Destination: Laos
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Travel Literature
In 1952 Norman Lewis narrated his trip through French Indochina in A Dragon Apparent: Travels In Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, a book that contained this passage on Laos: 'Europeans who come here to live, soon acquire a certain recognisable manner. They develop quiet voices, and gentle, rapt expressions'.
One Foot in Laos (1999) by Dervla Murphy is worth reading for the impressionistic detail it contains on travel in rural Laos and the passion the Irish writer feels for the Lao people, all as a result of a single bicycle trip through the country.
No other personal account of contemporary Laos is as informative, under-the-surface and well written as Another Quiet American (2003) by Brett Dakin, who spent two years working at the National Lao Tourism Authority. By paying close attention to the Lao and falang lives around him, Dakin makes Vientiane jump off the printed page.
Several classic travel narratives by 19th-century French visitors to Laos have been translated into English, including Henri Mouhot's Travels in Siam, Cambodia, and Laos. The book covers the 1858 to 1860 Southeast Asia trip which resulted in the explorer's death. Mouhot shows his ambivalence about the Lao in such contradictory estimations as 'They appear to be more industrious than the Siamese and possess a more adventurous and mercantile spirit' while later on he says, 'A race of children, heartless and unenergetic; the enervating climate makes them apathetic'.
First published in 1912 with original photographs, In Laos and Siam (Au Laos et Au Siam) was written by Marthe Bassenne, one of the few women of this era to have recorded her impressions of Southeast Asia.
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