A trip through Xayaboury

Some images and notes from a recent trip through Xayaboury, the only province in Laos on the right bank of the Mekong river. Or if you want to be precise the only province completely on the right bank, as Bokeo, Luang Prabang and Champassak have small parts of their territory on that side of the river too.

These impressions are not in any way coherent. Chronology is the only order here. Travel is often a chain of unrelated experiences and events, arbitrary like life itself.

For geographical clarity at least, there is a map at the bottom.

I expected Thai influences in Xanakham, as Thailand is right across the river. But its pace and vibe, its stage of development, its few guesthouses and eateries, the attitude of its people were all completely Lao.

The waters of the Mekong were blue-green and clear. No good. They are supposed to be brown and turbid. The dam upstream near Xayaboury town must be to blame, blocking the sand and clay particles that turn the river muddy, and farmlands downstream fertile.

Paklay has grown over the past decade. More people. More prosperity. More dust and dirt. The bridge across the Mekong opened in July 2017. The Netherlands contributed 2.3 million euro to its construction, roughly 12 percent of the total cost. (Source Vientiane Times of July 5, 2017.) I guess it is a coincidence, but it has the retro look of Dutch pre- or post-WW2 bridges.

In Paklay too the Mekong changed colour. See its muddy waters on these January 2015 photos. The dam upstream wasn’t finished. The bridge was under construction.

Paklay and the Mekong river in February 2023:

Thongmixay, inland, was a calmer, cooler, cleaner village than Paklay. From there it was a two hour walk to a small border post. Now and then a tractor or motorbike overtook me, and I was offered a ride. When they came from the other side they were laden with Thai imports. I didn’t expect to get to the market just across the border. And I was right. Laotian officers stopped me at their checkpoint, only local people were allowed to cross. Those that do enter Laos here are greeted by a martial monument, not befitting the Lao people who mostly prefer to avoid conflict and work their way around differences. In case you wonder about the top bar of the flag: yes, they must have run out of red paint.

Those that enter Laos here can also tell they are in the country from the crates of Beer Lao. They abounded in Thongmixay, as they do everywhere else in the country. A photo project on these bursts of yellow along Laos’s road sides would make for striking colour palettes and still lifes, and bizarre contexts, and special backdrops.

The most beautiful image passed by in a flash, a single crate in the middle of the road, the familiar bright yellow with a single branch of bright red bougainville sticking up. It was there to slow traffic for the wedding further up the road. No chance to take a picture from the driving bus. Travel is life itself, it doesn’t allow more than a short glimpse of its most amazing moments.

The area upstream from Paklay was full of village life, rural life, river life.

I stayed in Xayaboury for a couple of days, ran into a friend, wandered around town, strolled around the market, walked along the river, sat in a temple. Same routine everywhere I went this trip. I didn’t take photos. But that was my lack of inspiriation, the town was not to blame.

Xianghone and Xianglom are two halves of the same town, a thirty minute walk apart. Xianghone is the more spread out, with businesses, warehouses, a gas station, the bus station, guesthouses. At the edge of town is an unpaved wartime airstrip, now long out of use. As it is elevated, water gathers in pools next to it. Local people take advantage. The distant mountain range forms the border with Thailand’s Nan province. It also forms the divide between the Mekong and Chaophaya river basins. All rain this side flows into the Mekong, rain at the other side flows into the Nan river and subsequently into central Thailand’s main river the Chaophaya.

Xianglom is smaller and more rural than Xianghone. It feels more original, with two temples boasting age-old trees. Hidden in the forest nearby is a third one, with a cave, and bat smell, and encroaching plants and trees.

In Muang Khop Buddha watches over the town and valley from high up on a hill.

These two photos were taken at exactly the same spot, but in opposite directions. Buddha said introspection is a good thing. This gets misinterpreted in the selfie-age.

Muang Khop was a green oasis in this dry season, the only place where rice grew. Life seemed idyllic for the children in town. But less so for those staying at the boarding school, mostly ethnic Hmong from the border town of Ban Pangmon twenty kilometers away. The fourteen, fifteen year olds cooked their own food, and that of their younger school mates, in these sheds.

There were still traditional Hmong houses in Ban Pangmon, recognizable because they are built directly on the ground unlike the houses of almost all other ethnic groups in Laos that rest on stilts. These seasonal yellow flowers I saw all through the province. Recently harvested drying cassave was everywhere too, producing an unpleasant sour smell.

From Muang Khop (literally ‘district Khop’) I followed the Nam Khop (literally ‘river Khop’) to Pak Khop (literally ‘river mouth of the Khop’). Pak Khop village had an old temple with somehow naive and moving touches. Just my impression of course.

Near Konteun another Mekong ferry is being replaced by a bridge.

Near Konteun too, a road sign told me I had left the province of Xayaboury. It was the end of this trip.

You can trace my route through Xayaboury on this map, made as always by cartographer Jaap Vinke.