Matt Schiavenza From the Dragon to the Apple- A Sinophile in New York

Laos

Today is the sixth day of my trip to Laos, a trip that has certainly been a long time coming. I had originally planned to come to Laos in 2005, the year I took my first trip to Southeast Asia. Instead, I got stuck in Thailand. In each subsequent trip to Southeast Asia, as well during the years I lived in neighboring Yunnan Province, I had wanted to come but never got the opportunity.

Finally, I've made it. I can say with certainty that Laos is worth the wait.

First, a little backstory as Laos is still fairly obscure to most Western readers. Laos is a small, landlocked, largely agrarian country on mainland Southeast Asian and was for many years the backwater of French-controlled Indochina. Like its neighbors Cambodia and Vietnam, Laos received its independence in the 1950s from the French but soon thereafter became embroiled in the American war in Indochina. As part of the so-called 'Ho Chi Minh trail', Laos was the recipient of a secret bombing campaign ordered by the Nixon administration intending to disrupt supply routes to North Vietnam. To this day, no country on earth has been bombed as much as Laos, and unexploded ordnance still dots much of the eastern part of the country.

Like Vietnam, Laos came under full Communist rule in the mid 1970s and remains a Communist state today. At many monuments I've seen signs and plaques pointedly referencing Laos' friendship with other socialist states, such as its principal benefactor China.

Today, Laos is perhaps the least developed and poorest country in all of East Asia. There are no skyscrapers, modern highways, railroads, or much modern infrastructure anywhere in the entire country. Much of the population still lives in thatched-roof huts in the countryside, practicing subsistence farming. Lao cities are full of crumbling buildings left over from the French colonial days, and the evidence of Chinese investment remains scant.

The Lao people are gentle and kind- even the panhandlers smile and walk away when you reject their advances. Much of the population seems to siesta for about four or five hours a day, a practice that I've adopted myself. 

Luang Prabang, where I sit now, is a beautiful colonial town on the banks of the Mekong and one of the most charming places I've ever been to in all of Asia. The poverty and lack of development perhaps have not stopped this city from having some of the finest restaurants I've been to on the continent, all within a reasonable backpacker's budget. Two days ago I visited a waterfall park full of Lao and foreign people and encountered a mixed group playing bocce ball together.

That, to me, is what makes this place so nice. Laos seems to have adjusted to tourism better than any of its neighbors by far, and the Lao people seem unperterbed by the masses of large, big-nosed pale-skinned foreigners who descend on their country year after year. If anything, they're proud and welcoming. And judging by the beauty of their landscape, there's much to be proud of.  

Granted, Laos ranks very low on most human development indeces, and poverty here remains rife. However, there is a certain immeasureable quality to the life here, one that I suspect will entice travelers, such as this one, to wish to come back.