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one associated with Luang Prabang. The upper cave is slightly more difficult to access, has fewer statues and figurines, is also darker, and is inhabited by an uncountable number of bats.
Back in Luang Prabang the next day, M and I set out on our self-assigned tasks. Poking about one of the back lanes, I discovered a discarded metal sign that obviously had once hung on a government building. It was perhaps 1.5 metres in height and two in width, and shaped like royal crown; it was emblazoned with a big yellow hammer and sickle. Many dwellings and temples were freshly whitewashed, the streets were clean and quiet. I stood in the shade of lotus trees and smelled the bougainvillea blossoms. Occasionally I would see a bright multicoloured jumbo, a form of public transport larger than a tuk-tuk, but smaller than one of the buses (which are small in any case). Bicycles are by far the most common form of vehicular traffic, though rentals are not allowed and so only residents ride them (often steering with one hand while deftly manipulating an umbrella with the other). The town was busy and full of tourists, but I experienced nothing to jar the senses until a group of monks came up the street in close order, carrying their begging bowls. A Western woman with two cameras round her neck suddenly appeared out of the shadows to photograph them. They paid no attention, but she moved ever closer to them as her cameras clicked and clicked. I could see that she was about to touch the sleeve of one of them, presumably to ask if he would stop for a moment and pose for her. He evaded her, neatly, quietly, without expression, and without adjusting his step. I am normally a strong proponent of minding my own business, but in this case I took the woman aside and explained, with tact and patience, I thought, that the man would have had to perform a kind of purification ritual if she had touched him. She reacted badly to the news. Finally she said, “I’m going to see the abbot about this and give him a piece of my mind.”
M, meanwhile, was busily researching French education to determine how it did or did not differ from that in Vientiane. She began with the Golden Page Lao Business Directory, which is the telephone book for the entire country, printed in Lao and English, but not French (a bad sign). It is devoted almost exclusively to businesses and in any case doesn’t always make clear, not to foreign eyes, anyway, which entries refer to which towns and cities. By quietly muttering her frustration, however, she attracted the attention of the Phousi Hotel’s desk clerk, who proved to speak French at what she called a “tourist-industry level.” He told her that French-language classes are held at the school located behind the hotel. She went there and found a poster indicating that classes bilingues, parts of the Maison du Patrimoine programme, are held at 1600 hours.
She returned at the specified hour and waited and waited until students began arriving for some other class entirely. “Two teenage girls on motorbikes,” she told me later, over dinner at a strange restaurant, open-air and bare-bones, down on the riverfront near the jetty. “Once they parked, they stopped to read something written in Lao on a big signboard. So I picked my way through the mud puddles and began a conversation with them in French. They giggled. One of them pulled out her textbook for the evening. Its title was Lao-English Conversation Book, so I thought I must be in the wrong place or in the right place at the wrong time.” But she is not one to give up, and so whipped out her all-purpose Southeast Asian Phrase Book and the three of them tried to conduct a conversation using any Lao or English phrases that seemed to fit.
“There was a lot of laughing,” she told me. “I found out that they were fifteen years old. They asked my name and where I was from and what I did for a living. They told me their names, but I couldn’t record them because I found them hard to understand and was too busy looking things up. They told me they’d been taking English classes for three months.
“Soon five of their friends arrived and joined the conversation, and I was surrounded by about thirty teenage girls and twenty motorbikes. A few boys joined us. Finally one of the bolder girls gestured to me and said, ‘Come, meet teacher.’ He was in his classroom opening the doors and windows to let in some air. He was a young Lao who had been learning and teaching English for two years, and kept apologizing that his English wasn’t better. He explained that the daytime school was out now but that young people are so eager to learn English that they show up at evening classes. All of these ones were students from a high school nearby.
“I naturally asked him about French class. ‘Finished,’ he said. ‘Teacher gone home — home to France.’ I first thought this meant that the classes weren’t being offered any longer, but later found out that evening classes in French are only held during the regular school year.
“He invited me to be interviewed by the class. Everyone was so helpful, I could hardly refuse. So there I was standing at the head of the class, wearing my Jim Thompson silk T-shirt with the elephant on it, and they asked me questions. I chose ‘build websites’ as my answer to ‘What do you do?’ They understood what websites are (with help from the teacher, who wrote the English on the board). But when I asked them if they used email or went on the Internet — again, the teacher wrote the words on the board — no one put up a hand. He explained that they knew about these things, but didn’t use them themselves.” Mind you, this was a few years ago now; I’m certain the situation has changed greatly.
M continued: “I asked them their favourite singers or TV programmes, but they didn’t have enough English to describe these to me. So after another ten minutes of conversation that, unfortunately, seemed not to be leading anywhere, I thanked the teacher for introducing me to his students and said I’d better let him get on with his class.”
At this point our waiter arrived, carrying some sort of vegetarian plate for me and river eels for M, who is of course braver than I am.
“It turned out that my elephant shirt helped me make a good impression,” said M. “It’s a very positive image. Anyway, I found it satisfying to be on display myself for once as opposed to what we’ve been doing: floating by the local people and peering into their intimate lives whenever possible.”
— THE YOUNG OXONIAN —
At Hong’s Coffee Shop, I fell into conversation with a thin young woman who was exploring Laos, and quite thoroughly, before returning to her studies at Oxford. She was travelling light, on the back of her male friend’s motorbike. We talked about the oddly beautiful riverboats that carry both cargo and passengers up and down the river. They’re long wooden vessels, barge-like, but with high, square sterns like junks, and are painted Mediterranean blue with red trim.
“I wonder how long it would take to go down to Vientiane on one of them.”
I said I didn’t know, but obviously the downward trip would be much faster than the reverse, particularly now, in the wet season. (Later I checked. The passage from the Mail Boat Pier in Luang Prabang to the Kao Liaw Pier in Vientiane is 430 kilometres and usually takes three days.)
“The thing that puts me off the idea,” she said, “is that part at the back.” She explained that she was referring to the outhouse suspended over the stern. “Mind you, we stayed in a hostel where everybody showered together and the partitions only came up to here.” She indicated a spot midway between breasts and stomach. Anyway, she went on, she would be sticking to the motorbike for this trip. Maybe next time, if there ever were to be a next time.
We talked about Xieng Khuang Province and the Plain of Jars, and she told me about her problem. The motorbike had broken down and she and her partner had to locate a mechanic. “Well, not a mechanic actually. He was more of a tinker. He did things like take four old broken electric fans and, using bits from three of them, made one that worked. He had to rebuild our bike, but of course didn’t have the right parts, so he used, what do you call it? An elbow? Yes, an elbow on the exhaust pipe. This is the result.”
She twisted round in her chair and rolled up the right trouser leg. The newly improvised exhaust system was now sending the exhaust toward her, not away from her, and she had a circular burn on her calf the size of a doll’s head. “You see, I was wearing shorts most of the time, and the bloody machine was roasting my flesh.” It was clear that the fearsome-looking burn hadn’t begun to heal. I urged