Michael Batson

In southern Laos you can see two of Southeast Asia’s outstanding natural wonders, the Four Thousand Islands and the mighty falls of Khon, the third largest waterfalls in the world. To get there from Cambodia you can travel from Kracheh (Anglicised to “Kratie” by guidebooks and tourists alike) straight to the Laos border by minibus via the dusty Cambodian river town of Strung Treng. In the 19th century Strung Treng was in Laos until it was detached from the country by the French. The town is in fact the last outpost in Cambodia, a distinction to which its status as road end, river end and dead-end ought to lend a raffish appeal. So ill-served is it by either river or road that, as one writer has said, ‘the traveller’s satisfaction in having got there is instantly curtailed by worries about how to get away.’

In the 19th century there was no such entity as Laos. The region that is today called Laos was composed in the mid-19th century of a confusing pattern of minor states, none of them able to act in any truly independent fashion. In the traditional Southeast Asian’ manner these petty states were vassals of more powerful overlords; on occasions a state would have more than one suzerain. It was an apparent comic opera world of royal courts, sacred elephants, ancient temples, and orange-robed monks, and some of these features are still present. The country like several of the modern Southeast Asian states only achieved its present territorial existence in very recent times. The state of Laos came into existence due to colonial rivalry between the French and the British on the mainland of Southeast Asia. Thailand subsequently came to be by the rival European powers as a buffer zone between their conflicting interests.

The origins of the name of Southeast Asia’s poorest, least visited, and sleepiest nation are mixed. It is said the French in the 19th century added to “s” to a country named for the once largest ethnic grouping for reasons lost in the mists of time. Later John F. Kennedy is said to have been responsible for the 20th century disparagement of the kingdom, now republic of Laos. Pressed in the early years of the war in Vietnam to provide an explanation of what the CIA was doing in neighbouring but neutral Laos, Kennedy feared that domestic opinion might baulk at American lives being risked in defence of a place that sounded like “louse”, so he instead pronounced it “Lay-oss” as in “chaos”.

Throughout the 1960s and in the seventies “the chaos in Lay-oss” gained an international currency that only subsided when US interest in the region itself subsided following the Communist triumph in 1975. To be fair Americans were not alone is their ignorance of all that pertained to Laos. Was it one syllable or two? Singular or plural? Masculine or feminine? Concerning a land which only the French confidently called Le Laos, author John Keay wrote; ‘it could generally be said that those who knew it were not sure where it was, those who knew what it was and where it was, were unsure to define its international state, and those who knew none of these things did not care to ask lest they got the name wrong.’

Mr Lucky, my motorbike guide in Kracheh had told me there was a minibus to Strung Treng where a “big bus” would complete the last 80kms of the journey to Laos. A Laos visa in Phnom Penh cost then about US$36 depending on which visa service you choose. Visas can also be purchased at the border but despite one character telling me this only cost US$30, the real price can vary and is usually much higher. The minibus turned out to be a Hyundai people wagon with seating for eight people at a squeeze. However, as this is Cambodia normal vehicle capacity rules do not apply. Four large Europeans were crammed into the rear of the vehicle, along with all their bags and several large sacks of produce of indeterminant origin. Five Cambodians took up the other seats, to which was soon added a sixth who shared the seat with the driver. Mr Lucky’s friend was also making the journey to the border and was keen to off load his Laotian kip to me at the then unofficial rate of 8000 kip to the US dollar. Once underway he was then on the phone organising a date for the evening with a young woman who he said, haven’t clearly determined his priorities for entertainment, wasn’t to arrive before the end of the evening’s football match.

En route we passed a Hummer heading at high speed in the other direction. “These vehicles are for drugs,” said Mr Lucky’s friend. “They never stop for anyone.” Presumably this included the police, who had already been paid off, thereby supplementing their meagre wages, or others who were complicit in the drug trade. Laos, one Kingdom of One Million Elephants had turned into the what historian Alfred McCoy called the “Kingdom of Opium”. When most Laotian leaders realised from the late 1950s, that their national’s only real export commodity was opium, and they promoted the traffic with an aggressiveness worthy of modern export executives. First it was run by the French secret service, then after Dien Bien Phu by Corsican gangsters, and then during the Second Indochina War, by CIA paramilitaries with a private army of Hmong tribesmen. Now it’s Ya Ba, a drug containing a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine usually found in little pink pills and manufactured in the millions.

One of the other foreigners making the trip recounted a motorcycle trip around Cambodia where he and a companion had also determined not to stop for any police keen to extract a bribe from a passing foreigner, which was until they encountered two military policemen. Military police in Cambodia are distinguished by their dark green uniforms, as opposed to the civilian police uniform of a tan colour and the traffic police who wear light blue. Their determination to avoid stopping was thwarted when one officer levelled his AK-47 at them at which point they both decided it best to stop and await their fate.

At Strung Treng I changed vehicles, a rather seamless process involving little delay. The town itself has about 30,000 residents and is capital of the province of the same name. It’s located on the Sesan River (also known as the Tonlé San) near its confluence with the mighty Mekong. The town handles a lot of river trade and transporting of people – the activity of a frontier town though the border with Laos is 80kms to the north. The province is heavily forested though is under threat from logging and was home to many endangered species. Like other parts of Cambodia, it suffered from aerial bombing and remains heavily contaminated with unexploded ordnance courtesy of the US air force. After the crush of the minibus, I was able to spread out in an almost empty but battered 40-seat Hyundai bus; Cambodia being one country Korean produced vehicles go to die. Mr Lucky’s friend headed off to a money changer having removed a fair share of dollars from among his fellow passengers. He arrived back shortly carrying a large wad of kip notes in denominations of 50,000 for distribution to all those crossing the border. Stretched out in the bus, the short journey to the Laos border was rather pleasant when compared with many other journeys undertaken in this part of the world, where Europeans are crammed into laughably small spaces for long periods in vehicles which are pounded mercilessly on poor roads.

Judging by the construction taking place on the Cambodian side of the border at Nong Nok Khieng, the Cambodians are expecting great things at this border crossing. A large customs hall in neo-classical Khmer style in under construction, though by the lack of commercial traffic and trickle of people making their way from one country into the other, the scale of the design appeared overly optimistic. This new build will replace the original border crossing on the Laotian side at Vuen Kham where the Cambodian post was on an island and the Lao post located on the mainland opposite, comprising a rickety shack on stilts beside a flagpole at the top of the town’s single street. Knowing the whereabouts of the border post is somewhat critical not because of the formalities but because this whole no man’s land is heavily unpoliced by itchy-fingered “guards” with AK-47s. deployed to protect unauthorised logging operations, they notoriously fail to distinguish between snooping officials and lost travellers.

I was told that the Cambodian officials would require US$1 to facilitate an exit from the Kingdom. Keeping a dollar note under my passport but not handing it over, I awaited the expected request, which in the end never came. Laos officials, indeed border officials on both sides are notoriously poorly paid. At Lao side a hand appeared at the tinted window of the immigration hut for the US$2 “entry fee” this seemingly not being covered by having the requisite visa and it was made clear by the official standing outside that the money would be required. I handed over a 10,000 Cambodian riel note, or about US$2.50, to rid myself of the currency, it being worthless outside Cambodia and not much use whilst there. My passport disappeared into the air-conditioned building through a darkened window only emerging minutes later with the required entry stamp on my visa. A young English couple purchased their visas there and then and paid about US$47, compared to the US$36 for the cost of a visa if purchased beforehand.

North of the border along Route Nationale 13, the only sealed trunk road in Laos, the bus turned left towards the Mekong coming to stop near a busy market. I got off with my bag and was told to wait for my waterborne transport. Markets are interesting places; a litmus test on produce and consumption, and always revealing by what is being sold, traded, bartered or in some cases, stolen. They provide an interesting insight into local life and are infinitely more interesting that Western shopping methods. There’s the fine art of negotiating, haggling to “do the deal”. Transport was a small dugout canoe with an outboard motor, the motor emitting a put-put sound as we navigated the tea-coloured water with current in some parts and whirlpools in others past semi-submerged trees, islands some barely enough to stand on and others with whole communities like my destination. A long boat takes about 10 minutes to make the journey to the island. At another section a car ferry carries heavier traffic the island having some sealed roads.

Khong Island sits in the middle of the Mekong River and is the largest island and chief settlement of the Four Thousand Islands. These islands and that waterfalls and cataracts around them make the Mekong River unnavigable and spoiled French colonial designs to use the river for trade with China. Khong has a population of over 55,000 and at 47-kilometres around the largest island in the area known as Si Phan Don ((“Si” being four, “Phan” a thousand, and “Don” islands)). Khong is the root cause of much semantic confusion. Thanks in large part to sloppy editing, most published accounts of the river, including those of the French colonial explorers, to confuse Khong (or Kong) Island with Khon (or Khone) Island. Khon’s Falls unfailingly became the “Khong Falls”, the modest rapids below Khong are mistaken for the mighty falls below Khon.

Khong Island is a great place to chill out and unwind for a few days. The sun nearly always shines and everyday feels like Sunday. In the evenings overlooking the Mekong River, tourists and locals alike gathered to watch football via satellite and occasionally Thai kick boxing seemingly the only two things’ people here seem to get excited about. People seem so laid back as to be almost horizontal. One day a local had said he’d take me to the waterfalls, but having spent the night watching football, decided that he was too tired and couldn’t be bothered, so we’d have to go “later”. Lying in his hammock, he moved his arm in a circular motion as if indicating when this would actually occur. So, I went “later”.

Unearthing reliable information about Southeast Asia’s two outstanding natural wonders, the Khon (or Khone) waterfalls and the Si Phan Don, is even today strangely difficult. One guidebook dismisses southern Laos as notable only for being the last hangout of two endangered species, namely the Irrawaddy dolphin numbering but a handful, and the 20th century hippy. The dolphins live below the falls. The hippies live above the falls and maybe even fewer, although the migratory habits of both make the figures suspect.

The island has two main towns, named unimaginatively East and West. One day I hired a motorbike and after riding about exploring had lunch on a floating restaurant while watching Thai kick boxing and long boats take people, produce – doubtless illicit and otherwise - and their motorbikes across the river to Cambodia. Later I passed the car ferry, which consists of three rickety steel barges. At the intersection to the island’s ring road and entrance to the car ferry, two large European women in a pristine white Toyota Hilux, usually the vehicular symbol of NGO transport with Laos plates, was stopped while waving their arms about as if to say “where do we go from here?”

As I pulled up alongside, I detected immediately an American accent. Before I could say anything, the women occupants asked, “Are you from around here?” The absurdity of this question directed at a six-foot tall white man in a country of squat Asian people became all too apparent. The only answer was the obvious “do I look like I’m from around here?” “I mean do you live around here,” said the driver. I imagined them to be aid workers or embassy staff, who having arrived in Laos knowing nothing of its people or of the country, had been issued with a vehicle and told to go “discover Laos.”

“What should we do here?” “Well, what do you want to do here?” They explained that they wanted to have a look around and stay a couple of days. I advised finding accommodation first before having a look around, which they decided seemed a logical course of action. Perhaps they were part of some diplomatic mission, who while having a grasp of the larger picture, were woeful when it came to the detail of how to carry something out.

The Khon (or Khone Falls) and Pha Pheng Falls are a double series of cataracts over which the river tumbles 14m to a pool 82m above sea level. The highest falls reach to 21m. They are the widest waterfalls in the world at 10,.83kms in width from one edge of its multiple channels to the other. The levels causing the falls are also responsible for the islands. The Khon has the greatest volume of the world’s waterfalls (9,500,000 litres per second) being nearly double that of Niagara Falls. During the wet season this area of the Mekong develops into a series of surging rapids, the river cascades for almost 10kms dropping 21m in height with 49,000 cubic litres of water moving through there every second. Natural wonder though they are, the falls have impeded economic use of the Mekong by the peoples of the Cambodia and those of Laos. Attempts to make the falls navigable, including construction of a narrow-gauge railway, have ended in failure.

One afternoon was spent in a local market. One male tourist decided to buy a sarong. In Laos those are for men a single piece of material without a stitched edge, which means they surely slowly unravel in the wash. Women’s sarongs are joined and edged, so that the wearer more or less steps into the garment. He bought a woman’s garment much to the mirth of the local merchant and their family.

The guesthouse I stayed in was great value. Beautifully finished with a view over the river. The bathroom was great and it was finished in dark wood. All the princely sum of USD15. The owner also served great food downstairs and you could contemplate life watching sunsets over the river with a bottle of fine Beer Lao brewed on the outskirts of the country’s capital and a beer so good it was banned in Thailand for fear of ruining sales of their local brands. My guesthouse also furnished me a plane ticket and a bus ride to get to the airport in Pakse for the next leg of the journey. But then there was the rest of the day to get through, busy doing nothing in the land where every day is like Sunday.

Thanks to:

John Keay; Mad About the Mekong; Harper; London; 2005.
Alfred McCoy; The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia; Chicago Review Press; Revised edition; 2003.
Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia – An Introduction; Allen & Unwon; Sydney; 2004.