Muang Nan, Laos to the Thai border at Tha Li

December 22, 2014

No Lingering in Laos

Something is Lousy in Laos

When we first entered Muang Nan, Laos on the dirt road we had been struggling with for two days, the town appeared to be a larger version of the rustic, back-country little hamlets. But through the quaint little, wooden town, over a gorgeous coconut palm lined river and up one more steep hill we discovered the new section of town on the main highway. It appears a New Muang Nan has sprung up and is developing rapidly. New buildings are strung out along the new highway which heads straight towards the new Mekong bridge a few kilometers to the west. In the middle of the night we heard large trucks barreling down the highway sounding as if they were going 150 miles per hour through the still, cold night air. Buildings shook. They shook us awake and our immediate thought was, 'Are we sleeping in our car at a rest area on the interstate?'

In the morning we barreled down the same road, a bit quieter than the big trucks in the night, and crossed the most modern bridge in the whole region. I suspect the Japanese built it. The Lao certainly did not. In the past ten or fifteen years the Japanese have built all the big bridges in Myanmar, all the main roads in Cambodia and many schools in Laos. That's just what I know but I'm sure there are loads of other projects the Japanese have done in S.E. Asia in order to promote their goodwill and influence. It's also to secure favors in the way of trade. Unfortunately China is really good at letting other nations do the heavy lifting and building and then stepping in and controlling all the trade. China will be the primary beneficiary from any new bridges or dams across the Mekong or roads across Laos. China is in the process of swallowing Laos whole.

I was on a hill tribe trek way in the north along the Lao-China border ten years ago. It wasn't much of a trek through virgin forests or jungle as my guide had promised. Instead we spent a lot of time climbing over recently cut trees. My guide shared my astonishment because just a couple of weeks earlier he had been in pure jungle in the same area. He asked the headmen of the villages what was going on and every one of them said the same thing, "The Chinese came here and told us if we cut down all the forests and planted rubber trees they would buy all the rubber. They will give us the trees to plant. They promised us a lot of money for the rubber."

Forests that should have been preserved as national parks were turned into national eyesores in a very short time. Anyone who has ever set foot inside a stand of rubber trees will never do it again. They are the most sterile, unnatural boring forests I have ever seen and they are taking over areas near to China. I know that we all use rubber, that the world needs more and more rubber but not at the expense of national treasures and especially not dictated by a foreign country. There are plenty of other places to grow rubber trees.

The Lao government was incapable of stopping it or, more likely, didn't care. The border areas are often hill tribe areas not Lao and the Lao government would rather see those people happily making a living than creating problems. I'm sure the Lao government was pleased that China made a deal with the hill tribe peoples so that they didn't have to do a thing. I have learned that this is the way of the Lao; take the easiest way.

The government of Thailand took a different approach with the hill tribe peoples. Hill tribes along Thai borders were largely subsistence farmers - slash and burn - farm for a few years and move on. Same as Laos. For cash they grew opium poppies. Same for Laos. The Thai government taught them to grow other crops and then made good roads allowing the hill tribes to get their produce to markets. The land was used more wisely and much of the wilderness was preserved. Opium poppies are a thing of the past in Thailand but not in Laos.

As we peddled towards the hills in the western part of Sayabouli Province, supposedly protected as a national park, I wondered how many gorgeous old growth trees were being removed or how much pristine wilderness was being destroyed or how many endangered animals were being sold by the part to the Chinese for some weird belief usually concerning virility. I envisioned the entire "park" planted with rubber trees and no animals left.

Most of Sayabouli Province is a vast area of wilderness so wild that there is thought that a few Asian rhinoceros still reside there. Wild elephants definitely live there which we can attest to having ridden around some enormous deposits in the road early one morning. It's such a wild area that few hill tribes even live there and I thought the Hmong could live just about anywhere.

The town of Sayabouli has recently grown even more than Muang Nan. We hardly recognized it and six years is not a very long time for such incredible change to take place. What was a dusty little town is now a midsize, thriving, bustling, city with paved streets. As we left town and for the next twenty miles I'd estimate that 60% of the buildings in all the little towns we passed through were built in the last six years. Imagine driving through the small towns of rural America to see them thriving like that. It's unimaginable really.

Wealth doesn't accumulate at the same rate as taste.

Of course with this boom have come lots of new children. I'm not sure how it is all sustainable unless that "national park" immediately to their west is not exploited. I have concerns for any country that has doubled its population in the last fifteen years. I have less concern for people who can't do things for themselves better than the Lao seem to be capable of.

As we rode south on a really good new road I thought about all these things. Before the Lao government banned all passenger boats in Sayabouli Province a few months ago they improved the main road through the province. It had been a big mud hole six years ago but now it's all paved nicely. But we saw where a couple of accidents had gouged the asphalt revealing the poor foundation just below the surface. It was apparent that a thin layer of asphalt had been laid on the ground. Oh, some gravel had been laid first but not a lot and the asphalt was only an inch thick. We saw gouges that had opened up to be major holes. Before long the entire road will be worse than before they paved it because there will be sections of deteriorating asphalt, chunks of loose asphalt lying around and sections with mud holes again. It turned out the very surface of the road was a metaphor for the way the Lao do things - the foundations, if there are any at all, are poorly laid and maintenance is non existent.

In Laos we have seen that new things can be built and appear to be pretty nice for a time but since maintenance is never done they go downhill rapidly. If anything, including plumbing, breaks in guest house rooms it usually remains broken. Decrepit nonfunctioning light fixtures get increasingly dirty and full of bugs, walls need paint, TVs screens are so full of dirt and grease it hard to see the image, filthy drapes sag and locks on windows never work. It's the Lao way.

Even in UNESCO World Heritage Luang Prabang maintenance is something quite foreign to the Lao. Millions of dollars have been spent to recreate the French colonial town with brick sidewalks, streets and alleyways. Some are no more than three feet wide with flowers on each side - beautiful - but the Lao think nothing of driving their motorized carts down them punching in drain grates and smashing into the ceramic lighting fixtures. Bricks are blackened and thick with grease from frying chickens. Alleys we thought were the most quaint and beautiful we had ever walked just a few years ago now look like they are returning to the jungle.

The cheap road paving from Sayabouli to the border of Thailand will be returning to the jungle as well. All the NGOs in the world (and Laos has as many or more than any other country in the world) cannot instill good workmanship in a people who apparently don't care.

As I biked from day to day to the south through Sayabouli Province I got more and more down on the Lao. For forty years every single conversation I've ever had with Thais about the Lao ended with the Thai person summing the Lao up by saying, "The Lao are lazy." I always rejected that generalization. I never believed it. Fifteen years ago when I first came to Laos there was an enthusiasm about the future. We got caught up in it and we helped two guys through college thinking that we'd do our part in helping the country climb out of their awful past. But slowly I'm losing a lot of faith in the Lao. I'm almost to the point of agreement with the Thais when they say the Lao, in general, are lazy.

We supported the two Lao in their education and gave to other literacy organizations in Luang Prabang by buying Lao silk weavings and selling them in Portland. We were shocked to find no new designs and diminishing quality. The atmospheric night market on the main street of Luang Prabang now is full of fake handmade silk weavings, all machine made in China mostly polyester. Our old suppliers had a few nice items for outlandish prices but it was obvious that nothing much is being made anymore. Our best supplier had turned her attention to selling silver jewelry. It was very sad to see. We bought nothing.

The Lao had something unique and gorgeous they were producing in the weavings and every time we visited we saw that they had come up with innovative new designs. There was vibrancy to the industry. I don't really know what happened or how it could happen so quickly but I suspect Chinese goods flooding the market to be the main cause for the inevitable demise of silk weaving as we knew it. Or, is it laziness?

If laziness extends to the guys in charge of the country then it's natural that China will do whatever it wants. There are a few people in the military communist dictatorship who, along with their corrupt cronies, are making unbelievable sums of money with absolutely no regard for the rest of the population. They also don't care if China has eaten them as long as they personally get rich.

There are huge plots of land throughout the country that have been leased to China for 30 years with a 30 year renewal option. Within these plots of land the Chinese make whatever they see the Lao need with their own Chinese workers. A cement plant here, a dam there, a casino, a shopping mall. At the casino sites the Chinese operate as if they are inside China. Chinese money is used and no taxes or exchange of any kind with Laos is made. The profits go directly back to China in the form of their own currency. It's amazing to me that the Lao government is so stupid to allow their country to be overrun like this. This is where the Burmese are way smarter. Burma has stiff armed China and blocked its intended economic invasion by recently normalizing relations with the U.S.

Fence around a Chinese mall being built in Sayabouli.

It's all very interesting the way these emerging countries play their games. I just wish things were more equal. Along our route we saw new mansions but mostly we saw old shacks. One foot in corruption and influence and you have it made in Laos but the rest scrape by. I suppose things are a bit better for just about everyone but with one of the worst governments in the world I fear for them all.

I guess for this blog I should be talking about the bike route, the hills, the difficulty or ease of riding, accommodations along the route, the food but my mind was filled instead with anger at the Lao government. Do you know they still torture the Hmong leaders in prison? And where are those hundreds of Hmong who were returned a few years ago from living in a refugee camp in Thailand for more than 30 years? There were hundreds of them and they were promised that nothing would ever happen to them if they returned to Laos. They were supposedly resettled in the jungle but were in fact never heard from again. Why didn't the U.S. accept a few more hundred Hmong refugees? Why did Thailand finally kick them out? Why was this never in the news? Is there any news anymore? Things like this are never talked about so why should I mention that I was getting really tired of steep little hills? Will the irritating little hills never end?!! They were simply assisting me in my downward, and eroding quickly, opinion of the Lao.

It didn't make matters any better to hear a deterioration in the greetings from people along the way. As we rode south it seemed that the people were less educated or maybe were more freshly from the jungle. Instead of the normal greetings of "Sabaidee" or "Hello" it devolved to "Farang." When I'm sitting on my porch in Portland and a Japanese tourist walks by on the sidewalk I don't yell, "Foreigner" at him. I know that social skills are different everywhere and have to be learned but the people were starting to get to me as much as those pesky little hills.

I don't like coming to the place where I had come in my thinking but it was something I couldn't ignore. I had come to a place where all I wanted was to get out of Laos. I never have had such a feeling, never, never, ever. I used to love Laos more than anywhere. I've visited Laos countless times and was always quite unhappy that they issued only 30 day visas. I'd stay my limit every time. This time I couldn't wait to get out after only 11 days! Something is lousy in Laos. It looks great on the surface but if you dig down an inch you will see what's really going on.

There is always something wrong in Pak Beng. This time they assured us that Lao coffee does not have sweet milk. Finally we got them to just give us the can and we would add it. We happen to like traditional Lao coffee but I don't know what happened in Pak Beng.

Lovebruce

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