Same Same...but Different

  Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, February 14, 2008

    Laos and Luang Prabang are beautiful, aggravating and completely mesmerizing.  I am entirely and wholeheartedly in love with Luang Prabang and it took all the effort I had in me to come back to China.  I feel completely unable to write about Laos because I think it would be impossible.  Luang Prabang, where I was for a week, was so consistently breathtakingly beautiful that I just know that no matter how hard I try, I wouldn't even come close to doing the place justice.  I did try at first, but it ended with me being frustrated at my inability, so instead, you get a smattering of my different experiences.  The photos can be your visual guide, but even then, Laos made me realize all of the shortcomings I have as any sort of photographer.
 
    One of my favourite images from the city is of the bright marigold orange of the Buddhist monks' robes moving against the dark green of the trees and gardens outside of Lao homes.  We did a boat ride down the Mekong at sunset and as we floated down the wide river, thick with mud, our entire boat was bathed in the most fantastic sun-burnt red from the setting sun.  The sun itself was this large and heavy orange disk that slowly slinked underneath strips of clouds, making it seem like it was a sunset straight out of the Lion King.

offerings

  Everything on our cerulean blue boat, its paint chipped with age and use, was drenched in this orange sunset and I just ate it up after surviving the cold of China's south.  As I looked out at the banks of the river, I could see monks scuttling between the trees and the gardens, jumping over homemade bamboo fences and rushing back to town before their evening prayers.  It was just beautiful and peaceful and everything that I loved about Luang Prabang.
 
    The monks are everywhere in the city.  As you walk along the streets lined with a colourful mix of crumbling French colonial architecture, guest houses, and poor Lao housing, you always see boys from ages six to fourteen walking along in their robes, shaved heads and school bags of the same saffron coloring as the robes wrapped around their bodies.  They walk everywhere, going into stores and rubbing up against all the foreign tourists (myself included) who often times gape and always take pictures of them.  The young novice monks are treated with the same awe, fascination and naked curiosity that most people reserve for celebrities.  It's impossible to think that all of the unsolicited attention doesn't go to their heads, especially since most of them are incredibly young.   But every time I spoke with a monk, there was never a hint of self-importance or ego.  They were mostly in awe of me, and how I was travelling by myself.  Which was something I wasn't expecting.
 
    Every morning, after the monks finish their morning prayers, the city wakes up to participate in Tak Bat - or almsgiving.  The monks walk around the streets of Luang Prabang and receive alms from townspeople, generally in the form of homemade sticky rice, bananas and other forms of food.  Old women will wake up early to prepare the sticky rice for the monks and then will shuffle onto the street before day has even begun to break, carrying mats and wicker baskets stuffed with the rice.  Kneeling down on top of their mats, they will murmur some blessings to themselves in honor of the food they are sacrificing to the monks.

Tak Bat

Slowly, the monks will leave their wats (their monasteries) and in a single-line, quietly accept the food offered to them.  I was genuinely impressed that this happens every morning and how obvious it is that to the local people, this is a really beautiful and serious spiritual moment for them.   But there are also tourists there as well.  Most of the time, the tourists hang back in the shadows, willingly watching from afar and only approaching to take a picture (without the flash) once or twice.  But then there would be an obnoxious few who bought baskets of sticky rice and bunches of bananas from the illegal street vendors.  They clumsily would kneel down next to a row of believers and hand out the sticky rice, nervously glancing over to the people next to them, making sure they were doing it correctly.  It just seemed really silly to see the differences between the rows of local townspeople with their sarongs and flip flops and then the older white women with their sweaters tied around their shoulders, trying to be benevolent and offering sticky rice.  It was a  bizarre juxtaposition and a scenario that Laos is actively trying to prevent.
 
    Posted all around the many wats in the city and inside of rooms in guesthouses, are booklets and signs giving people information about Tak Bat.  The goal is to educate tourists about the sanctity of the ritual, informing them of its history, its place in Lao culture, and more importantly, the rules in adhering to its spiritual integrity.  The goal is to keep the morning ritual holy and prevent it from being hijacked by Laos' booming tourist trade.  Which is something I really admire after living in China for the past couple of months.  Luang Prabang is beautiful and even though most of the time it felt like for every Lao person there were five tourists, there is still a sense that the city is still connected to the rhythms and existence of local life, which is a large part of the city's charm.  But I'm afraid of what will happen to Laos in the future.  I wonder how long it will take before Luang Prabang starts to resemble something like Yangshuo - the semblance of a city, but with no soul.  Yet, I can't quite believe that Laos will give in wholeheartedly to tourism, changing it for the worse.  Despite the large amounts of tourists there (there were so many more Canadians, Brits, Australians and Americans than I could have ever imagined.) there are still large parts of Lao culture that seep through everything.  Every afternoon when it's hot, as you walk along and there's a bit of shade, somebody will be napping and taking a siesta.

siesta

I loved walking through the textile market during the late afternoon to see all of the women laying on their platforms, sprawled out over their hand-made quilts, bags and pants, napping with their children tucked under their arms.  Or walking along the Mekong and watching as a group of boys, all wearing what seems to be a standard issue pair of navy blue underwear, take turns jumping and flipping off the rickety bamboo bridges connecting the town's two sides together.  And you know that even though there is a flock of tourists standing above the embankment watching and taking pictures of the boys, the boys would still be there tomorrow - with or without the tourists.
 
    And watching the development of Laos' tourist industry is also interesting because it seems to be developing as the violent antithesis of China's tourist industry.  Even though there was a massive presence of visitors in Luang Prabang, I wasn't annoyed by them for the most part.  Everyone seemed to be walking around in a sort of stupor, subdued by the heat, the sheer beauty of the city and its pervasive tranquillity.  Plus, there's an 11:30 pm curfew on the city, which weeds out the obnoxious under-21 crowd.  But mainly, I'm much more confident about Laos' future than I am about China's.  There is this feeling of intense pride and need to preserve their culture that is not felt in China.  So, many of the tour agencies are designed around fair trekking and ecojustice -providing tours that are economically and environmentally beneficial for tourists and the locals in the villages being visited.  The government is actively promoting an awareness of how tourism makes an impact (usually for the worse) on culture and I don't think that China even has a sense of how its actions affect anything.  True, Laos is a much smaller country so its self-awareness is more feasible, but it was completely refreshing to be in a city where modernization and preservation were seen as being symbiotic - not as a roadblock.
 
    This is of course my opinion after only visiting Luang Prabang.  I was upset that I couldn't stay longer and travel to other parts within the country, but I had a 36 hour bus ride between me and the closest transportation hub in China that needed to be conquered.  Plus, the fact that there are no ATMs in the country and I had no more money also affected my decision to leave.  There is so much more of Laos that I want to see and to explore, but I'm fairly certain that even though it might take me awhile to come back, the Laos I come back to will be one that I want to see.