by Sue Perkins
ME: Now obviously you’ve already done the what-happens-if-I-get-attacked-by-bears session – and you’re about to attend the I-have-to-perform-open-heart-surgery-in-the-frozen-tundra workshop – but this class, this one here, is all about car accidents!
These monks were obviously going to be tough novices to crack. Undeterred, I tried again.
ME: Right. Well, this is one extreme syllabus. First things first, has everyone done their Psychopath Module One homework?
Still nothing. One man with a wisp of a beard nodded, which I took as both a positive and worrying sign.
There was nothing for it but to get on with the class. I began by working my way down the words, trying to find a suitable sentence in which each one would sit. But every time I located the words within a context, it seemed to make things worse.
ME: When a wound doesn’t heal, you get a … scar.
‘Scaaar,’ murmured the class, their monotonous repetition only adding to the feeling that I’d wandered into a death cult.
ME: That’s right. And when you’ve ripped your LEG off in an ACCIDENT, you need an AMBULANCE.
CLASS: AMBUUULANCE.
I proceeded to deliver thirty minutes of hearty improvisation, based around the words on the whiteboard. It was like a really violent episode of Just a Minute, where I would speak, without hesitation, deviation or repetition on the subject of multiple car pile-ups to a load of Laotian trainee monks.
At the end of the lesson, one man was rocking slowly, back and forward, muttering ‘Wound’, repeatedly.
Mercifully, the bell rang just as I got to the last word on the vocab list.
ME: SUTURE.
CLASS: SHOOCHURE.
ME: Before you go, as a parting shot, I just need you to know that the UK is very safe.
MONK: Wound …
ME: It’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever need a lot of this vocabulary.
MONK: Wound …
ME: It’s a pretty welcoming place, with well-established traffic rules so you should be fine. OK. Enjoy the rest of your day.
And with that, I turned to leave and smashed headlong into the boom pole.
CLASS: WOOOOUND.
ME: (trying to suppress a roar of pain) That’s right. Well done. Well done! Class dismissed!
I was sad to leave Luang Prabang: it had afforded us a little peace in what was an arduous journey. We usually moved hotel or house every day, getting up at first light to pack the endless batteries, drives and lenses we needed, so to have the chance to be in the same place for a few days was bliss.
We boarded a boat and set off on a two-day journey north. After recording a couple of reflective pieces to camera, and a few in expectation of what was to come, there was nothing to be done but laze in the sunshine or drift off on one of the mattresses onboard. You’d catch the odd dot of saffron on the landscape, as a monk headed to the banks to wash his robes, but in the main the landscape was free from all human activity. Buffalo munched their way along the ridges of the banks. Birds circled and dived around us. It was a truly special few days.
As I woke the next morning, I sensed something had changed. The air was thick and humid. There was no sound of birds or insects. I went above deck and, sure enough, the landscape was altered. The land had been stripped, the lush vegetation replaced by dust and sand.
I can feel the pull of Laos’s superpower northern neighbour. I can feel the breath of China on my face.
19. All That Glitters
We maundered upstream for a day to Pakbeng, overnighted there, and the next morning set off northwards for Bokeo province and the Golden Triangle. We were literally on a slow boat to China. The Golden Triangle is where the borders of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet, although the name is more commonly used in reference to the region’s major export: heroin.
On nearing our destination, I transferred from our wooden vessel to a gleaming white powerboat with a plastic roof. I felt like a ready-meal – hermetically sealed and sweating in a synthetic tray waiting for the full microwave experience. Through the vinyl flaps I could see the heat radiating from the pavements beyond, the earth scalped of any living things that could mitigate the rising temperature. The skyline, usually so dominated by trees, was now owned by a vast gold dome atop a concrete monstrosity. I had arrived at the Casino.
If building dams and selling green energy to the Thai government was one way of earning money, this was another. This was the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone. There are at least ten SEZs in Laos, with many more planned over the next decade. These are parcels of rural land developed with foreign investment, with unique low tariffs and flexible free-market-oriented economic policies. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the rules don’t apply here. It’s a free-for-all. Essentially, this place is an annexe, a de facto Chinese state in the heart of Laos.
The Casino attracts hundreds of visitors each week from mainland China, where gambling is banned outside Macau. Most travel by road from Yunnan, or fly to northern Thailand, then cross the Mekong on speedboats laid on by the gambling firm. Despite its location in the tropical hills of Laos, the casino clock is set to Beijing time, one hour ahead of Laos. Mandarin is the lingua franca here, and the local shops only accept Thai baht or Chinese yuan, rather than the Laotian kip.
I pulled up at the dock. Young Chinese women in pink dresses and kitten heels wandered the concrete walkways alongside the river, shielding their alabaster skin from the scorching sun with branded parasols. I was met by an army of business representatives who ushered me towards a glistening black stretch limo.
‘What, this? You want me to get into this?’ I gestured to the car, but the men were no longer listening, turning their backs and returning to the boat. I stood, somewhat confused, next to this elongated obscenity of a vehicle. It took me nearly five minutes to work out where the door was. Thank God I never got that Top Gear job, eh? It would have been an hour on BBC2 of me saying things like ‘Where’s reverse?’. ‘I can’t find the ignition’ and ‘What do you mean it’s an automatic? I’ve just rammed it into second gear.’
I half expected to see Sean Coombs turn up and oust me from my ride, but after a few minutes of dazed silence, and a lack of any other passengers materializing, I managed to find the handle and jumped in.
For months I had lived with, and around, subsistence farmers and fishermen. I had seen their world; matchbox houses, tarpaulin shanties, kids with ribs overhanging their bellies like bone roofs. And now I found myself here, in a stretch limo, my face blasted by Arctic air-con, a champagne-chiller to my right and a state-of-the-art sound system to my left. If anything summed up more what is wrong in this world then I have yet to find it.
I was met outside the casino by the general manager, Mr Abbas, a courteous gentleman, although, if I may say, a tad liberal with the hair pomade. We passed through the vast revolving doors and I entered another world.
The air was suddenly cold and processed and carried the relentless beat of tills, tellers and Muzak. There were polished marble floors in a riot of beige as far as the eye could see. Above me, giant frescos depicted the hand of God reaching for, but not quite meeting, the hand of humanity. What a perfect metaphor for this soulless venture. Everywhere you looked there was Italian Renaissance statuary, topped by a vast mock-marble rendering of Zeus at the top of the stairs. He appeared to have shrugged off his role as defender of mankind and charitable protector of the poor and was now, thunderbolt in hand, waiting to punish anyone marking cards or manhandling the croupiers.
‘We wanted it to feel like the West,’ said Mr Abbas, with no hint of irony.
The casino was made up of twelve thousand feet of gambling space, VIP rooms and private spaces where the high-rollers could get their ‘special needs’ met. I asked Mr Abbas what ‘special needs’ these might be, but he quickly changed the subject. I was ushered in to a side room where a vertiginous blonde Russian with a face like set concrete proceeded to deal me some cards.
WOMAN: Baccarat. Yes?
ME: Actually, I won’t play, if that’s OK.
WOMAN: This casino. You play.
ME: Really, I …
WOMAN: You don’t know rules? I show you. Listen …
ME: No, I know the rules, I just don’t want …
WOMAN: You no fun. No fun.
As consumer experiences go, this one was up there with the bleakest.
WOMAN: Bad customer. So goodbye.
Outside the casino, the developers had also been busy. There were long, formal gardens, planted in haste, with shrubs at right angles, their roots exposed, drying in the heat. Gaudy cement pagodas popped up here and there, cracked and faltering. There was even a miniature Forbidden City, which managed the extraordinary feat of being less well preserved than the original, despite the fact it had technically been standing for only a matter of months. All around me was a concrete simulacrum, a shoddy grey replica, where the natural world, where beauty, should have been.
I wandered around. I felt displaced and uncomfortable. Something about this barren theme park felt menacing. I didn’t know then what I know now: that the SEZ is a haven for child-trafficking, illegal wildlife trading and sex tourism. I just knew that I hated it.
Somebody mentioned that an airport and shopping mall were on their way. A zoo was planned too. My heart sank. I imagined a snow leopard pacing up and down on the boiling aggregate, a polar bear rocking from side to side, while gawping tourists took snapshots for family and friends back home.
That night we headed off to find somewhere to eat, but couldn’t find anywhere half decent. Later I learned that some of the restaurants sell bear paws and pangolin. The boutiques openly stock ivory. I had even heard that live tigers were traded for skins, meat and tiger-bone wine. What a basin of hell this place was – a habitat so lawless and godforsaken that even the designers of Westworld would have found it de trop.
We wandered to the edge of the strip, to what felt like a shanty town, a place where the thousands of casino workers lived and ate. It was edgy – TVs blaring, motorbikes revving. Sex workers patrolled the humid streets. There was no laap here, no fresh papaya or fish, just a vending machine, monitored by some kids in flip-flops with buckets of attitude. When it came to paying, we didn’t even have the right currency. ‘Yuan only,’ said the server. ‘Yuan or baht.’
We stayed in the hotel complex, a brutalist block designed around a waterfall with no water in it. The rooms were painted black, and the walls hummed with electrical cabling. I could hear the couple next door having a fight. Then having sex. Then having a fight again. Maybe it was all sex, I don’t know. I can’t tell any more.
I couldn’t sleep. The air was too thick and I felt too anxious. I walked around the courtyard – the stars that had accompanied me throughout my travels seemingly gone, the eastern upside-down moon obscured by cloud.
I rang London. I knew it was the middle of the night. I knew I would just get Anna’s voicemail. It didn’t matter. I got to hear her voice. I got to say how I felt.
It’s me. Sorry, I know it’s late.
Baby, I want to come home. Please. I want to come home.
I just want to come home.
CHINA
* * *
20. Yunnan
We flew from Kunming to Jinghong, the capital of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture. It was my first trip to China and the only thing I knew about it so far was that Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture is a total shit to pronounce on camera first thing in the morning after approximately three hours’ sleep.
We arrived to a skyline broken by the vertical scars of cranes and tower blocks. I heard that a new skyscraper goes up every five days in China. Whether that’s factually correct, I don’t know – but the nomenclature is off, that’s for sure. These things don’t scrape the sky, they punch right through it. They burst through the clouds and get their concrete faces into God’s grill, good and proper.
The story of Jinghong is a familiar one, repeated time and time again across this country. Just over fifteen years ago it had been a fishing village, nestled in the jungle – alive to the sound of temple bells. Now, it resembled a tropical Gotham. Plants struggled to mature in the cancerous gloom, tourists strolled through the streets in face-masks, the birds hung their nests in JCBs, not trees.
From the second we woke, we were serenaded by angle-grinders and the endless beep, beep, beep of reversing haulage trucks. Everything you touched was covered with a thin film of concrete dust. Your throat tickled as you talked, and in the dead of night you’d wake, choking on the particles lining your sinuses.
Our hotel was a vast compound unlike anything I have seen before. When I say vast, I mean vast – it was larger than a village and verging on the size of your average suburban town. The Citadel of a Thousand Trouser Presses. To give you a sense of scale, it took just over ten minutes to walk to my room from Reception. You had to put walking shoes on to get to the gym. By the time you got there, some fifteen minutes later, in the thick, oppressive heat, you felt your workout was already done, so you could simply turn around and head back again.
The hike to breakfast had to be planned with military precision, making note of the right and left turns in the endless and identical breezeblock boulevards. Golf carts stood idly in the roads that connected each residential unit, so if you got too knackered you could make like Bob Hope, hop in one and career over to the restaurant.
Everywhere I went in this grey metropolis I felt dwarfed – like a Borrower on a building site. I would walk to the end of a corridor, only to return the next day and find builders hard at work extending it still further. Perhaps this is how it ends, this endgame of capitalism – with a hotel that expands ever outwards, covering every hamlet, village, city and country in the world with its asphalt fingers, until we are all interconnected by vast grey tunnels punctuated with conference rooms, ‘meeting spaces’ and restrooms.
How can I help you, madam?
All this walking, from lobby to room and back again, makes a girl hungry. Thankfully, there were multiple restaurants to choose from, although only one technically completed. I am not exaggerating when I say it was the size of an aircraft hangar with a buffet laid out as far as the eye could see: endless metres of immaculately sliced dragon fruit, melon, pineapple and papaya. A depressed woman stood making pancakes at a crepe station. A depressed woman stood making bespoke omelettes at an egg station. A depressed woman stood dunking grey pork balls into dish-water at the noodle station. There were huge lengths of sliced meat curling in the heat; pitchers of concentrated orange juice stagnating, topped with an inch-thick neon meniscus. And who was there to eat all this food – this never-ending sumptuous spectacle?
Twenty people.
Twenty of us, sitting at six or seven different tables spread out in the cavernous space: our crew, a party of six from Beijing, a single-child family from Hong Kong and a silent couple. All with a concrete acre of space between each of us. I could have played a tennis match in there and been unconcerned that the ball would hit a fellow diner.
It was as despairing a sight as I’ve ever seen, a paean to waste and excess and basic bourgeous crapitude. As we left, the flies started to descend. Normally, I’d be appalled. Here, I was just glad that something, at least, got to polish off the buffet.
Our first day involved getting the boat from Jinghong to one of Xishuangbanna’s major tourist destinations. The boat was a pleasure cruiser, a floating party rammed with Han Chinese out for a good time. Han Chinese are the majority Chinese, making up around 92 per cent of China’s population. This day trip was to allow them to see a different side of their great nation. On each table there was more wasted food and a pile of plastic trinkets that celebrated ‘ethnic culture’. The PA whined into life and a couple, resembling a tribal Donny and Marie Osmond, embarked on a gruelling half-hour set of traditional folksong. There is something searing about the Chinese scale, that shrill pentatonic, which, when combined with a microphone and a loose cable connect
ion, can provide a brain-damaging audio onslaught. This trip ended up feeling like one stress-position short of an aquatic Guantánamo.
We were headed to a visitor experience called the Dai Minority Park. Take a wild guess at the main attraction …
I’ll give you a clue – ‘minority’.
Yes, this is a theme park celebrating the ancient traditions and ways of the Dai ethnic tribe. But the Dai weren’t played by actors, recreating the past – oh, no. The Dai were playing themselves. This tribe have lived by the water for millennia, until one day someone popped a fence around them and started charging tourists an entry fee. Essentially, their community was now living a simulated version of their traditional existence under the watchful gaze of coach parties and day-trippers.
There is no other way of putting this: it’s a human zoo, with visiting times and feeding times. You’re not gawping at jaguars or a greater one-horned rhino. You’re gawping at people, real people, going about the same daily routines that their ancestors have enjoyed for thousands of years.
It’s hard to find a point of comparison in the Western world for this. We no longer have members of the hunter-gathering Caucasoid Europeans on our shores. There are no existent Celts or Germanic tribes living off the land. Our indigenous communities no longer exist, if indeed the term ‘indigenous’ can be accurately applied to our nation in the first place.
Of course, the reason there is no parallel is because the rapidity of change in China itself is unparalleled. It’s outrunning its own yesterdays at a pace the rest of us can only marvel at – evolving so fast, in fact, that it feels like an entirely different country from the one of even a decade ago. In that context, of course you’d want to make a feature, an exhibit, out of what has been so suddenly abandoned or outdated.
The state of Britain, say, fifteen years ago is a recognizable spectacle. We can easily join the dots between then and now, and find the through-line. We certainly wouldn’t look back on 2003 and think anything back then had enough historic or cultural rarity to merit creating a visitor attraction around it. Can you imagine a VERITAS theme park, devoted to Robert Kilroy-Silk’s anti-immigration party? Or a Littlewoods ride, commemorating the loss of the 119 stores sold to Associated British Foods? Or would you and the family like to pop to BOOZE WORLD, celebrating the law change meaning pubs in England and Wales were finally allowed to open twenty-four hours a day?
