Another Quiet American Read online

  During my visit, the government’s effort to strengthen Lao identity in the face of enduring pressures from the country’s neighbors—indeed, globalization at large—was palpable. The leadership seemed to have jettisoned the revolutionary heroes who were the focus of so much lionization during my time Vientiane; it was reaching deeper into the recesses of Lao history to find suitable national icons to help unite the populace and legitimize the regime. In a country where the median age is 19.3—the youngest in Asia—most people have no memory of the revolution. In conversations with Lao diplomats and parents alike, I heard deep worries about these young people: what did they believe? What were their aspirations? What did they think it meant to be Lao? Did they think of themselves as Lao at all?

  The 450th anniversary celebration was as good a time as any to reign in the more ostentatious displays of Western behavior and remind people that there was much about Laos to value. Vendors at commemoratory trade fairs were prohibited from selling provocative clothing like hot pants and spaghetti-strap blouses. A piece in the state-run Vientiane Mai Daily gently chided, “The intention of this article is not to offend anyone, but it’s important to realize that we have a celebration coming up. Although Laos has been developing rapidly, we should not forget our fine traditions and culture and should show foreign visitors that we possess and love these valuable treasures.” Reading this passage over a tartine and café au lait at Le Banneton, I could not help but think about the destruction of the National Museum—not to mention the other elements of Vientiane’s past that were destroyed when I lived in the city. Could the government really expect its people to respect such “valuable treasures” when it was in the process of eliminating so many of them?

  In any case, such exhortations from the Party were likely to fall on deaf ears, and with good reason; in 2010, the opportunities for engagement with the outside world were simply too tempting to resist. During my visit, Vientiane was also gearing up for the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Above the entrance to nearly every downtown home, shop and office building flew not only the national flag but the blazing hammer-and-sickle as well. On my way home from the riverfront, I stopped by a small shophouse where a group of women were busy cutting fabric and running it at top speed through sewing machines, assembling rough-hewn versions of the two flags. While I was negotiating the price for a pair, an old colleague from the NTA drove up to the store and shouted hello. We had not been in touch for more than ten years, but in short order it seemed like only a few hours had passed. He invited me to join him that evening at Bar Martini, a new addition to Vientiane’s nightlife, where he danced salsa every week. We are now friends on Facebook; I will likely never lose touch with him again.

  Despite all of the transformation, much about Vientiane remains the same: the monks sweeping their temple grounds at dusk, the joys of a Beer Lao on the riverfront at sunset, the baguette vendors near the Morning Market at midnight, the refreshing openness and general goodwill. It is still a wonderful place to live—a large village, now slightly larger—and a fascinating place to visit.

  On my last evening, I received a stark reminder of how little some things had changed. I was planning to meet an old Lao friend for a final cocktail, but he had to cancel at the last minute: there was a funeral to attend. The day before, his friend’s seven-year-old son had suddenly died. The boy had caught dengue fever, which the local neighborhood clinic had failed to diagnose. He had slipped into a coma and passed away, just like that. My friend lamented the family’s failure to bring the boy immediately to Thailand; local medical care simply did not suffice. As I made alternative plans, I had to remind myself: this had happened in Vientiane, by far the wealthiest and most developed place in the country. Most Lao live in the countryside, work in agriculture, and cannot imagine the wonders of the World Wide Web—or even, in many cases, clean drinking water. Government spending on health care and education is woefully inadequate. In the same manner as their pre-revolutionary predecessors, the current leadership has lavished attention on the capital city while giving scant attention to rural areas. The country is said to be experiencing a robust annual growth rate of seven percent, but little of this seems to have trickled out into the provinces.

  The veneer of modernity that has been draped over Vientiane—traffic lights, grand government offices, newly-laid turf, elevators, wireless Internet access—cannot hide the basic problems that still plague the country. During my visit, I was struck by how similar my conversations were to those I had enjoyed so many years before. Discussions with government officials and entrepreneurs, NGO workers and teachers, old friends and new, all touched upon the same concerns explored in these pages. Income inequality, government corruption, foreign influence, environmental destruction, youth disaffection, cultural dislocation—each is more acute today than it was when I lived in Vientiane.

  ___

  It is astonishing to me that the publication of this new introduction will mark the fifth edition of Another Quiet American, which continues to attract new readers around the world. Over the years, I have received messages from folks in places as far afield as Indonesia and Poland, Montana and South Pole Station, Antarctica. Not all comments have been positive; one Vientiane expatriate complained of the “venom in your pen for some of the characters in the book.” Others questioned my motives for writing: a Thai reader asked, “Brett frankly, do you a CIA spy on Laos that period?” One reader recently condemned me as “inconsiderate and reckless.” And perhaps I was. I was twenty-two years old when I began jotting down my thoughts about life in Vientiane; today, I doubt I would be able to produce a book like this. With age one gains wisdom, to be sure, but restraint as well—and that comes with a price. At the time, free of allegiances and vested interests, I just wrote what I saw.

  Overwhelmingly, however, the response has been positive. Particularly gratifying have been the messages I have received from members of the Lao diaspora, who are thirsty for relevant information about their country and people. One woman my age wrote, “Your book provided more information than I’ve ever gotten from my parents or the limited books written about Laos. I guess my parents do not want to be reminded of the reasons why they had to leave Laos.” Another young Lao-American: “I have never been back, and have no memories whatsoever. But through your experience and stories, I was able to imagine what life is like there.” A young man claimed he had been inspired by the book to “one day find the courage to leave my comfortable American surroundings and really pursue my heart’s dream of helping my fellow Lao people.” I never would have predicted that so many Lao in the West would reconnect with their homeland through this book.

  In fact, it was through the book that I myself reengaged with Laos. A few years ago, I received an e-mail from a young Lao-American woman living not far from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. She had left Vientiane as a child along with her family, and had grown up in Northern Virginia. Recently, she had come upon a series of illustrations drawn during the war by refugees displaced by the U.S. bombing in Northern Laos. Inspired by these artifacts, she had begun working to raise awareness among Americans about the Secret War and the lasting impact of the bombing today. The activities of Legacies of War came to include a travelling exhibition, middle and high school curricula, panel discussions, film screenings, and Congressional briefings about the bombing. I began to help out, and became the organization’s Chair. We have worked with members of Congress and representatives of the State Department to substantially increase the United States’ budget for bomb clearance, risk education and victim assistance in Laos.

  I am proud of the progress we have made, but there remains much to be done. The very day after the Gala Dinner to celebrate the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a cluster submunition explosion in Bolikhamxay Province killed a 10-year-old girl and injured her 15-year-old sister. The U.S. owes it to Laos to clean up the mess it left behind more than three decades ag
o. As President Obama said in September 2010, upon belatedly awarding an American serviceman the Medal of Honor for his heroic service long ago in Laos, “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”

  I am often asked about the people, Lao and expatriate, whose stories I tell in these pages. What became of them? I will not offer any specifics. But I have spoken to most of them directly, and others I have learned about from reliable second-hand accounts, and I can report that all are safe and well, even thriving. While many were unsettled by my decision to write about them, with time they seem to have warmed to the idea—including those to whom I was not entirely kind. More than one has told me, simply: “You wrote the truth.”

  My goal in writing Another Quiet American was not to change anyone or anything, but simply to document a specific period in the life of a city. It was a special time in Vientiane, a city on the verge of major transformation but firmly rooted in the past. One knew that big things were coming, but there was space to breathe before they arrived. For me, it was a time of unparalleled freshness and freedom—an irony given the limits of life under the current regime. I am glad that this period will live on through these pages, and (although I would like nothing more than to delete the occasional passage that today makes me cringe) to that end I have decided against revising any of the original content. What is more, given that so much about Vientiane, and Laos in general, has not changed at all, the key themes of the book seem to me to be as salient as ever.

  Writing a book about one’s life is an odd thing. It forces you to commit your own experiences to paper, to bind them up and set them aside—quite literally, to place them on the shelf. Of course, real life moves on: my own, and the city’s. I am reluctant to accept the changes that have occurred in Vientiane since I left, and those that are still to come. Some have told me not to worry so much, to simply embrace the changes and enjoy them all. That seems to be the choice that most people make as they grow older, and it is likely the healthiest option. Nevertheless, when I consider Vientiane today, and the country as a whole, I think I am right to mourn what has been lost. We should celebrate change when it is a force for good; when it is not, we must not be afraid to say so. It will not be easy to retain what is extraordinary about Laos while improving the lot of its people, but I know that it can be done.

  Brett Dakin

  New York City

  December 2010

  Author’s Note

  ________________

  This is a work of non-fiction. All events described within these pages took place, and each character you will meet is real. In order to protect their identities, however, I have changed most people’s names. Open discussion of political issues—let alone direct criticism of the government—is prohibited in Laos, which has no free press. During my time there, I never revealed that I was writing about my life and the people in it. I apologize in advance to anyone who may feel betrayed by the publication of this book. The likelihood of any harm coming to those I knew in Laos is very small, but I have often reconsidered the wisdom of publishing this book. In the end, though, I felt that these stories of life in Laos needed to be told.

  As for Lao words and phrases, I have not followed any rigid system of transliteration. The transcriptions simply reflect the way I hear and speak the language. On a related note, a disclaimer: while I do hope you will learn much about Laos and its history, politics and culture from the book, it is not an academic work and should not be taken as such.

  Thanks are due to all of my friends and colleagues who so graciously took the time to read and comment on the book. Thanks as well to Princeton-in-Asia for getting me to Laos in the first place. Above all, thanks to my parents, without whose steadfast support over the years this project—as with so much else—would not have been possible.

  Part I

  Remembering

  ________________

  I want to remember, but sometimes it’s hard. Hard, even, to imagine I was ever there. It seems so far away, sometimes. So far from this life.

  As I sit at my desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts I try to remember. It is bitterly cold outside, and there are only a few more hours of sunlight left in the day. Relieved to be in my room, sheltered from the winds that whip against my windows, I let the steam from my tea rise and warm my lips. And I try to remember. I try to recall each detail of my life in Laos: the delicate bell of the fruit vendor, who pushed his cart of fresh pineapple and sugar cane down the street past my bedroom window each morning. The heat that at first I couldn’t stand, but which eventually I came to welcome, even to need. The thick coating of dust from the city’s roads that covered my body, and which at the end of the day I had to scrape off my eyelids and from behind my ears. The warm, fetid smell of mud just beyond my doorstep after a welcome rain. I want to remember it all, to sense it once again, but I feel the details slipping away.

  From inside this old brick building, I’m protected from the frost outside, but it still takes a bit of work. I am easily distracted. The cars on Massachusetts Avenue fight their way through the traffic, blowing their horns in frustration. No one in Laos used their horns, I remember now. In Vientiane, the traffic was so light, the vehicles so few, that the horn rarely struck me as necessary. The button on my Honda Dream never worked, but it never mattered. The frigid weather (and people) here, the rigid order of life, the relentless traffic on the streets: it all seems so far removed from my life in Laos.

  And I often find myself wondering: was it real? Was I ever there?

  Sometimes music helps to bring it back. I place a recording of traditional Lao music in my stereo, turn out the lights, put on the headphones, and listen. I let the insistent beat and soothing tone of the singer’s voice wash over me. Soon, I lose myself in his poetic words. They recount a poor young man’s failure to win the love he longs for:

  I only ask you, beautiful young woman,

  To help me construct the basis for love

  Because I have never been able

  To reveal words of love like this before.

  It is New Year’s Eve, he sings, the most joyful day of the year, and yet still she ignores him. The oak paneling and nineteenth-century plumbing that surround me fade away, and I once again feel the humidity of the night air in Vientiane. It is a humidity you can’t escape, one you learn not to fight. You learn instead to let it embrace you, even to draw you in. And it soon becomes a source of comfort. I am walking from my house in Vientiane to the Lane Xang Hotel, near the banks of the Mekong, for a wedding reception at the hotel, and I can hear the music already. I don’t know the bride and groom well, but this isn’t unusual. Weddings are grand, festive events in Laos, not intimate affairs limited to close friends. As I come closer, the canopy of Christmas lights that hangs above the dance floor near the hotel’s swimming pool, one of only four in the city, comes into view.

  There are days when, near dawn

  I languish from love of you.

  I’m nearly exploding with worry;

  I’ve admired you emptily for a long time.

  At the reception now, I am dancing the lam vong, Laos’ traditional dance, and it’s real once again. Across from me a Lao woman—a friend from work, perhaps, not a lover—dances with effortless grace. She scarcely moves, yet she leaves me breathless. She is at once impossibly beautiful and entirely beyond my reach. Her elegant yet tightly constrained movements put me and my clumsy attempts to shame. The music that fills my musty dormitory room lifts me up and away from Cambridge. I no longer need to resort to leafing through old photographs and imagining a past long gone. No longer a distant daydream that occasionally interrupts interminable lectures on administrative law, Laos is real. I am there.

  Suddenly, a police siren outside pierces the music. I am jolted out of my thoughts, and transported back to this life. Laos is accessible, it seems, but never for very long. It remains, like my dance partner that night in Vientiane, just out of reach.

  ___

  In 1997, I was a senior at Princeton, and gradua
tion loomed on the horizon. Laos was the last thing on my mind. In a few months I would be released from the comfortable embrace of university, and would have to fend for myself. I had done well, and plenty of avenues were available to soothe my uncertainty about the future: the lucrative world of investment banking and management consulting; Internet start-ups that at that hopeful time still promised to be snapped up; an extended lease on student life at graduate school. But none of these options felt quite right. While my classmates marched off to interviews in suits and ties, I moved in the opposite direction. I felt the need to get away from a world of rankings and Top Ten lists—to escape the endless talk of first quartiles, second tiers, highest salaries, and lowest quality of life. After nearly two decades of uninterrupted formal education, I was ready for a break. I wanted to do some learning outside of the classroom—before someone sat me right back down in a conference room. What I wanted couldn’t be ranked.

  I was also looking for a challenge. Without having done a thing to deserve it, I had been born into a life of comfort and privilege. I had grown up in London, New York, and Washington, D.C., and had been educated in elite, private institutions just about every step of the way. I was grateful, of course, for all that I’d been given, and proud that I’d been able to succeed, but I felt trapped. From behind the ivy-covered gates of my university, I was searching for something new. And I needed to get out. As an East Asian Studies major at college, I had spent time living and working in Japan; one summer, I had even worked as an aide to a member of the Japanese parliament in Tokyo, which certainly had its moments. Sharing the microphone at a karaoke bar with a Japanese politician, a middle-aged woman who had once been a national entertainment sensation as a member of an all-female, all-drag singing group, had definitely been an experience. But I hadn’t lived for more than a few months at a time in Asia, and I had never lived in a developing country.