Tourists gone wild; The stampede of visitors has one writer mourning the loss of an undiscovered gem

Posted By Denis D. Gray



On a chilly pre-dawn in this wondrous and once-secluded place, scruffy European backpackers and well-heeled American tourists have staked out their firing positions.

A fusillade of flashing, jostling cameras and videocams is triggered the moment Buddhist monks pad barefoot out of their monasteries in a serene, timeless ritual. A forward surge breaks into the line of golden-yellow robes, and nearly tramples kneeling Lao women offering food to the monks.

Later that day, a prince of the former royal capital struggling to preserve his town's cultural legacy, protests: "For many tourists, coming to Luang Prabang is like going on safari, but our monks are not monkeys or buffaloes."



Nestled deep in a Mekong River valley, cut off from most of the world by the Vietnam War, Luang Prabang was very different when I first saw it in 1974.

Fraying at the edges, yes, but still a magic fusion of traditional Lao dwellings, French colonial architecture and more than 30 graceful monasteries, some dating back to the 14th century. It wasn't a museum, but a cohesive, authentic, living community.



Fast forward to 2008: Many of the old families have departed, selling or leasing their homes to rich outsiders who have turned them into a guesthouses, Internet cafes and pizza parlours. There are fewer monks because the newcomers no longer support the monasteries. And the influx of tourists skyrockets, the fragile town of 25,000 now taking in some 300,000 of them a year.

Throughout Laos, tourism was up an astounding 36.5 per cent in 2007, compared to 2006, with more than 1.3 million visitors in the first 10 months of the year, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.

Some time has passed since destinations on the major crossroads of Asia - Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok and others - first took on this influx, even, ironically, as they bulldozed and skyscrapered over the very character, atmosphere and history which drew the visitors by the jumbo flight.

Now, it's the turn of places once isolated by conflicts, hostile regimes and "off-road" geography to which only the more intrepid travellers had earlier ventured.

And as Asia's last little gems, one after another, succumb to tourism's withering impact, there are truly pangs in my heart, together with a dose of selfish jealousy as for a love one must now share with many.

"Siem Reap may be one of the few spots that still clings to the remnants of the old Cambodia, before the war, before the slaughter," I wrote in my diary in 1980, returning to this northwestern Cambodia town just months after the fall of the murderous Khmer Rouge.

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