For such a small place, Laos is surprisingly hard to define. You come away feeling that the omnipresent Mekong, the country’s economic and spiritual lifeline, is the one thing you possibly can make sure of.
Southeast Asia’s longest river winds its winding but relentless path from the highest to the underside of this long, narrow, landlocked country also generally known as the “Land of a Million Elephants.”
The Mekong River, like all great rivers of Asia, rises on the Tibetan Plateau and flows through six countries before emptying into the South China Sea, greater than 4,000 km (2,500 mi) from its source.
Yet it’s Laos, greater than every other country, that seems to belong to the Mekong.
It grew along the banks of the river. The Mekong unified the country’s many ethnic groups. It stays a significant center of settlement and a national trade route.
“Mother of Rivers”
The word Mekong translates in Lao as “Mother of Rivers.” As one Lao man told me, “Its water is our blood.”
Its floodplains provide rice, water, fish (the primary source of protein for the population), and the two,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) route through Laos remains to be probably the most convenient route for transportation.
The French colonized Laos largely because they hoped the Mekong would connect them to the legendary riches of China.
The upper section of the river has proven to be unnavigable. But China itself is busy deepening and widening the river to enhance trade and tourism links with Southeast Asia. Small islands have been completely destroyed.
The Chinese are also constructing dams to divert water needed by countries further downstream, comparable to Laos and Cambodia.
Potential for conflict
This is just one among many potential sources of conflict between the six countries along the Mekong River.
Other concerns include overfishing, pesticide runoff, and human waste dumping. Mass deforestation has already caused annual flooding.
To manage the river basin resources and use the water for hydropower production and irrigation, in 1995 Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam established the Mekong River Commission, with China and Myanmar as dialogue partners.
Mekong Monk | TripAdvisor
The director of the Laos Mekong River Committee, Boriboun Sanakisam, took me for a ride on one among the fast motorboats favored by wealthy young Thai businessmen seeking to do business with their resource-rich neighbor just across the river.
He assured me that the commission would supply a forum where different neighbors could efficiently resolve their problems, using what Asians wish to call their traditional ability to attain consensus.
Yet from its heyday within the 14th century, Laos was a helpless victim of its larger neighbors, in search of to play them off against one another.
As the waiter at my hotel told me, Laos is sort of a small boat that may easily capsize when larger vessels get too close.
Change of pace
In the north of the country, I took a small boat down the Mekong and retraced the route taken by countless Lao kings, from the Buddha caves at Tham Ting to the royal pier at the traditional capital of Luang Prabang.
Thick, viscous, almost purple water seeped past, and all I could hear were the birds within the forest on either bank. The golden roofs of temples peeked out from between the trees.
Four hundred kilometres (250 miles) downriver, within the present-day capital of Vientiane, life is starting to throb with the emergence of nightclubs and modern hotels.
But even here the pace of life is way slower than in every other Asian capital.
You can feel that Laos really desires to remain as restless as possible, hidden behind the mountains and the river.
For now, no less than, the mood remains to be: Who cares? As long as we’ve the Mekong, life goes on.
This article was first published on BBC August 21, 2001, written by Tim Luard
