70 when things get busy during the high season," Mainetti admitted. He added, "As does most of our furniture, all major building contractors must come from Vientiane. People here are not knowledgeable about the construction trades."
Returning to the heart of the matter from a World Bank point of view, aviation will not be a problem. China Travel Service of Hong Kong is the foreign investor in the national air carrier and already flies one Boeing 737 on its international routes as well as the occasional charter. Yunnan Airlines just signed a memorandum of understanding in Kunming to be the foreign investor on domestic routes (a brand new French ATR-42 was just added to the fleet). Moreover, the international community has pledged over US$40 million to overhaul the creaking civil aviation infrastructure. In addition to helping a socialist brother, the Chinese clearly see Laos as a wise investment.
And although local officials say it may be many years before it will be easy or convenient to travel overland between northern Thailand and Luang Prabang, road travel to the Chinese border is becoming a reality. A fleet of high-speed river boats (four passengers maximum) are plying the Mekong and Ou rivers northward to Pakbeng and the Chinese bridge on the China Road respectively. There the locals and a scattering of diehard tourists are inching their way northward, some claiming to have done the entire trip in 12 hours. In late June the first Chines passenger boat transported 15 Thai tourists from Chiang Saen.
Compared with a virtually endless list of Occidental wonders beginning with three heaps of rocks called the Pyramids, Southeast Asia principally offers three princely sites: Barabudur, Angkor Wat and Pagan. Philip Rawson's The Art of Southeast Asia, a 288-page book found in every art scholar's library, devotes a paltry two paragraphs to Laos. So lilliputian it could pass through the eye of a needle, Luang Prabang, that fragile heart of lightness as delicate as an orchid and ethereal as cologne, is it about to be "discovered" and trampled under? (Never mind the sign which reads "Declare All Guns" near the Vientiane Airport boarding gate for Luang Prabang, but one wonders why it's in English!)