by Brett Dakin
After four hours of bad music and drunken revelry, even my colleagues’ seemingly unlimited well of tolerance for the absurd was showing signs of depletion. I exchanged many a knowing glance with Mon and Seng. Privately, in hushed voices, my friends agreed: it was time to go. But no one would say so out loud. Not a single staff member would openly acknowledge his desire to leave before the chairman. Finally—as if Buddha himself had answered our silent prayers—our boss rose from the ashes of Nong Nok and signaled his intention to return home. As he bid his farewells and expressed his gratitude to the village headman, his driver, Oudom, made a beeline for the parking lot. In a matter of seconds, our trash was cleared away, the straw mats were rolled up, and the NTA crew was back in the van. Thanh popped Will Smith back into the tape deck, and, before I knew it, we were on our bumpy way back to Vientiane.
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Over the weekend, as I recovered from the abortive eco-tourism celebration, I mulled over what had happened that afternoon. Why had the staff been so reluctant to leave early? After all, the chairman had his own transportation—he didn’t need the NTA van. Some staff had their own motorbikes, and could have gone home at any time. On Monday, Seng helped me to understand. Let’s say the staff had in fact cleared out early. What if, when he arrived at work on Monday morning, the chairman had asked one of his secretaries, “By the way, why did you all leave the festival so early on Friday?” An appropriate response might have been: “Oh, because we were all very tired, and we agreed it was time to go. So, together, we decided to leave.” But, after shifting in his boots for a few moments, his assistant would more likely have come up with: “So-and-So pressured us all to leave, so we finally gave in to his demands.” This was what worried Seng and the others: in the official version of events, there always had to be someone to blame.
At the office, anyone who openly expressed a personal opinion usually stood alone. He had little chance of receiving support from colleagues, even those he considered close friends. Seng gave me an example: a few years ago, the chairman had decided that, in order to increase efficiency and to better manage technical problems, it would be best to put all the office computers in a single room. The new computer room would be manned by two or three staff who would carry out all word processing requests from all sections of the office. Privately, everyone agreed that this was a ridiculous idea. Imagine the chaos that would result if, any time someone wanted a document typed up, he had to submit a request. The office would quickly fall apart.
At a general staff meeting, Seng voiced his disapproval of the proposed reorganization. But no one came to his defense. If it was the chairman’s idea, then it had to be good. So the plan went ahead, and after only three days, centralized efficiency had degenerated into pure silliness. No one could get anything done. The plan was aborted, and the computers were re-distributed to the section offices. Overnight, everyone’s public opinion of the plan suddenly changed—it seemed it hadn’t been such a good idea after all. But Seng didn’t feel vindicated, as nothing was said of his original opposition to the scheme.
Seng now kept quiet at staff meetings. “My parents always tell me, ‘Don’t waste time,’” he said. “Sometimes it’s better to keep silent, to keep your job. If you criticize the government, they put you in prison, and you might never come out. You can lose time in prison, many years.”
Why didn’t at least some Lao stand up and reject the chaos that surrounded them? I wondered. Why did so few Lao demand change? Seng’s answer was simple: “It’s just the Lao character. We don’t protest.”
For an American upstart just out of college, his answer was, in a word, unsatisfactory. “We are different from the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Thai. It’s in our spirit.” It was an explanation I could understand, but not fully accept. And besides, it didn’t tell the whole story.
Laos was certainly a laid-back place to live. But beneath the surface, a deeply ingrained culture of fear pervaded government and society. To comment publicly on an issue, to express an opinion, or even to acknowledge a problem that everyone already knew existed, was to be avoided at all cost. People may have been relaxed, but they were afraid. And not only of the big guys who flew down Lan Xang Avenue behind the tinted windows of their Mercedes sedans, sirens blaring. Or of the policemen who blew their whistles and stopped traffic to let the officials through. They were also afraid of one another. There was little trust, and even among friends it was too risky to speak your mind.
You just never knew—even the birds might be listening.
The Lost Generation
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At precisely five o’clock each evening, just as the sun was beginning its lazy descent over Vientiane, a black Toyota sedan would pull up in front of the Lao Hotel Plaza. A handsome Lao man in his late twenties—dressed to kill in a black silk shirt, black pants, and black loafers—would step out of the back seat and trot up the front steps to the main entrance. Just as he reached the front door, it would swing open, as if by magic, and he would sail through, leaving a bewildered doorman in his wake. This was Paul, a friend of mine and a regular at the Lao Hotel Plaza gym. Paul hadn’t yet learned to drive, so each day he caught a ride to the gym in his family’s chauffeured car. Paul was a name he had picked up while studying and working abroad. These days, only his parents called him by his given name.
In the early 1990s, Paul had graduated from Vientiane High School, in the same colonial building that had once housed the prestigious Lycée Vientiane. It had been decades since the communists had taken over, but the crumbling edifice remained a bastion of the Vientiane elite; if you were a child of the upper class, you went to Vientiane High School. Paul did well there, and he was granted a government scholarship to study construction and engineering in Moscow—at the time, still the most prestigious of placements. After leaving the Soviet Union, he continued his studies in Bangkok before taking a job with an Austrian architecture firm in Vienna. Paul whiled away many an hour in Vienna’s cafés, sipping coffee, eating rich Sacher tortes, and smoking filtered Gauloises. It was a far cry from Vientiane. He loved the freedom, the fashion, the style.
“But one thing, you know,” Paul told me, “the Austrian people are not friendly. They never smile. One time I was sitting at a bar, and I smiled at a woman across the room, a stranger. She was so surprised that she came to me and said, ‘Thank you so much. I have lived in Vienna my whole life and no stranger has ever smiled at me. Thank you.’ Most people, if you smile at them on the street, they think you’re crazy.”
Despite the icy stares and social isolation—you couldn’t ask for a more stark contrast to life in Vientiane—Paul liked living in Vienna. But after only one year, his parents insisted that he return to Laos; he was needed at home. Now back in Vientiane, he was living at home and working for the family business, a consulting firm employed by private investors and development aid agencies alike for advice on construction projects. His father had recently signed a lucrative long-term contract for multiple aid projects with the Japanese government, and there was much work to be done. The oldest of three sons, Paul felt obligated to use the skills he had acquired abroad to help the firm. He was, however, bored out of his mind.
Even by American standards, Paul’s family was very wealthy, and his life in Vientiane was nothing if not comfortable. Chauffeured cars, mobile phones, designer imports—he had it all. But living at home meant that Paul had lost all of the independence he had come to know and to cherish while abroad. “I want to stand on my legs,” he told me in his idiosyncratic English. (What else would you stand on? I wondered silently.) He felt just like a high school student again, a helpless teenager dependent on his parents to survive.
All the trappings of wealth in the world could not silence Paul’s chorus of complaints about Vientiane: there was no nightlife, no culture, no romance. As an escape from the doldrums of his daily routine, he would often call a former lover in Thailand. To conceal the relationship from his parents, he always used his c
ell phone. Whether the object of his affection was male or female remained unclear, as Paul hadn’t yet mastered the all-important distinction between the English pronouns “he” and “she.” In Lao, simpler than English as always—although not as clear—the single pronoun lao is used to refer to both men and women. Then again, perhaps Paul’s mistake was intentional, and I elected to preserve the ambiguity.
One evening after his daily sauna at the Lao Plaza (he rarely did much else at the gym), Paul reminded me that it was Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t aware of it—indeed, I had no reason to remember. I may have enjoyed the freedom for which Paul yearned, but, romantically speaking, it had done me precious little good. I remained as single as I’d been for years. In celebration of the pathetic state of our respective love lives, we decided to go out to dinner. Before we left, Paul checked himself in the mirror one last time, dabbing a bit of cologne behind his ears and styling his hair with a healthy application of gel. The image of the two of us in the mirror made for a striking contrast. Paul was almost painfully stylish, not a single hair out of place and dressed in the latest Bangkok chic. I, on the other hand, hadn’t bothered to shave, and it had been months since I’d purchased a new item of clothing.
We ate at Namphu restaurant, at the Fountain Circle, just a few minutes’ walk from the Lao Plaza. The Namphu was one of the oldest and most expensive restaurants in town, and, given my precarious financial situation, I’d been there only once before. By expensive, I mean to say that an entrée ran you about five dollars, but for me even this was quite an extravagance. Paul, on the other hand, was a regular. His new Seiko, bought on a recent trip to Bangkok, glistened in the soft lighting. He lay his miniature cell phone on the table just to the right of his table setting, as if it were another eating utensil. It rang every ten minutes or so throughout our meal, usually a call from a family member wanting to do a little business or a friend wondering what his plans were for the evening.
Paul lit a cigarette—he now smoked only Marlboro Lights—and began, not for the first time, to recount his latest troubles of the heart. He often pined for ex-lovers in Russia, Thailand, and Austria. Although he was Lao himself, he found romance in his native country a mysterious and frustrating endeavor. “I don’t like Lao style,” he claimed.
What exactly was Lao style? I asked.
“You know, the face, the body, the character—Lao style. It is very difficult for me to find someone in Vientiane.”
My friend tended towards the dramatic whenever the topic of romance came up. “You know, love is poison,” he told me. Paul’s English lexicon had been strongly influenced by MTV Southeast Asia, particularly the ubiquitous boy bands that plagued the airwaves. His statements often read like a refrain from the latest Boyzone or N’Sync hit. “I want to live for today,” he liked to say. “I need to follow my heart.” When I suggested that I was also struggling with the mysteries of “Lao style” romance, he would tell me that it was simply because “You don’t know how to love.” If ever I tried to change the subject from our love lives to other, more substantive matters, Paul invariably demurred. Once during our meal at the Namphu I asked him what he thought of the Lao economy. “I don’t care about the Lao economy,” he said with disgust, and lit another Marlboro.
After we had finished eating, I asked Paul where he was heading. “Home,” he replied. “My mother worries.”
I also worried about Paul. All dressed up with nowhere to go, he dreamed of a life in the big city even as his own life was confined to the narrow corridor between his home and the Lao Plaza gym. His life in Vientiane was indeed a cushioned, chauffeured existence, but it left him feeling unbearably empty. He longed to break free of his doting mother and demanding father, but felt constrained by the obligation he felt to his family.
Paul was a member of what I called Laos’ Lost Generation. This group of upper-class twenty-somethings hailed from wealthy families, and most had been granted the opportunity to study in the West. But despite—or perhaps as a result of—their tremendous fortune, Paul’s peers were struggling to make it in Vientiane. Many felt listless and without purpose; in essence, they had everything and nothing at the same time. Their concerns were far removed from those of the average Lao, it’s true, but they were no less painful.
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The manager of the Namphu, Sone, stood behind the bar and fixed me a gin and tonic. It was rare indeed that I’d treat myself to such an extravagance, but Sone’s G and Ts were the best around. He always had the mix just right, and the atmosphere made a drink there worth most any price. A well-worn recording of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto filled the dining room as I sipped my drink and slowly got to know the man behind the bar.
Sone’s mother had opened the Namphu more than a decade before, when it had been just about the only restaurant in Vientiane that catered to expats. Back in Paul’s class at Vientiane High, Sone hadn’t been known as the brightest of students. He had, however, been lucky enough to study in Australia following graduation. Upon his return to Laos, his mother had designated him the Namphu’s manager; it was up to him to make sure the red wine flowed freely and the renowned blue-cheese hamburgers were always fresh.
Sone was the perfect host; a jolly fellow, always ready to greet his customers with a smile and an outstretched hand. His belly already protruded quite a distance beyond his waistline, it struck me that perhaps he had enjoyed a few too many of those famous burgers himself over the years. In fact, Paul and others who had been his classmates at Vientiane High often mentioned that Sone had put on weight in recent years. His healthy appetite notwithstanding, business at the Namphu wasn’t great. But with a surname like his, Sone didn’t really have to worry. He was an Inthavong, and thus heir to at least part of one of the largest family fortunes in Laos.
The Inthavong family business—which included three hotels, three apartment buildings, an office complex, a joint-venture hydro-electric dam, and a construction company—was said to be worth more than 500 million dollars. Sone’s grandfather, Somboun Inthavong, had been born in 1907 in Luang Prabang. As a young man, he worked as a construction apprentice in the royal palace. There, he cultivated the practical skills and official connections that would come in handy later in his career. In 1935 he left Luang Prabang to serve as the chief of the Royal Lao Government’s Housing Department in Vientiane. Before he retired from the civil service in 1940, Somboun had set up a trading company that supplied consumer products, office equipment, and other imported goods to the local market and to the government.
Somboun had been a savvy businessman. Even as the country had descended into civil war in the 1960s, he maintained close friendships with key figures in each of Laos’ divergent political factions. He was buddies with the centrist Prince Souvanna Phouma, the right-wing Phoui Xananikone, and the communist Phoumi Vongvichit. After his retirement, he founded the country’s first construction company and undertook his own property development projects in Vientiane, including apartment buildings, office complexes, and markets. During the Indochina War, he was awarded government contracts to build a military camp and an apartment building for US officers in Vientiane. His buildings were leased to American and French officials, and the value of his properties rose to more than 25 million dollars.
Due to Somboun’s broad political connections, the communist victory in 1975 hardly put a dent in the Inthavong family business. If anything, it was a boon; the revolution conveniently eliminated most of Somboun’s competition. After 1975, he was granted state contracts to renovate and construct buildings in Vientiane such as the Presidential Palace, the Morning Market and the Ministry of Education. After the government abandoned socialism in the late 1980s, Somboun began once again to lease his properties to private enterprises. Remember the US officers’ apartment building? The Novotel Hotel group paid 90 million dollars for a twenty-year lease.
In the wake of Somboun’s death in 1994, the Inthavong family was struggling to build upon his tremendous legacy of sustained success. It wasn’
t easy. Somboun had 14 children from two wives: nine sons and five daughters. All of them had been sent to study in France, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, or the US; only four had returned to Laos. Those who lived in Vientiane still had plenty of cash to throw around, but the business seemed to be falling apart. As marriages collapsed, children feuded, and cousins fought, the Inthavong name suffered. Many in the younger generation seemed aimless, unwilling or unable to properly manage family properties. One of Somboun’s major post-war projects had been a five-story building just opposite the Namphu on the Fountain Circle that had once housed a French language and culture center. For years, his children had been bickering over the future of the building, and no one could agree on who had the right to develop the site. In the meantime, it just sat there, sad and empty, a blot on the downtown landscape.
Perhaps most emblematic of the Inthavong family’s fall from grace was the decaying Phonexay Hotel, a bit further out of town. A few weeks before, I had driven up to the hotel to have a look inside. The Phonexay was an imposing, cavernous structure. At one time you might even have called it grand. But it had been years since tourists had even considered staying there. These days, the only guests were laborers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; around town, it was known as the “Indian Hotel.” These South Asians, temporary workers in Thailand, stayed in Vientiane for only a few days at a time, just long enough to renew their visas at the Thai consulate. While they waited, they lounged about the hotel’s foyer, joking with one another and playing cards. In the afternoons, a few inevitably drifted across the street to Nazim’s Indian restaurant for a cup of milk tea. Perhaps the dank, dark, air-conditioned interior and melancholy Indian tunes playing at Nazim’s—which rarely attracted any non-Indian customers (a great pity, as the food was excellent)—reminded them of home. But by evening, most were back in the foyer, playing cards. When I stopped by, a good-humored young Lao man was sitting quietly behind the reception desk. He seemed genuinely surprised to see a falang in his establishment, and immediately set about dissuading me from renting a room.
