Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SAYABOURY PROVINCE: THE LAO WILD WEST
Something of a Lao Wild West, the remote, densely forested and mountainous
Sayaboury
Province
is home to elephants, tigers and the Sumatran rhino. Recognizing it as the perfect
place to disappear, CIA operatives active in the Second Indochina War saw Sayaboury as
the escape route for
VangPao
and his band of
Hmong
irregulars should their “secret war”
go wrong. The untamed nature of the province is perhaps best illustrated by the traditional
lifestyle of the
Mabri
, a tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers numbering only a few hundred,
who are known to the Lao as
kha tawng leuang
or “slaves of yellow banana leaves” - the
name is derived from the tribal custom of moving on as soon as the leaves of their huts turn
yellow.
Some of the villages are so remote that they hardly feel part of Laos, finding it far more
convenient to trade with Thai towns across the border, or to simply exist in relatively isol-
ated self-sufficiency. Seizing upon the Lao government's seeming neglect of its far-flung
villages, the Thais claimed three Lao villages near the border as their own in a land grab
during the 1980s - an incident that sparked two skirmishes between the historic rivals dur-
ing the course of four years and highlighted the vagueness of the border.
These days the line separating Laos from its larger neighbour has been sketched some-
what more permanently on the map, and it's business as usual for traders on either side,
with the border town of
Kenthao
functioning as a gateway for goods flowing across the
Nam Huang River. A fair number of smuggled cars, sparkling new and without plates,
also pass through here and continue on to Vientiane, where they change hands for a frac-
tion of their tax-heavy cost. Amphetamine production is another thorny cross-border is-
sue, with Thai police accusing clandestine factories on the Lao side of producing
ya ba
, or
methamphetamine, which ends up on the streets of the Thai capital Bangkok.
Paklai
PAKLAI
, a port town 210km south of Luang Prabang, is the best stopover between Vientiane
and Sayaboury. Although not as developed as the border town of Kenthao, 60km to the south,
Paklai is bigger, its wooden houses spreading for several kilometres along the riverbank. For
now, crossing the Mekong here involves using the dilapidated car ferry (motorbikes 5000K,
cars 35,000K), but a new bridge may be open around 100m further downriver by the time
you read this.
ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE: PAKLAI
By bus and sawngthaew
Now that speedboats have stopped running, the only way to reach
Paklai is by road. One slow bus departs Paklai for Vientiane each day at 8.30am (80,000K).
Minivans bound for Vientiane leave four times a day from a separate minivan lot, taking
around five hours to complete the journey (100,000K). Prices include the ferry crossing.
