Isolated Splendor

by O.W. Wright

"You're absolutely right," said Hans. "This tossing, turning flight is reminiscent of black-and-white movies like Casablanca and Lost Horizon." My Swiss friend and I were en route to Luang Prabang on Lao Aviation Domestic. This day the ephemeral edge of the world was lost in blind corridor after blind corridor of naga-headed clouds generated and driven by a heat pump over the Bay of Bengal called the Southwest Monsoon.

The aircraft was an old 54-passenger Y-7 built on the Chinese mainland, its metallic props driven by twin engines that an hour ago had refused to start, forcing all of us on board to disembark at Wattay before we had even taken off. As a Kiplingesque character in Isan blue on the ground near the cockpit leaned whimsically on a closed umbrella, nimble grease monkeys attacked the starboard engine.

"Don't worry," I said to Hans as we stood on the wet tarmac within sight of the old Air America control tower. "The great thing about Lao mechanics is they can fix anything. The older it is, the more antique it is, so much the better. I've complete confidence in them."

Having again boarded the airplane, several mechanics cum technicians emerged from the cockpit clutching duct tape, bailing wire, pliers, a screwdriver and an assortment of monkey wrenches. Hans noticed that I gave them a compassionate smile. "Since you piloted aircraft in Indochina during the war," Hans said, "I trust your judgement."

"Well," I said, "old aircraft and experienced pilots shouldn't be underestimated. Despite the nonsense I despair over--like going round and round in circles instead of walking straight lines--the Lao do have many redeeming attributes. And neither are we non-Lao perfect. It's hard not to love these people. Looking at the world from a Lao perspective, they've been up against some pretty big obstacles. In many ways I can't help but admire them."

The obstacle half an hour later was finding a hole in the clouds through which to discover frail remnants of the former royal capital called Luang Prabang. Never the capital of Laos, this city of mist and mystery was the seat of a single king when there were anywhere from five to seven.

We found it, and the engines droned on, propelling us low as we twice crossed the brown Mekong like a great prehistoric bird in search of its nest. Below was the good green Asian earth reminiscent of so many insightful stories written by Pearl S. Buck.

Approaching the tiny airstrip was like setting clocks back to pre-World War Two, indeed a very black-and-white era. In my mind's eye we might be greeted by Humphrey Bogart or Greta Garbo. And if we weren't, well, the mind-set of locals might not be far different.

The next morning the residents of Luang Prabang woke up to gentle rain, which somehow seemed fitting on the very day of the Great Boat Race on the Nam Khan (Creeping River). When the rain-turned-drizzle tapered off, natives and a few foreigners--not much more than a handful in this last Shangri-La in Southeast Asia--started congregating on the narrow bending road beside the swollen river. The overhanging mountains, now fully revealed, were somehow not all dissimilar to those in The Sound of Music and South Pacific.

If the boat race was the principal attraction for the Lao, the multiplying throng of Lao was the main attraction for the handful of farang (foreigners). And they--the Lao--were wonderful in their physical diversity and variety of dress.

Hmong, of course, had descended from remote perches in surrounding mountains and walked about in what outsiders would call costumes. Even the tiniest Hmong child was decked out in colorful headdress and black tunic and trousers adorned with crisscrossing sashes in a rainbow of colors.

As for the sprightly Lao themselves, every other one seemed to carry an umbrella--warding off the sun as the clouds rose and the rain tarried in some adjacent valley to come back again--and all were linked hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm as though several thousand ambulating feet belonged to the same family. The longer you remain in Laos, the more you vow they do.

However, as though we were in some Greek or Roman theater, the steep sweep of concave bank above and below the road were festooned with inquisitive people who had the forethought to claim the best seats. Above them, one could see tile tops of miniature Buddhist temples, many crowned by cascading fronds of coconut trees looking like becalmed whirling dervishes.

Under an enormous natural canopy of deep-green banana leaves, at the upriver end of the concave curve waited the patient boatmen. Reminiscent of smooth-skinned Hiawathas all, two abreast in a file of twenty or thirty, in pencil-like boats they waited patiently for their turn to race.

At some unseen or unheard signal to foreign eyes or ears, they rowed silently forward in mechanical precision to the starting point, a barge-like boat moored in the middle of the Nam Khan. Once there, a man in each of the two sterns held fast to a rope tossed down from the vessel. This was released by each man as soon as a whistle was blown and a cannon-like shout shot across swirling waters.

The oarsmen leaned into it immediately and there was a great din and rushing of brown water as 40 or 50 paddles dipped, pulled and raised only to be dipped, pulled and raised again. The boat itself became like a great coiled spring coming unwound, the belly in the middle seeming to spring up as the bow and stern sprung down, propelling the wooden craft faster forward.

There was much cheering from an almost-out-of-sight chorus of spectators who had silently lined the Nam Khan in private pirogues lined end-to-end and three or four deep at the muddy edge of the steep rain-soaked banks of the river. It was as if a clap of thunder had rolled down a long valley, picking up speed and sound as it neared some natural barrier at the distant end.

At the finish line, marked by a red flag on a stick fastened in the bow of an empty dugout, the team in the lead immediately raised its oars skyward in one sweeping motion as if to salute in victory. But all was not over, the winner of the pair having won to race against another winner. And it took several hours after the races began for the victor to be proclaimed.

Admittedly, each boat-racing pair looked like any other, and the milling, churning crowd perambulating the full length of the road obviously felt the same. There was a tendency for everyone to press against the guardrail as the pencil-thin boats went speeding by--and all Luang Prabang, like a great ship, seemed to list to starboard, almost rolling over. But then the water-borne comet was past and the crowd returned to the fun of seeing and being seen.

Finding myself at the very end of Nam Khan River Road, this gave me the perfect opportunity to walk across the grounds of Aphai Temple, a delightful cluster of buildings easily seen from the top of Phou Si when looking East. Here I was fascinated by fathers and children walking round and round the portico porch of the sim (main temple).

Little wonder. In over 100 colorful hand-painted pictures, here was the "creation story" known to Lao by heart. It begins with a dove-like bird sitting on a nest of eggs. But it was the postscript picture to the story that utterly surprised me. It was a polychrome scene of a modern hi-rise city. It looked a lot like Moscow, replete with the semblance of Lenin's tomb in Red Square.

I decided to make an inquiry of a boy-monk who followed me around and spoke very rusty English, so rusty, in fact, there were very few moving parts. "This is Soviet, yes? This is Russki, yes?" I said pointing to what was an obvious Moscow skyline. Likewise pointing, the boy-monk replied, "Yes, Soviet. Yes, Russki. Yes, Moscow."

I was thinking there was no more to see, but then in Lao language I discovered a "credit" at the bottom of the PS. A Luang Prabang family had emigrated abroad and sent money to local artists to paint, the donors thereby earning merit in this life. Although their message of thanks was written in curling looping script, their new country of residence was boldly displayed using classical Roman letters: USA. Magnifying the geographic contradiction, the artwork was dated 1993, by which time the word "Soviet" had been dismissed to the dustbin of history.

As a native American, the bold discrepancy made it difficult to contain myself, and I almost laughed out loud at the innocent faux pas. However, the paintbrush blunder was made less of a fault as I walked back to the finish line. I passed a strolling smiling Lao youth wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "May your dreams come true." Coupled with the Cold War being consigned to not much more than a pawn shop, the message restored my faith in humanity, dreams being universal.

By late afternoon I started strolling homeward to the Phou Vao Hotel. In miniature temple pavilions teenaged monks beat drums and clashed cymbals, a few in rhythm with background music--yes, Thai--played on cassette recorders. Women lit charcoal fires to prepare sticky rice. Aboard truck-like buses that would carry them home, sleepy-eyed children clutched young mothers.

All was serene again among the temples in this near make-believe provincial town, and finally I caught myself gazing down on it from kite hill, the meaning of phou vao. It was at this point that Hans and I rapturously took in the isolated splendor of Luang Prabang. And he asked me what I really thought about it deep down inside, his own opinion being it somehow resembled a cross between rural France and mountainous Bhutan.

"I think it's something like this," I said. "See that airplane preparing to land?" I pointed to it. "The world is a kite. The plane is descending the string. At the bottom is Luang Prabang. This is where I want to be. To escape to, few such tranquil places are left. Of course it's particularly nice living in a largely insulated world where, on one hand, most inhabitants still have it that the earth is flat and, on the other, Adam and Eve might be sighted any minute--I hope you've noticed the climate isn't right for apples!"

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