VII Sabaidee! , Lao P.D.R. and the Settha Palace Hotel ______

Words and Photography by Kennie Ting

Fig. 1 – Patuxai, Victory Monument and symbol of Vientiane, supposedly constructed from concrete donated by the Americans for the city’s airport runway.

“ is as different from as Big Sur is from Long Island.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Checking Into the Lane Xang

In Its Own Time

Ten years is a long time between visits. But then, I never expected to revisit Vientiane when I was last there in 2003, on a business trip. Then, my overwhelming impression of the city was of crumbling French colonial buildings doubling up as Municipal Government Offices – the likes of “Le Minist re d L’Ag icultu e et des F rets1” with spaces alluding to letters that had fallen off from the official signs in

1 I single out the name of this ministry for illustrative purposes only, it does not mean that this was the crumbling Ministry building I saw.

Ting 1 front of the buildings. That, and the food – oh the food! – which was surprisingly glorious even then, as it was this time around.

Vientiane, and Laos in general, is a bit of an anomaly. It barely features in the travel literature of intrepid European and American travelers from the 19th century. Hell, it barely features even in 20th century accounts of Southeast Asian history and politics. But yet, Vientiane (and Laos) has a character that is entirely its own, not easily conflated with any other city (and country) in mainland Southeast Asia. This distinct character is surprisingly easy to put one’s finger on. There’s the delicious food, unlike any other kind of food in the region (alright, I shall stop gushing about the food!). There’s also the very genteel, laidback way Laotians carry themselves; in particular the women, with their elegant silk sinhs, or traditional skirts made from intricately designed fabrics. “Sabaidee!” you hear everyone say, in the most friendly and welcoming tones possible, to everybody else in general, including you: Hello stranger! How’s it going?

Fig. 2 – Buddhas in Wat Sisaket – the oldest temple in Vientiane, spared the destruction by the vindictive Siamese, because it was built in the Siamese style.

What’s also surprising is how this sense of (national) identity has remained strong, despite more than a century of Siamese imperialism, that saw the Lao

Ting 2 Kingdom’s most important symbol – the Emerald Buddha, wrested from Vientiane and brought to Bangkok in 1779 (the relic presently sits in Bangkok’s Grand Palace). For good measure, the Siamese returned in 1828 to raze to the ground the very temple that held the Emerald Buddha, along with many other temples and most of the mediaeval city. It was brutal even by today’s standards, and in a sense, modern-day Vientiane is still reeling from that pivotal sacking by the Siamese, with the subsequent French colonisation in the early 1900s and Communist occupation in the late 1970s paling in comparison with that singular event of national humiliation.

Fig. 3 – That Luang, the Golden Stupa, symbol of Laos.

The city’s other major national monument, the That Luang, is an impressive multi-storey stupa painted entirely in gold and occupying a Vientiane suburb. First built in the 1500s, it too has been ransacked and looted over the centuries, though the main body of the stupa has remained largely intact. Ten years ago, I paid a visit to the That Luang, and I found it largely unremarkable, set, as it was, in a rather grey, uninspiring and desperately poor environs; and looking like it had been poorly painted over in gold, rather than gold plated, as it must have been at some point in its fraught history. This time around, I found the stupa far more evocative and moving, resembling a meta-fictive impressionistic painting of itself (a painting of which actually existed at the gates of the Lao National Museum). Partly because I attempted

Ting 3 to visit in the midst of a full-on tropical squall, wherein I had the chance to contemplate the structure through the obscuring veil of heavy rain; and partly because, having been denied entry multiple times by Buddhist monks who kept directing me to alternative entrances that were also firmly shut (despite their having supposedly been open more than half an hour ago), the stupa that morning looked positively paradisiacal – alluring, enigmatic, and illusory by virtue of it being completely, inexplicably unattainable.

Fig. 4 – Chancing upon white elephants in Vientiane.

That inexplicability — Vientiane’s nature of existing and functioning in its own time and reality – was what made it completely unique, and utterly frustrating. At the horrific monstrosity that is Patuxay – Vientiane’s version of L’Arc de Triomphe in Paris – I had a another taste of this alternate reality when the ticketing office manager repeatedly explained that the viewing platform was shut; until, that is, twenty minutes later, when it was obviously open and admitting a trickle of tourists2. Patuxay itself also epitomised inexplicability on multiple fronts. I simply couldn’t see what the fuss was all about – the view from the top was far from breathtaking; and

2 Language drove inexplicability – the ticketing lady simply didn’t have the vocabulary to explain to me that she needed twenty minutes to get the place ready for visitors. Why that had to be done after opening hours is another question. But I’m being too Singaporean.

Ting 4 the view at the bottom was more likely to induce feelings of “what the f - - - were they thinking?!” than rapt contemplation. I couldn’t help but compare the Victory Monument to the proverbial and legendary white elephant – rare, ornamental, and utterly useless. While elephants are now an endangered species in the country, and the latter’s heyday as Lane Xang, or the Kingdom of a Thousand Elephants is long past, present-day rulers still clearly cherished the symbolic value of maintaining, at great expense, a white elephant of a more concrete variety.

Fig. 5 – Fashionable types in downtown Vientiane.

Elsewhere, with the influx of tourists and foreign domestic capital, the city has been developing along more predictable lines. Much of the city centre by the Mekong waterfront has become a sort of Bangkok-lite, strewn with cosy bars, bohemian cafes, swank restaurants and boutique hotels housed in colonial-era shophouses. The twin thanons of Fa Ngum and Setthathirat, in particular, bustled with the kind of very blonde and very tan European, American and Australian bag-packing tourists traipsing all over Southeast Asia; while around the more up-market areas of Nam Phu Fountain and Thanon Samesenthai, one sees mature European tourists partaking of the excellent European-style restaurants and cuisines on display. Occasionally, one catches proof, without shadow of a doubt, that the city has indeed moved on up in the material world. These are the “young and fashionable types,” ubiquitous in all major

Ting 5 urban metropolises in the world and who have, inexorably also slunk their way here in what is still the most inaccessible city and country in the region. It’s no mean feat.

Thankfully, the city is still a generation away from becoming Bangkok on the Mekong, and its traditions appear to run far deeper than its former imperial liege city. I woke up insanely early one morning to observe a ritual that has taken place for centuries here and in the other Buddhist nations of mainland Southeast Asia. Each morning at the crack of dawn, dozens of novice monks, garbed in saffron-hued robes, emerge from the many temples in the city and take to the streets with their tiffin boxes. The city is prepared for them: at every major thoroughfare, Lao women, of the motherly persuasion, appear with small pots of rice and other condiments in anticipation of the monks’ appearance. As the monks – all teenaged boys – finally coalesce in the horizon, in small groups of six or more, the women would beckon them over, and smiling, scoop out generous amounts of the food they had prepared. Having received their alms, the monks would then bow deeply, speak a prayer of goodwill, and make their way to the next waiting alms-giver.

Fig. 6 – Novice monks.

It was a moving sight. And a far cry from the steady modernisation that was already starting to replace the city’s quaint vibe with the kind of generic and banal

Ting 6 shopping mall slick that Asian cities in general view as a sign of economic advancement. It’s hard to come down too harshly on economic advancement, however, since every city, particularly such a desperately poor one like Vientiane, deserves its own experience of trial, error, reflection and success. One can only hope that however the city decides to develop, it still keeps its eyes squarely onto what really matters – those inexplicable, age-old ways of doing things that make the city utterly frustrating, stuck in its own time and space, but like no other city that has come before or will come after. That, I think, would constitute successful development.

The Remains of the Day

Fig. 7 – The Settha Palace Hotel, channeling the Raffles Hotel(s).

The Settha Palace Hotel is one of two legendary hotels in Vientiane, the other being the Lane Xang Hotel, built in the 1960s by the Russians, and famous for having played host to Beat author Hunter S. Thompson in the 70s when he fled Saigon in the aftermath of the Fall3. The Settha Palace is the much older and grander hotel of the two, having been built in 1932 in the era of the Grand Tour and having somehow

3 “Legendary” is relative of course, since Vientiane itself was hardly a must-do stopover on the Grand Tour.

Ting 7 miraculously survived the tumultuous history of the region. The hotel is named after the street it sits on – Thanon Setthathirat – which in turn is named after Lao King Setthathirat, who reigned over the kingdom of Lane Xang at its capital, Luang Prabang from 1548 – 1571. Evoking a turn of the century country estate owned by members of the European gentry, the hotel has always been a family-owned institution, even today. Having fled the city during the Communist takeover in 1975, the family were welcomed back in the early 1990s when conditions had loosened up. After extensive conservation and renovations efforts, the Settha Palace reopened its doors in 1999 as a boutique hotel, looking not unlike its distant cousin, the Raffles Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh.

Fig. 8 – The hotel’s rickety old London Cab, which drives on the opposite side of the road, to rather amusing effect.

Being one of the least known of the grand hotels in one of the least known of Southeast Asia’s capital cities (bar Dili, in East Timor), the hotel was rather a challenge to get to. For starters, only one airline – the Lao national carrier – plied the -Vientiane route, and this route being sparsely plied, the price of the air ticket was rather exorbitant for the quality of service. Reserving a room at the Settha Palace was also inconvenient, with me having to fill in a reservation form that was hard to understand and required a long distance telephone conversation to clarify.

Ting 8 Finally, when I got into Vientiane airport, my driver was nowhere to be seen, and I had to call the front desk again (on my Singapore mobile) and get them to persuade the driver that it was quite possibly time to hold up the placard with my name on it (twenty minutes after I arrived). Once he did show up, however, bundling me into the hotel’s vehicle - a rickety old London cab with barely functioning air conditioning and left-hand drive – all that inconvenience was forgiven and I gave myself over to the quirky and at times humorous period environment I was enveloped in4.

Fig 9 – My four-poster bed in the Junior Suite room.

As I had arrived past 11 p.m. at night, the hotel bar had already closed, and I had not sufficiently familiarized myself with the immediate environment to brave heading out alone to the bars that supposedly were in the vicinity. Instead, I spend the rest of the evening in my room – an exquisite Junior Suite on the second floor of the hotel, overlooking the front entrance. For the first time on my Grand Tour, I had a four poster bed, which was charming, old-school touch, even if posters were merely decorative elements today, serving to remind one of those days, barely fifty years ago,

4 As the London Cab eased up along the parking gantry, my driver grumbled audibly, slid out of the left-hand drive car and trooped over to the other side of the cab to slip his parking ticket into the machine – because Vientiane, of course, being an ex-French colony, was on a right-hand drive system. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Ting 9 when there had been no air-conditioning, and mosquito nets (hanging from posters) were de rigueur.

This being my seventh hotel on the tour, I had to admit that everything within my hotel rooms were beginning to look rather same-y, revealing, to my mind, a significant degree of cross-referencing that must take place between these grand colonial hotels in the process of their refurbishment, most of which took place in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. As it was, my room in the Settha Palace reminded me most of all, of the décor in the Sarkies-signed Grand hotels in Asia – the E & O, the Majapahit and the Raffles, by virtue, in particular, of its art deco bathroom, with black and white marble tiles and mahogany wood paneling. That evening, I slipped into a soothing bath in the (too-shallow) bathtub, had a nightcap from the minibar and slipped into the exceedingly comfortable bed for an early night.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Fig. 10 – Breakfast at La Belle Epoque.

The next morning at breakfast, a scrumptious American-style buffet was laid out and I experienced first-hand, the hotel’s friendly but rather inadequate level of service, hampered in no small part, by language. The very young waiter at the

Ting 10 restaurant was warm enough, in an awkward and gangly sort of way – which on its own was rather a quaint colonial touch – but he was unable to understand me when I made a simple request for a “hard-boiled egg,” even after I described in meticulous detail, how a “hard-boiled egg” was cooked. “You mean fried egg, sir?” he ventured, tentatively, having still not understood what it was I wanted, and I resigned myself, instead, to a fried egg, “sunny-side up” – pointing to the picture of an egg, sunny-side up, that sat on the table. The yolk, I have to add, was not in the least runny, as I had desired.

Fig. 11 – The variegated urban landscape across the street from the hotel.

As I leisurely took in breakfast, I peered out the windows of the hotel restaurant to see what lay immediately across the street. It was an intriguingly mix of residential settlements – chiefly an entire block of 1960s four-storey art deco apartments, housing on the ground floor a couple of tailors, local food places and a local karaoke bar; and alongside it, a disused colonial warehouse compound that had been re-colonised by an informal settlement. As I sipped at my cup of coffee, I spied, just beyond the hotel’s outdoor seating area – which, incidentally, I never once saw anyone seated at – residents of the informal settlement firing up impromptu stoves and barbecue pits, setting up shop in what appeared to be a makeshift food market. I would walk by later in the day to see what it was exactly they were cooking up and I

Ting 11 found it to be rather unappetizing bits of skewered meat and vegetables, and the ubiquitous Lao , which is their version of the Vietnamese staple. Dozens of locals would stop by on their motorcycles for snacks and bits of chatter, all the while completely ignoring the fact that a luxury hotel – and a whole different universe – sat just there, across the street from where they were blithely discoursing in almost- squalour.

Fig. 12 – The free form pool at the hotel.

Therein lay, for me, the central conundrum of luxury tourism in third world regions: how does the population of such regions, cognisant of the neo-colonial double standards in protection of economic and political rights, simply remain complicitly oblivious to symbols of this double standard – like the Settha Palace and all the other Grand Hotels I had been to? I found it mind-boggling that the populace didn’t simply storm the hotel, raping and pillaging hapless terrified guests, in some fantasy recreation of a scene from a post-colonial epic novel. Security at the hotel certainly didn’t seem very reassuring, and the hotel itself was completely permeable. These apocalyptic thoughts ran through my head as I lazed (hypocritically) on a deck chair by the side of the hotel’s pool – a beautiful free-form piece of resort architecture, totally restful, but completely, double-standardly, out of place. As I

Ting 12 dozed off, I saw a last fleeting image of myself, floating face-down in the water, after having been raped and pillaged by the madding crowd.

Fig. 13 – Lao, at the Colonial Bar.

I awoke a couple of hours later to find myself safe and sound, and in time to freshen up and head to the bar for an aperitif. Dinner that night was at the hotel restaurant – La Belle Epoque – arguably the best restaurant in the city, and its only formal restaurant. Men had to be dressed in a long sleeve shirt, long pants and shoes; and for the first time on my trip, I found myself have to pack a slightly larger suitcase just so I could pack for the oppressively old-school dress code. At the adjoining Colonial Bar, I sunk into a divan and ordered myself the best indigenous liquor the Lao P.D.R. could offer: Beerlao. Having been multiply awarded internationally, Beerlao is the pride and joy of the Lao nation. Flavor-wise, I have to testify to a remarkably light and refreshing tanginess and zing, which, to a non-beer drinker like myself, made it somewhat akin to a very very dry spritzer. It also didn’t weigh as heavily on my head as do in general, and I found myself staying sufficiently alert to overhear conversations in my immediate vicinity.

To my left sat a couple of men in their ‘60s, looking not unlike Hunter S. Thompson would look if he hadn’t shot himself in the head at 48. They were spry,

Ting 13 energetic, and very intellectual, debating the state of political affairs in Bangkok, where one of them – an American from New York – resided, and in London, where the other – visiting the region – was from. Again, fantasies ran through my mind of them having been spies in the Vietnam War era, based in Vientiane (together with Mr Thompson), and discharging secret correspondences with the CIA and British Intelligence. They certainly looked the part, one smoking a pipe, and the other dispensing with rapier-sharp comments on the lack of a credible winelist in the bar. Later on, I would find out in conversation with them that they had both been business consultants and had hopped over from Bangkok for the weekend just for a change in environment. But at that moment in time, before dinner at La Belle Epoque, and starved of conversation, I fancied myself on the brink of being swept off into an international saga of espionage and murder, one from which I would emerge, hardened and eager to recount my tale.

The Incredible Lightness of Being

Fig. 14 – Down a dark corridor towards the light at the end. What I found most memorable at the Settha Palace Hotel that weekend was the light, and the quality of the light that shone through the building. In the mornings, when I stepped out of my room, I would marvel at the sunlight streaming through the

Ting 14 vertical panes of glass installed in the art deco-style stairway leading from the second to the first floor. To my right, just before I descended, would be a semi-dark corridor illuminated at the end, by a door that let out and down into the courtyard pool of the hotel. While dimly lit by the sun, the space within the hotel was never claustrophobic, but on the contrary, felt airy and expansive, contributing to a lightness of mood that myself, and I’m sure, other guests that weekend experienced. It was a pleasant feeling of floating along in a timeless and nameless space, alleviating all the pent-up emotions of a long week negotiating office politics and population congestion in Singapore.

Fig. 15 – The Colonial Bar, in broad daylight.

This incredible lightness of being translated into other parts of the hotel, most notably the hotel lobby and the Colonial Bar, which, under the cover of night had seemed rather oppressive and funereal, but in broad daylight, completely opened up to become warm, convivial and welcoming spaces, even if they were, largely deserted in the day that weekend. The atmosphere within my room too, felt immensely more homely and comforting in the day, with the sheets endearingly tousled and my things strewn somewhat carelessly all over the living area. Sitting on the settee, looking through the shots I had taken all weekend, it took a leap of imagination for me to remember that I wasn’t a long-staying guest at this hotel; that I hadn’t already been

Ting 15 here for six months and I was due, that very day, to take a return flight home to Singapore.

What? Leave all this for the daily grind? It was a heart-wrenching thought, and I tried to keep it at bay as long as possible by pottering around the room, making myself a pot of coffee, dashing off a letter to a friend at my study desk, and peering out through the windows to observe the day’s comings and goings. Again, it felt to me like this really was my home, for the time being, and I was merely play-acting at being somebody else in Singapore, just like I had been play-acting at revolution and espionage all weekend.

Fig. 16 – Kai, minced chicken steeped in herbs.

To console myself, I ordered a spot of in-room lunch from the excellent La Belle Epoque restaurant, which served French and Laotian specialties. I opted for the Larb Kai, a typical Laotian specialty consisting of minced chicken marinated and cooked with a variety of herbs, in particular, mint and basil. The chicken went with Khao Neow, or served in a rattan basket canister. The Larb was excellent – a dizzying mix of flavours and textures unique to Laos and nowhere else. The Khao Neow added to that complexity of flavours and textures, and it also being

Ting 16 my favorite staple of all time, provided a fitting end to my short return-tip to Vientiane. I had first tried Khao Neow ten years ago on my first visit to Vientiane and I fell in love with it. If there was anything that would take me back to Vientiane again, it would be this delightfully sticky, simple yet satisfying part of the city’s heritage and everyday life.

Fig. 17 – Sohk dee deuh Settha Palace.

* * * * *

Essential Reading

Grant Evans, 2003. A Short History of Laos: The Land in Between. Allen & Unwin.

Martin Stuart Fox, 1997. A History of Laos. Cambridge University Press.

Hunter S. Thompson, 1990. “Checking into the Lane Xang,” from: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream, Gonzo Papers III. Simon & Schuster.

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Fig. 18 – The cathedral-like art deco stairway down to the hotel lobby.

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