Paying Homage to Henri Mouhot
When he at last succumbed to malarial fever, Henri Mouhot was just ten kilometres from Luang Prabang. He had tramped his way across mainland Southeast Asia for three years, between 1858 and 1861, living for months in the Cambodian jungle, amongst “the savage Stiens”, where tigers were such a constant menace that he slept with a loaded gun. He had visited the ruins at Angkor, which were being torn apart and swallowed in places by a resurgent jungle; locals told him the temples were built by god or giants and Mouhot, with no knowledge of India, couldn’t offer a more plausible explanation. When he penetrated the hardwood forests of Laos on the back of an elephant, he was the first white man in 25 years to enter the kingdom – or what was left of it after Thailand and Vietnam had casually picked Laos apart – and it was only at the very end that Mouhot’s health gave out. Around him, people regularly suffered from “the pestilential miasmata”, but he had a regimen – “abstinence, all but total, from wine and spirits, and drinking only tea, never cold water” – that he credited for his sustained good health.
Mouhot died on October 29, 1861, beside the Nam Khan River. He was 35. His servant Phrai sent Mouhot’s journals – “scribbled generally by the light of a torch, and on my knees at the foot of a tree, amidst interruptions of all sorts, of which the mosquitoes are not the least annoying” – to the French ambassador in Siam. Three years later they were published in two volumes, both of which are now in the public domain. In the preface, Mouhot’s brother thanks Phrai, who accompanied the explorer everywhere. “Phrai is delighted to attend me, and to run about the woods all day,” Mouhot wrote, soon after the two men met, “and I am not less pleased with our bargain, for his knowledge of the country, his activity, his intelligence, and attachment to me, are invaluable.” The bond between the two was so strong, by the end, that Mouhot worried Phrai might die for him, but he still referred to his servants as “boys” and wherever he went, Mouhot looked at Southeast Asia with a European’s jaundiced eye.
While Mouhot was in Cambodia in 1859, his countrymen were planting France’s tricolore in Saigon. By 1893, the French conquest of Indochina was complete; Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos had been incorporated into a French protectorate, and gunboat diplomacy had left Thailand with a territory reduced at every side. Mouhot was posthumously accused of being at the vanguard of European imperialism, but in spite of his stage-whispered assessments of Bangkok’s fortifications, he was mostly an old-fashioned naturalist, more interested in skinning monkeys and digging up worms than military conquest, and his colonial views were an inescapable – if inexcusable – product of his time. He collected and carefully packed specimens of plants and animals across the region, and classified hundreds of species for science. His journals are scattered with observations of geology, meteorology and anthropology, with a breadth of scientific knowledge that modern travel writers can only admire.
Mouhot was an old-fashioned Christian too, constantly worrying about Southeast Asia’s heathen soul. Religion gave him a network; it was also a bulwark against loneliness, because he stayed with missionaries everywhere except for Laos. They introduced him to government officials and tribal chiefs, who provided Mouhot with the oxen, ponies and elephants he needed to haul his baggage. “Their life,” he wrote of Southeast Asia’s missionaries, “is one of the hardest and most painful, and requires self-sacrifice more than any other. Exposed to the influence of pernicious climates, badly lodged, badly fed, far from their families and from their country, often ill and dying without help — such is the lot of these men.”
Mouhot’s condescending view of Buddhism and Animism skews his writing more than his colonial mindset. The latter only increased his interest in the workings of Southeast Asia’s governments. Christian disdain had the opposite effect, and Mouhot ignored obvious religious differences when speculating on the origins of Angkor. I read his journals in Luang Prabang, beside the Nam Khan, just downriver from where he died, but it was only when I went to find his grave that I realised how blasé Mouhot could be. He took informal audiences with the kings of Southeast Asia for granted and whined bitterly when officials were unwilling to give him accommodation, transport or any kind of help. Although he rarely mentions it, Mouhot travelled with a long baggage train, a retinue of servants and a seemingly endless supply of gifts, and the comforts of his journey are as difficult for today’s travellers to appreciate as the astonishing discomforts.
Mouhot reserved his wonder for nature, not people; in Luang Prabang, which he reached in July 1861 and was trying to return to when he died, he considered the locals “dull and apathetic and full of small vices.” “But for the people,” he wrote, “Louang Prabang would be one of the most charming places in the world.” When I cycled to his grave, which was lost to the jungle until 1990, Laos’ people proved Mouhot wrong. I appreciate small vices and by the time I got back to Luang Prabang I was drunk on Lao moonshine and the kindness of Laotians, whose hospitality had convinced me that Luang Prabang is one of the most charming places in the world.
I have collected passages from Mouhot’s journals and interspersed them with extracts from my own, written on my journey to his tomb. Old travelogues need excavation, but monuments to their authors are rare, and my journey to pay homage to Henri Mouhot was an opportunity to reflect on what has changed – in travel, in Laos, in the ways a foreigner is welcomed by its people – and what has stayed the same. Continue reading Paying Homage to Henri Mouhot»
Luang Prabang: The Elements of Heritage
Luang Prabang is a riddle that photographs can solve. It is a town popular with tourists and a World Heritage site, but it rarely feels overrun. It is like a sprawling resort in places, with a commerce given over to foreign comforts, but it is not a colony on the Banana Pancake Trail. Instead, Luang Prabang is tranquil. The Mekong and its bubbling tributary, the Nam Khan, wrap around the historic district and meet at its eastern tip, punctuating time with the river sounds of Southeast Asia – with the hum of motorboats and squeals of swimming children, with the plop of hand nets and sploosh of oars. Bamboo groves and palm trees arch over its riverbanks, and the jungle has not yet been banished by urban sprawl; it covers the town protectively, and looking down from the limestone hills that surround the town, nothing but the golden tips of Buddhist stupas remain visible above the green fecundity of trees.
Luang Prabang is a riddle because it has no single wonder to leave you awestruck, but the town pries its way into your imagination all the same. It has the elegant temples of Southeast Asia, with roofs tiered like loose skin on the arch of a dragon’s back, but in and of themselves, its temples are not especially remarkable. It has novice monks moving between the duties of a carefully structured day, in ochre and saffron robes set off by the browns of teak, brick and rust, but monks are a part of life across the region. Its architecture is a blend of indigenous and French styles, with elements borrowed from Laos’ neighbours, but its mixture of timber and brick, shuttered windows and ornamental eaves can be found throughout old Indochina. Its animals are remarkable, especially its dogs; they are left to take themselves on walks, but stay friendly, greedily chasing after a stroke. There are cats too, with broken tails, and chickens clucking and pecking in vegetable patches on the river banks. Luang Prabang is not wholly urban, nor is it rural: it is a town of distinct parts and mingled pasts that has held onto its soul, and with photographs you can frame the elements of its heritage individually and start to unravel the riddle. Continue reading Luang Prabang: The Elements of Heritage»
An Alternative to Tubing in Vang Vieng
Claire and I went to Vang Vieng to laze in a grove of Edenic green. It was a picture-perfect fantasy, conjured up by a postcard in Vientiane labelled Blue Lagoon, but we were curious too. Vang Vieng was where drug-addled backpackers bobbed downriver in tyre tubes, and its ugly reality did not come as a surprise when we arrived, or even a disappointment. The town pandered to the depths of hedonism, and its signboards promising cold beer, blaring hip hop and reruns of Family Guy and Friends were like a parody of Western culture, as if the joke was on us. It was laughable and dispiriting by turns, but on the day we rode out to find landlocked Laos’ Blue Lagoon, pedalling mountain bikes over a bamboo toll bridge and along a dusty track, into farmland, we found a reason to return to Vang Vieng.
Rain started pouring down in heavy, languid drops. The track became slippery, forcing us to pedal quickly through deep puddles, spraying mud. It covered us up to our necks in a layer of brown, like the buffaloes around us, wallowing idly in the paddy fields. There were signposts at intervals, pointing to caves with Buddha idols in their depths and a variety of Blue Lagoons; if we hadn’t stopped to play with a litter of puppies, we might have paid 20,000 kip for access to the wrong pool of water.
The puppies’ owner was a Thai man with a small homestead set beside the road, kilometres from the closest settlement. He said he had been a jungle monk at home, but now he was married to a Lao woman, with whom he meditated every evening, in their home of crooked logs without electric light. The couple had chickens and a garden planted with vegetables, basil, lemongrass, bananas and pineapples; the only food they bought was rice. They had placed three tables in the garden and optimistically opened a restaurant, where Claire and I promised to eat on our way back. We did, and the slices of pineapple served with our fried rice were sweet and soft, without a trace of stringy fibre. The Thai man warned us to ignore the signs to other pools, and pointed us in the direction of the postcard’s Blue Lagoon; it was about five kilometres away, he said, past a village and over two more bridges, where we saw children cavorting naked in the clear river water, and wondered why we were cycling further, our arms aching from the dirt road’s constant bumps. Continue reading An Alternative to Tubing in Vang Vieng»
Land of the Banana Pancake Eaters
They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-Eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return.
Homer, The Odyssey
At first, the sheer ease of travelling in Southeast Asia came as a pleasant shock. After flying in from Calcutta, Bangkok’s budget hotels seemed exceptionally clean, and were as affordable as their Indian equivalents. We didn’t need to trek halfway across the city to buy bus tickets from dingy ticket offices filled with aggressive queue jumpers; they were sold by agents for the same price. We spent our first month between Bangkok and an idyllic island in the Gulf of Thailand, without any of the familiar hassles and challenges of travel, and when our Thai visas expired, we continued into Laos. My thoughts often turned to India and the twelve months I’d spent travelling there, testing and tormenting myself on long sweaty journeys to vast, polluted cities where a concrete box with a creaky overhead fan was often all I could get for my money. Had all the hassles and challenges been worth it?
The day I arrived in Vang Vieng the answer slapped me in the face. Or, rather, a few dozen pairs of barely-bikinied breasts slapped me in the face, closely pursued by as many pairs of luminous shorts, emblazoned with Vang Vieng, In the Tubing.
Vang Vieng is famous – in Australia. To most eighteen year old backpackers – and like-minded twenty-somethings – Vang Vieng is the highlight of any coming-of-age jaunt around Southeast Asia. To other travellers, it is a small town in northern Laos where people hire rubber tubes and float down the Nam Song River, stopping at ramshackle bars along the riverbank to drink buckets of whiskey and coke, or truly test their endurance with opium-laced cocktails or a bucket of magic mushrooms blended with fruit juice, hoping to god they won’t need to swim. Several travellers die every year, most from drowning or cracking their skulls on a rock. There are several tragic stories of people swimming after runaway tubes, only to disappear in the current – for the sake of a seven dollar deposit. Some float their way to the end of the tubing course in the dark, having lost track of time, and are robbed by groups of teenage locals who pretend to be helping them ashore. Continue reading Land of the Banana Pancake Eaters»
Off the Record in Vientiane
A man I met in Vientiane, who spoke eloquently about the city and how it had changed, initially gave short, guarded answers to my questions. When I promised not to quote him, he opened up, but I couldn’t fit what he said into my portrait of the Chinese people changing Laos without either revealing his identity or allowing faceless, out-of-context accusations to creep into my narrative. I’ve transcribed a part of my conversation with him instead, and published it below. Among other things, it contains some strong criticisms of the path Laos’ government has chosen; they may or may not be well founded, but are at least an indication of what some people in Vientiane think.
How has Vientiane changed in your lifetime?
In the eighties, there were no cars on the road, no restaurants, nothing. It was dead after six o’ clock. You could lie down on the main road.
Wow! It’s changed a lot. Is that all in the last twenty years?
Mostly in the last five years. The tallest building was the government office – seven storeys. Now there are all these high rise buildings under construction.
How do people feel about the changes?
They have mixed feelings.
Do they think that their quality of life has improved?
In what sense? Happiness? How do you measure this? Continue reading Off the Record in Vientiane»
South African in China
Shanghai is mainland China’s most cosmopolitan and outward looking city. It is – in a line that was used and reused, ad nauseum, ahead of the city’s World Expo last year – China’s window on the world, with a population of well over 200,000 expatriates. There are Japanese and Koreans tucked away in neighbourhoods that they have made their own; in the old concession areas, there are Germans, French and Americans making a life amongst the buildings put up by their pre-1949 forebears. Chilean students mix with Nigerians, Norwegians, Turks and Scots in its dive bars on Friday nights, and there are even a few South Africans, who meet once a month at a pub called The Spot, to drink and complain, about China and home in equal measure, and to help each other find Prestik, Western Cape wines and boerewors, made by a butcher in a suburb on the city’s outskirts. For three years, from 2008 to 2011, Iain and I were two of them.
The Chinese are still not used to all the foreigners they now find living amongst them and, in the course of three years, we found ourselves having exactly the same curious conversation with different locals on a hundred different occasions.
“Which country are you from?” the local would ask. “America? France?”
“No, I’m from South Africa,” I’d reply, forming the words clearly, knowing it wasn’t what they were expecting to hear.
“South America?”
“No – South Africa.”
“South Africa?”
“Yes.”
“Aah…”
A few seconds would pass as he or she processed my response. Sometimes they’d continue by asking which country in South Africa I came from. ‘South’ and ‘southern’ are as distinguishable in Chinese as in English, but the question didn’t surprise me: I have been asked it everywhere from India to Egypt, by the educated and the ignorant. Many people simply don’t know where South Africa is; I have accepted that. The next part of the conversation was more confounding.
“But you’re white! You can’t be South African!” they’d say, frowning at my pale skin.
“Well, I am.”
“But people from Africa are all black!” they’d protest.
“South Africa also has white people,” I’d say. “About ten percent of the population is white.” The more I was faced with this logic, the more I felt like I was having an argument over my own identity. “There are all kinds of people there – lots of different races,” I’d say, but this didn’t satisfy the Chinese, who think of race and nationality as things that are more or less the same. The people of China’s diaspora, whose families might have lived in the US or Canada or the UK for generations, are still Chinese. Iain and I must, as a result, still be European.
“Aah… So your parents must be from England,” the local would continue. “That’s why you’re white!”
“Well, originally my mother is – yes. But lots of white South Africans have Dutch ancestry, including my family. That goes back hundreds of years. We are white South Africans – not Europeans.”
“So you are a British person.”
“No, I’m not. I’m South African.”
“You can’t be – you’re white.” Continue reading South African in China»
The Chinese of Vientiane
Part I: New Arrivals
On the banks of the Mekong in Vientiane, there is a Chinese temple that is empty for most of the day. The city’s children use its concrete parking lot to practice BMX and skateboard tricks, popping Ollies and kickflips in torn jeans and t-shirts with obscure English prints – like Your Momma Is My Bitch, on a podgy boy of about twelve. The dragons and roosters on the temple’s roof are coated in waterproof enamel, a layer of primary colour that is strikingly new, because Laos’ temples and monasteries are mostly dilapidated, with paint and mould peeling off their sun-bleached walls. Inside the temple, an electric pump pours water into a stone tank and a polished Buddha presides over the empty room. There is a plastic seat for an attendant beside the shrine, but when I visited even he wasn’t there. His pack of cigarettes, with a photograph on it of orchids bobbing on water in a copper bowl, was the only sign of ordinary life.
Opposite the temple, across the Mekong, is the Thai town of Phan Phrao. Phan Phrao was originally a part of Vientiane, but in 1887, when France drew up the borders of its new protectorate in Southeast Asia, the Mekong was used as a boundary. Vientiane was cut in half. If it had still been Laos’ capital, the French would have been guilty of exactly the sort of brash land grab for which European colonialism is reviled, but in 1887 Vientiane was not the capital of Laos. It had been annexed by Siam in 1779 and in 1827, during a rebellion, it was razed by a Siamese army. The Emerald Buddha was carried off with the spoils. It is now a talisman of the Thai kings, enshrined at the royal Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok.
At night, smugglers cross the river with products Laos cannot manufacture itself. It is a tempting run. Although Laos is a member of the ASEAN trading bloc, it imposes duties of up to 40 percent on imports from Thailand. The crossing is simple too, a straightforward A to B over unpatrolled water. The Mekong is a few hundred metres wide where it flows past Vientiane, but the water is sluggish and heavy with silt. On the Lao side, a wide sandbar called Don Chan Island halves the distance from riverbank to riverbank. Don Chan is, for the moment, just a strip of mud and scrub, but a joint venture with a Chinese company and 180 million dollars of cheap Chinese loans will soon transform it into an island of wealth, with apartments and offices, a shopping centre, a hotel, an entertainment complex, a medical centre and an international school.
Even my Lonely Planet guidebook, which I normally dismissed as a vapid guide to Southeast Asia’s banana-pancake trail, contained a reference to the Chinese presence in the city. Fifty thousand labourers from China had moved in, it said, as part of a deal between the two countries’ governments. In return, China had built the city’s stadium for the Southeast Asian games, along with the road to it. A waiter at the Mekong View Café told me that the empty temple was built for these 50,000 new arrivals. It might have explained why nobody ever paid their respects to the deity inside: Laos had apparently reneged on the agreement, with the lame excuse that the wrong official had signed the papers. But my waiter had been wrong. Fude Temple was established in 1968, by immigrants from China’s Guangdong province; its parking lot was smooth and its coat of enamel still bright because as part of the redevelopment of the promenade along the Mekong – a project funded by Korea – the old temple had been knocked down and rebuilt. Continue reading The Chinese of Vientiane»
No Biltong, No Gucci, No 繁體字
Old World Wandering has been nominated for the South African Blog Awards. To win, we need to collect more votes than South Africa’s largest travel magazine, Getaway, which explains the first of the four images below. The other three were inspired by our last few weeks in Hong Kong, where we’ve felt more like jobless vagrants than we normally do.
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- When it arrives, click on the link in the body to confirm your vote
