Word: mekong
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Once the capital of Lan Xang, the Kingdom of a Million Elephants, this town of about 16,000 inhabitants perches on a peninsula where the Nam Khan and Mekong rivers meet about 200 km north of Vientiane. It's a place of unsurpassed charm, which seems all the more fragile when you consider it's a mere 100 km or so from the infamous Other Theater where between 1964 and 1973 the U.S. was busy dropping a planeload of bombs every eight minutes in the so-called Secret...
...town's old quarter, which on the map looks like a boot giving the fat brown snake of the Mekong a kick in the belly, is a conservationist's paradise: a kind of colonial Disneyland with lane after unspoiled, palm-fringed lane filled with French brick and stucco buildings and teakwood homes that sag with age. On almost every corner and rise sits a temple: there are more than 30, some half a millennium old. The golden sweep of their winglike roofs seems to suspend them in the hazy skies. The place is so photogenic the local Kodak concession must...
...first full moon-style party, modeled on Thailand's island raves, is anything to go by. "Us backpackers have got to make our own fun," said a shaggy type who bounded up to me in Sisavangvong Road and thrust a flyer proclaiming the birth of the Full Mekong Party into my hand. "I'm the Great Disco Dane," he explained, assuring me the party would be "wicked." Around 9 p.m., I ventured down to the sandy strip where the ferries land?to find about 20 people sipping Beer Lao around a fire, a decided lack of music and a disconsolate...
...SMOOTH SAILING It was the romance of it all that persuaded me to take the slow boat to Luang Prabang from Huay Xai, meandering down the Mekong through a veil of river mist like some intrepid adventurer of old ... Well, O.K., romance and fear: the fast boats have a reputation for dispatching passengers to the murky depths...
...Unfortunately, the newspaper man's slavish attention to detail?facts, dates and potted biographies?leaves Gargan little room for introspection and self-analysis. He takes up too much space running down the political histories of the countries along the Mekong, and identifying all the principal players. His diligence makes the reading interesting and informative, but hardly gripping. Every now and again, you wish he'd pause from the narration of facts to tell us more about himself, about how his perspective on Asia has changed with the years?molded by the things he's seen, the stories he's covered...