Homespun Charm

We move from booth to booth in Talat Sao, the morning market, which is filled with traditional hand-woven fabrics, handmade clothing, rattan and wicker ware. I am feeling fabrics and writing down prices while my travel partner, Kit, picks through piles of bamboo baskets. The elegant women who run the stalls, dressed in silk, pay us no mind.

Lengths of multicolored silk glisten in the sunlight beside more subtle hand-woven cottons. I am the only frantic note in this otherwise peaceful and organized market. Prices are low and quality high, and we only have the weekend to sort out this maze and do some smart shopping for my import business at home in Canada.

My progress is halted by a solid figure with a motherly demeanor, her hand extended. In perfect French and English she greets us. “Everyone calls me Madame,” says Chantorne Thattanakham. “I have been collecting antique fabrics for over 20 years.”

I settle in, ready to listen and learn about the fabrics and antiques, and, in the process, get an impromptu lesson in politics, the future of Laos and, as Thattanakham keeps reminding me, “PDR,” Please don’t rush: a common admonition to Westerners.

Quaint but quirky and off the map to the modern world, Laos may now be coming into its own. Yet while the rest of Southeast Asia modernizes faster than the Western world can comprehend, Laos remains much as it has been since the mid-14th century. Continually subjected to the influence of its immediate neighbors, Laos is a showcase for diverse and original arts and crafts. Its fabrics, in particular, are wonderful.

With the opening of its borders to Western tourists in 1991, followed by the further easing of entry restrictions in 1995, Laos and its capital, Vientiane, the dusty provincial sister city of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Phnom Penh, are readying to receive visitors.

We are here to shop. This is our 10th year in the Asian import business but our first visit to Laos. We finally feel Laos is accessible enough to make our visit enjoyable, as well as profitable.

With its mountainous jungle terrain and small and rural population, Laos has always been something of a cultural backwater when compared with more flamboyant civilizations at Angkor, Cambodia, Sukhothai, Thailand and Pagan, Myanmar. Yet through the centuries, favored with a climate perfect for mulberry trees and hemp plants, the Laotian people developed an excellent cottage weaving industry. The silk and hemp cloth produced here has been well known in Southeast Asia from as early as the 1300s.

Formerly a French protectorate, Laos was recognized as an independent nation in 1954. Until 1975, when the communist government took over, the country’s development was held back by regionalism and the Vietnam War. For the last 20 years, Vietnam has been the patron of Laos and the new economic freedoms of the 1990s--including free enterprise--parallel those of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon).

This, our first economic sojourn into Laos, is delayed as our plane from Ho Chi Minh City arrives eight hours late. An evening walk around the city shows us wide streets and no traffic, so we choose bicycles as our mode of transportation for the weekend. Our hotel rents them, so we make plans to leave at dawn.

We have no trouble maneuvering our bicycles along the bumpy streets. Long lines of monks in rust and ochre robes--made of rough cotton--also weave through the empty, quiet morning. I buy two baguettes from a lone woman vendor on Chou Anou Street, while the monks’ alms bowls are being filled with little packets of rice and bits of fruit by kneeling men and women.

On the riverside road we see a man splitting bamboo poles, but at the gray and white presidential palace, nearby, there is no discernible movement.

We peddle toward Pha That Luang--perhaps Laos’ most famous Buddhist shrine--its spire glowing gold against a pale sky. Downhill, back toward the Mekong River, we circle the fountain, Nam Phou, which is central to the dozen embassies and many international aid agencies in this town of 400,000. We select the Scandinavian Cafe for breakfast but nearby are several French restaurants, a pizza parlor and an excellent Indian restaurant, the Taj.

Before shopping we stop at Wat Sisaket (1818) and the adjacent Ho Pra Keo (1566), which once housed Bangkok’s famed emerald Buddha and is now a museum of religious art. It is a relief after having seen the destruction of art at Angkor and the Da Nang Museum in Vietnam to see rows and rows of bronze and wooden Buddhas still with their heads.

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The peaceful courtyard of Wat Sisaket is lined with wood and metal examples of Khmer and Chiang Sen style statues.

Two short blocks and we are at Madame Thattanakham’s booth at the morning market. She has been at the market for five years and for three years has sold high-end pieces at her shop--Gallery Lao Antique Textiles--on the outskirts of town. Her specialty is silk. Thattanakham explains that Laotian silk has the same qualities as the more famous Thai silk. The threads are smooth and tightly woven and have a great ability to take dye. Traditionally the weft and the warp are different shades, creating varying hues depending upon how the cloth is viewed.

Thattanakham also carries, as do many of the other booths, newly made fabrics in traditional designs (average price is $60 for 4 1/2 yards, 36 inches wide). I am surprised at her knowledge of modern trends. Many of the silk items she has commissioned for her shop now use fashionable vegetable dyes. (The current popularity of eco-friendly fabrics in the West has caused a revival in use of these, the traditional dyes of Laos.) Most appealing to me are the $18 plain raw silk scarves in soft colors (pale pumpkin, rosy pink, soft violet), the $25 shawls edged with intricate weaving and the raw silk jackets for $18.

The hemp weaving industry has also been revived and the local shopkeepers tell me that much of the hemp fabric woven in Laos is sold to shopkeepers in the Thailand shopping mecca of Chiang Mai. But that, too, is changing as Westerners find their way here to shop.

Thattanakham has only one hemp garment in her shop at the moment. It’s a simple but lovely straight-lined, hip-length jacket, with a V-neck, three buttons and long sleeves ($15). But there are also colorful wallets of hemp ($4).

Chindavong, Thattanakham’s brother, gathers bamboo goods from Louang Namtha province in the north and rattan goods from the southern provinces, which Thattanakham also sells (as do most of the stalls in the market). Prices range from $5 for a woven jewelry box to $80 for a century-old rattan hunting pack with three sections originally used for leather bows, arrows and poison.

Our next stop is Carol Cassidy’s store, another fabric lover’s paradise. Although the distances in Vientiane are all very short on a pedal bike, there is no central shopping area and all streets seem to be similar dusty lanes with derelict buildings, a wat, a disco or a classy boutique. We find Carol Cassidy’s tucked behind a government building and there we spend hours marveling at the selection of cloth.

Cassidy is an American woman who is internationally known for her exquisite reproductions of antique Laotian fabrics. Her weavers make the cloth on old-style looms copying shreds of antique fabrics.

Around the corner is the shop, Yani, run by a Frenchwoman who previously worked for a Paris fashion designer. Yani sews Laotian silk into modern designs, including sleeveless party dresses (starting at $50), short jackets and vests. Last year she also opened Couleur d’Asie, a boutique specializing in well-made handicrafts of all sizes and prices, including bamboo kitchen tools (50 cents), a folding carved elephant table ($80) and rosewood dining tables ($250).

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Early Sunday morning, we fortify ourselves with a cup of excellent dark Laotian coffee at one of the restaurant stalls overlooking the river. Activity along the river road is growing. People are slowly filling seats at the stalls while the day’s foods are chopped and cooked and secured under bug-proof covers.

Laughter from the river below catches our attention. Traditional net fishermen are moving waist deep out into the Mekong. The cone shaped nets attached to bamboo poles are dipped in unison. But while we stand watching for half an hour, not a single fish is caught.

A young man named Sam, standing beside us, says, “Do not worry. These are only the town’s shopkeepers enjoying their Sunday morning angling club.” But I am alarmed; apparently most of the shops will not be open.

At least the market is open and we do spend time and money there. Afterward, we pedal up to Patusay, the Victory Gate built in 1969 to resemble Paris’ Arc de Triomphe. We decide to take Sam’s advice. The best thing to do on Sunday, if you are not a fisherman, is to go to a herbal sauna. There are four around town and we select Wat Sok Pa Luang. The nuns who run the sauna collect the herbs from the surrounding forest to scent the steaming 55-gallon drum of water, boiling on an open fire under the little stilt house.

The men and women resting on the tiny porch call out the drill to us. We grab a sarong, change and bathe behind screens set in the tropical garden. We relax into an afternoon of international gossip with locals and other tourists who have discovered the charm and shops of Vientiane.

Horback, an art historian, lives near Vancouver, Canada.

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GUIDEBOOK

Material Laos

Getting there: Thai Airways flies, with a change of planes in Bangkok, from LAX to Vientiane, Laos. Other airlines, including United, China Air, Northwest and JAL, fly with one stop but no change of planes, from LAX to Bangkok. In Bangkok it is necessary to transfer to Thai Airways. Advance purchase, round-trip fares start at $1,342.

Where to stay: Novotel hotel, Samsenthai Road, Vientiane; tel. 011-856-21-213-570, fax 011-856-21-213-572. Luxury in a Western-style hotel. Doubles $96 to $250.

There are many business class hotels to choose from in Vientiane, including: Douangdeuane Hotel. Nokeo Koumane Road, Post Box 6881, Vientiane; tel. 011-856-21-222-301, fax 011-856-21-222-300. Clean, spacious, modern bathroom, TV with cable and balcony. Doubles $27.

Lane-Xang Hotel, Fa Ngum Road, Post Box 280, Vientiane; tel. 011-856-21-214-102, fax 011-856-21-214-108. Most tourist class and business class hotels here are only 1 or 2 years old. The stately Lane-Xang is the exception. Doubles $100.

Tai-Pan, 22-3 Francois Ngin Road, Vientiane; tel. 011-856-21-216-906, fax 011-856-21-216-223. Doubles $60.

Where to shop: Carol Cassidy, 82/5 Ban Mixai Road, Vientiane. Newly woven fabrics, traditional techniques and modern designs.

Couleur d’Asie, Khoun Bouloum Road, Vientiane. Wide variety of Laotian handcrafted goods and a wide price range.

Gallery Lao Antique Textiles, Km 5, Chinamo Road, Ban Suan Mone, Vientiane. More than 3,000 pieces of antique textile.

Talat Sao, the morning market, Lane Xang Avenue, Vientiane. Open daily 7 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. (opens later on Sundays). A large selection of hand-woven fabrics, clothing, baskets and handicrafts.

Yani, 86/2 Setthathirath St., Vientiane. Excellent tailoring, European designs, done in traditional Laotian fabrics.

For more information: Consular Office of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, 2222 S St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008, tel. (202) 667-0076.