Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nam. When Vientiane was chosen by the French to be the capital of an administrative division
of French Indochina, they rebuilt the city and laid out its system of roads. It is from this peri-
od, roughly 1899 to 1945, that the city's crumbling collection of French colonial mansions
dates.
The end of the First Indochina War between France and Vietnam in 1954 saw a flood of
Vi-
etnamese refugees
enter Vientiane from Ho Chi Minh's newly independent Democratic Re-
public of Vietnam. As North Vietnamese troops began to infiltrate into South Vietnam while
simultaneously occupying large areas of northeastern Laos, the US started pouring massive
amounts of unregulated aid into Vientiane, causing widespread corruption among govern-
ment and military officials. In August 1960, a disgruntled army captain, who resented the vast
difference in lifestyles between his high-living superiors and his hard-bitten troops, staged a
successful
coup d'état
. Four months later, during the Battle of Vientiane, two Lao factions
(one supplied by the US and the other by the USSR) managed to level whole blocks of the
city with mortars and artillery.
The Vietnam War
As the
war in Vietnam
steadily escalated with growing US involvement, Laos was pulled
deeper into the conflict, but for most of the war, Vientiane was like an island of calm surroun-
ded by violent seas. A steady influx of refugees arrived from the outer provinces, the pop-
ulation of the capital swelled, and rows of squatters' shanties appeared along the tree-lined
avenues, contrasting sharply with the Mercedes-Benz automobiles of wartime profiteers.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the
Lao communists
suddenly gained power and, with
coaching from the Vietnamese, set out to create the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Thieves, prostitutes and other undesirables were rounded up and held captive on two small
islands in the nearby Ang Nam Ngum Reservoir and, although revolutionary fervour never
reached the extremes seen in China or Cambodia, many in Vientiane found it necessary to
escape across the Mekong. These were replaced by immigrants from the former “liberated
zone” in northeastern Laos, further changing Vientiane's ethnic make-up.
Socialism and capitalism
The 1980s were a time of quiet stagnation. Soviet aid eased the transition to
socialism
, but
the majority of Lao with any education were in some form of exile, either attending “re-edu-
cation camps” or squatting in Thai refugee camps, awaiting resettlement in a third country.
Grand plans for progress were announced by the communist government and then promptly
forgotten. Not until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the suspension of Soviet
aid was the government forced to rethink its opinions of capitalism. A number of
economic
reforms
were implemented, leading to an explosion of new ventures and businesses.
In 1994, the first bridge to span the Mekong river between Laos and Thailand was com-
pleted. Dubbed the “
Friendship Bridge
”, it marked a new era of cooperation between the
former enemies. Thai entrepreneurs were soon arriving in Vientiane to search for econom-
