Window on Southeast Asia:
Luang Phabang: The Lao Fairy-tale City
continued
Eventually, as I got further off the beaten track, the children began to follow me, utterly fascinated. Imagine, just a few miles from the touristy old town and the children were treating me as if they'd never seen a white person! As I continued through the maze of roads, which were trails really, they became very narrow and finally ended in a family's yard. The people seemed amused when this happened, and a smile with a "Sabai dii" (Lao greeting) seemed to make everything alright. One family was busy playing with the children when I found myself in their front yard. They invited me to sit down and brought me some water. The father explained to me that he worked for the government. The house he lived in had woven bamboo walls and a thatched roof. One would think that a government employee (not to mention the family that could afford the satellite dish for their bamboo hut) could afford a house made of more expensive materials. But, like I said, the Lao are villagers at heart, and while some Lao with means do prefer to live in fancier homes, it seems to me that many Lao, even in the city, are happier surrounded by the trappings of village life.
All this was in the east of the city. When I finally made my way out of the maze of dirt roads to a paved street, I rode to the north. There were plenty of the proverbial "roads less taken" and I took several of them. Many of the women were wearing their traditional woven fabrics, adding a great deal of color to the dirt paths. And once again, many children acted as if they'd never seen a white person. At one point a flock of young ducks waddled in front of me and into the yard of a bamboo house. I watched them for a bit, then noticed that the family was watching me, greatly amused. I'm sure ducks are as common to the people in that neighborhood as refrigerators are to us. But to me...
All too soon it was getting dark and I had to return my rented bicycle, happy to have seen places that the tourist lemmings miss altogether. Not that Luang Phabang is touristy by Thai standards, but for a place unused to tourism, the influx of tourists must be a small shock.
The citizens certainly seem to be handling that shock well. They are very friendly to tourists, yet they haven't let their fairy-tale city turn into a tacky tourist trap. They haven't let the city turn into another Disneyland as some Asian cities have. But why would they need to? After a vacation, many of us feel as if it was all just a dream. Luang Phabang made me feel that way from the moment I arrived.
Robert Wilson is an English teacher in northern Thailand. Pictures of his travels can be seen at photos.yahoo.com/robert_92122.
Other stories in this series:
First in our series, Window on Southeast Asia:
From Monkey to Monk
Along Cambodia's Backroads
Listening to the Rice Grow: A Journey Up the Nam Ou River in Laos
Part 1 and
Part 2
Don't miss future articles from Robert in our continuing series, Window on Southeast Asia.
