While in Louangphrabang I thought I might bring back a book for someone back home and I bought the one above from a young fox in the market. She assured me she had made it herself and because she was an orphan with six younger brothers and sisters one of the lame as well as a blind and senile grandfather. Making these books was the only way she could find to keep them in rice. I wiped a tear and bought one only to see hundreds of them on sale in stalls further down that market. I realised then I had been dealing with a fox; no human girl could have been that convincing. I may have exaggerated a little but not much.
My landlady in Luangphrabang, Mala the Dressmaker may well have been a fox too. As I left she whispered to me that she had charged the Swedish couple who had just taken my old room 50% more than she had charged me. She also offered me a special rate should I ever return. She did not specify if the special rate was going to be more or less than the one I already paid. Just special.
I'm now back at KL airport on a slow flight back to the UK with Royal Brunai Airlines.
I have not been able to write much on this iPod and Laos is a very interesting country in many different ways.It more hard line communist country than Vietnam (I'm not quite sure how you might class isolationist Burma. Military Socialist?) but is starting to go down the capitalist route. It now has a stock exchange, though with only a few companies represented. I asked who was funding a new road and was told, 'Private finance, but 100% Lao People!'
I also met a few Lao who had returned from the USA and were involved in bringing foreign investment into the country. 'I can be a dollar millionaire here in two years,' one American Laotian told me. Foreign investment may bring better health and education but it may also bring urban slums, pollution, corruption and organised crime. If you look at the number of very expensive cars in Vientienne you can't help thinking corruption is already here and has been for a long time. I can't see how a communist system can tolerate huge personal fortunes among the party elite without some kind of backlash from the rank and file.
I think the current system will eventually collapse like that of the old Soviet Blok, but what direction the new regime will take I'm not so sure. Probably a move towards an open market within ASEAN but if that has problems like those of the EU then anything could happen.
Seeing these signs of transition has been fascinating and I am glad I came when I did before the cities become like all the others in the region. I did find a shopping mall in Vientienne; it could have fitted into the ground floor of many I'n KL or Jakarta.
One of the high points for me was seeing the Mathura style Buddha in Louangphrabang and wondering how it got there. I shall have to read more about Thai and Lao art when I get back home. There was evidence of many stylistic influences and I could only guess at most of them.
I hope they leave the Natioal Museum alone and it remains as quaintly eccentric as it is now with its incomprehensible English language signs and the chest-expander of victory.
My landlady in Luangphrabang, Mala the Dressmaker may well have been a fox too. As I left she whispered to me that she had charged the Swedish couple who had just taken my old room 50% more than she had charged me. She also offered me a special rate should I ever return. She did not specify if the special rate was going to be more or less than the one I already paid. Just special.
I'm now back at KL airport on a slow flight back to the UK with Royal Brunai Airlines.
I have not been able to write much on this iPod and Laos is a very interesting country in many different ways.It more hard line communist country than Vietnam (I'm not quite sure how you might class isolationist Burma. Military Socialist?) but is starting to go down the capitalist route. It now has a stock exchange, though with only a few companies represented. I asked who was funding a new road and was told, 'Private finance, but 100% Lao People!'
I also met a few Lao who had returned from the USA and were involved in bringing foreign investment into the country. 'I can be a dollar millionaire here in two years,' one American Laotian told me. Foreign investment may bring better health and education but it may also bring urban slums, pollution, corruption and organised crime. If you look at the number of very expensive cars in Vientienne you can't help thinking corruption is already here and has been for a long time. I can't see how a communist system can tolerate huge personal fortunes among the party elite without some kind of backlash from the rank and file.
I think the current system will eventually collapse like that of the old Soviet Blok, but what direction the new regime will take I'm not so sure. Probably a move towards an open market within ASEAN but if that has problems like those of the EU then anything could happen.
Seeing these signs of transition has been fascinating and I am glad I came when I did before the cities become like all the others in the region. I did find a shopping mall in Vientienne; it could have fitted into the ground floor of many I'n KL or Jakarta.
One of the high points for me was seeing the Mathura style Buddha in Louangphrabang and wondering how it got there. I shall have to read more about Thai and Lao art when I get back home. There was evidence of many stylistic influences and I could only guess at most of them.
I hope they leave the Natioal Museum alone and it remains as quaintly eccentric as it is now with its incomprehensible English language signs and the chest-expander of victory.