Vientiane by Night

The fast train from Bangkok had taken me to Nong Khai, in the far northeast of Thailand. Nong Khai is unexceptional - five streets of neat houses; but a boat ride across the Mekong River takes you to Vientiane in Laos. Vientiane is exceptional, but inconvenient. The brothels are cheaper than the hotels, marijuana is cheaper than pipe tobacco, and opium easier to find than a cold glass of beer.

Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975)

Things have changed in Vientiane, the somnolent Laotian capital, in the 25 years since Mr. Theroux's fleeting but perceptive visit. And, in the topsy-turvy world of Laotian politics, they may shortly change again - though not if those tenacious men still in power across the muddy Mekong River have anything to do with it.

In 1975 the CIA's Laos was on its last legs. Theroux found it "a river bank... overrun and ransacked; it was one of America's expensive practical jokes, a motiveless place where nothing was made, everything imported; a kingdom with baffling pretensions to Frenchness". Indeed, so obviously anachronistic was the pro-Western rump of the Lao state that the American traveller found it "surprising... that it existed at all, and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed like a lower form of life, like the cross-eyed planarian or a squashy amoeba, the sort of creature that can't die even when it is cut to ribbons".

As we now know, Laos had indeed been cut to ribbons, with more tons of bombs dropped on it during the period 1964-73 than the USA dropped world-wide during the entire Second World War. But Laos didn't die - instead it metamorphosed into the socialist Lao Peoples Democratic Republic. And with the departing Americans went the hectic nightlife witnessed by Theroux and others.

In the early 1960s, when the first Americans began to arrive in Vientiane, they found a quiet and sleepy Lao-French provincial town masquerading as a national capital on the banks of the middle Mekong. To be sure, Laos was always a popular posting with the French colonials - especially the men. Its very name seemed to conjure up visions of long afternoon siestas spent with accommodating Lao or Annamite mistresses. The scent of opium fumes mingled with the heavy perfume of jasmine never seemed far removed. Yet Laos' legendary appeal during the colonial period bespoke a certain languid style, never raunchy or uncouth.

During the period between about 1960 and 1975, all this was to change radically, with the formerly discreet Lao capital developing, albeit briefly, an uninhibited nightlife which in some ways surpassed the more notorious excesses of contemporary Bangkok and Saigon. According to Christopher Robbins, author of Air America, at the height of the USA's aerial bombardment of North Vietnam, CIA "secret warriors" and millions of dollars of American aid 'temporarily turned the place into a swinging town offering every sort of diversion and perversion... "The Strip" in Vientiane numbered enough exotic bars and specialist brothels to keep the most jaded Asia Hand entertained'.

For reasons doubtless associated with the psychedelic, war-weary cynicism of the time, some of the better known bars and brothels which sprang up during this time boasted fatuous names such as The Purple Porpoise - An Australian-run establishment widely known as the Air America "watering hole" - and the unappetisingly named Green Latrine. Other famous bars included Monica's, The Lido, and - most especially - The White Rose and Le Rendezvous des Amis.

The first of these establishments, The White Rose, was famous for its "outstanding and unusual floor shows". Vientiane's other most notorious establishment, The Rendezvous des Amis, was -according to Robbins - also known as Madame Lulu's 'after its patronne... a broken-down French woman in her sixties with her hair set in an outrageous bouffant, her face thickly camouflaged in makeup, and a theatrical cigarette holder forever in her hand'. The speciality of the house - which, we are told, consisted of a single garishly-lit room scattered with school desks surrounded by wicker chairs - was "warm beer and oral sex". Robbins assures us that 'every one of Madame Lulu's girls had been personally coached by the grande dame herself' who (one can well believe) 'combined a tawdry elegance with a spirited vulgarity'.

These establishments aside, the CIA's Vientiane also boasted a nightclub, The Spot, which was run by two notorious Corsican gangsters and drug dealers, as well as a five-story casino owned by the Royalist General Phoumi Nosavan, an American ally who also maintained an opium den for 150 smokers (one of about 40 in the city) styled - touchingly but unconvincingly - "DETOXIFICATION CLINIC".

All this was swept aside following the Pathet Lao seizure of power in December, 1975. The new, communist leadership (like that in neighbouring Hanoi) was distinguished by a strong Puritanism - perhaps hardly surprisingly, given the impact of 15 years of "secret war" excess on the sexual mores of Vientiane. In quick succession, bars, brothels and dance halls were closed, a curfew imposed between midnight and six A.M., whilst opium and marijuana consumption was banned. Meanwhile Vientiane's "ladies of the night", including Madame Lulu's sexual athletes, were rounded up and banished to an island in the middle of Nam Ngum Lake for a lengthy 15 year period of re-education. They were not released until 1990, when they were reported 'drifting back' to a town they can hardly have recognised.

Today, albeit somewhat more lively than at the height of the cold war, the Lao capital remains a sedate and rather discreet town. Certainly the bars of the debauched pre-revolutionary days have disappeared without trace, and there is no sign of the burgeoning, free-wheeling nightlife which is beginning to re-emerge in Saigon and Phnom Penh.

A few popular discotheques such as "Feeling Well" and "Hanle" provide the locals with a popular mixture of traditional ramwong dancing and Thai-style disco - but with nary a hint of impropriety. A small but growing number of Lao yuppies, together with visiting Thai and Chinese businessmen, entertain themselves as best they can at a handful of rather proper nightclubs and karaoke bars such as the Lane Xang, and the Anou. The Blue Star Restaurant and Night Club may seem redolent of The Purple Porpoise and The White Rose - but in fact there is no similarity, and any resemblance begins and ends with the name.

These establishments aside, Vientiane's nightlife revolves around a handful of friendly bars, some no more than holes-in-the wall, offering a selection of Lao and imported beers together with a colonial spectrum of other beverages - French champagne, Jim Beam Whiskey, and Stolichnaya Vodka. At about 1,000 kip, or just over US$1-00, a large bottle of Lao beer is good value and not bad quality; draft beer is even cheaper.

During the somnolent Lao afternoons, most foreigners in the know make for the Sala Khounta Beer Bar, more generally known to the expatriate community as "The End of the Universe", to watch the sun set over the broad Mekhong. Another popular destination, also by the banks of the river on Quai Fa Ngum, is the Mixai - known to the westerners, for historical reasons, as "The Russian Bar", though nowadays precious few Russians or East Europeans are to be seen there. Finally, right in the town centre and close by some of the few western restaurants, visitors to Vientiane may drink a peaceful nightcap by the illuminated waters of Nam Phu Fountain.

In sum, visitors to the Vientiane more used to the vigorous entertainment scene in neighbouring Thailand will probably find the Lao capital friendly but dull. Such a judgement will certainly delight the Lao leadership, who want to open their country to the outside world at their own, restrained pace, avoiding the worst excesses of free market capitalism and unrestrained growth which they see across the Mekhong. Indeed, in private Lao politicians will admit that they are horrified by the degradation and exploitation of Pattaya, which they say can never be equated with the "Lao way". AIDS, too - already an emerging problem in Cambodia and Vietnam - is a major, if largely unspoken concern.

The question is, following the opening of the Australian-sponsored Friendship Bridge between Thailand and Laos, can Vientiane be spared the worse excesses associated with its richer, more developed neighbour? Already a few red lights have come on in some of the more secluded houses along the Mekhong banks. No doubt it will prove impossible to exclude all "corrupting influences" from Vientiane's nightlife, just as it will to prevent some resurgence of the city's former free-wheeling lifestyle.

Be this as it may, there can at least be no doubt that the government of the Lao PDR is determined, at least as long as it stays in power, that there will be no return to the sexual free-for-all so graphically depicted by the worldly-wise Mr Paul Theroux!

If you are interested in publishing this article please contact info@cpamedia.com (or use this page) for pricing and additional images. Should you wish simply to quote from the article or to use it for strictly non-commercial purposes please be sure to acknowledge CPAmedia copyright together with a link to our website at www.cpamedia.com.