Louangphrabang, Laos — Southeast Asia has become so well-traveled in recent years that it's difficult to find an interesting spot that also offers Westerners an unadorned look at local life.
Hmong villages in Vietnam and northern Thailand are tourist showcases. Resorts in Bali, Indonesia, and Phuket, Thailand, offer sanitized markets for tourists who may be squeamish about the real thing. And now it's possible to play tennis not far from the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia. That was only a developer's dream when I visited that archeological gem in 1996.
This would explain my delight in Louangphrabang, which I visited in November with my husband, Ken Stern, and our 6-year-old son, Jack. This small, charming city in northern Laos is known for its old architecture and easygoing culture. The former royal capital, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the location of Wat Xieng Thong, the country's most treasured temple.
Once I got here I discovered even better attractions: being able to sample life along the Mekong River and visit nearby villages while enjoying the city's outstanding cuisine and Western amenities at affordable prices.
Louangphrabang is only 90 minutes by air from Bangkok but a world apart from that bustling Thai city. Louangphrabang, tucked at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers and surrounded by green mountains, more closely resembles a small town, although it has a population of about 70,000.
Traffic lights are unnecessary because there are few cars. Only four years ago, Laos' chief transportation was the bicycle. Most women wear the traditional sihn, a calf-length tube skirt made of woven fabric. The main shopping area, which runs half a mile along Xieng Thong Road, consists largely of 19th century shops with brightly colored wooden shutters, a remnant of the French colonialists.
Recorded Laotian history dates to 1353, to the reign of the warrior king Fa Ngoun, who established the boundaries of present-day Laos and introduced Buddhism to Laotians. France annexed the territory in the late 19th century, and it languished as a sleepy part of French Indochina until World War II. In March 1945 the Japanese occupied Laos, and in April, the country declared its independence. But the French reestablished control in 1946. Few Americans took notice of landlocked Laos until the Vietnam War, when the U.S. launched a bombing campaign to halt infiltration of the country by communist North Vietnamese. In 1975, a communist government took control and changed its name to the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
