Second paragraph of third chapter:
Clouds of mosquitoes were tormenting the four passengers already aboard and I hastily applied repellent to my bare parts before passing the bottle around. But it is a fallacy that clothes protect one; soon this swarm was feasting off my thighs and buttocks. Happily Vientiane is not malarial, at least in winter; dengue fever, borne by a soundless daytime mosquito, is more of a hazard. It kills many children and ‘break-bone’ fever debilitates adults for weeks, causing agonising pain; there is neither a prophylactic nor a cure. Perhaps its worst symptom – certainly the most alarming, from the patient’s associates’ point of view – is psychological: dengue violence. A mild-mannered elderly expat told me that while fevered she hit her gardener over the head with a trowel. When she had fully recovered the young man suggested their going to the wat together, to sit in silence in front of the Lord Buddha and be reconciled. In our world, he’d have sued her.
The late great Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, who I worked with briefly and at long distance back in 1991, travelled around Laos in late 1997 and early 1998, and produced one of her typically empathy-filled accounts of the country and its people, along with the difficulties of getting around on a bicycle. (The title of the book refers to the fact that she injured a foot quite early in the trip, which also hampered her mobility.) It becomes gradually clear that this is a society in deep trauma after the American bombed it to smithereens in an unreported sideshow to the Vietnam War. Murphy generally enjoys and learns from her interactions with the locals; other foreigners are a different matter (to her annoyance, she finds that a fellow passenger on a ferry boat has brought along a copy of one of her earlier books).
Murphy was anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist, and deeply hostile to western interventions in the developing world. That’s not quite where I am coming from, but I really appreciate her candid and unflinching commentary on the consequences, intended or unintended, of economic transition. But I must say that I appreciate even more her description of the glorious landscapes through which she travels, cycling along uncertain roads through the middle of the Laotian mountains. The one thing that the book lacks is a proper map; when I tried to identify some of the spots where she travelled, I was astonished at the distance she covered. I foolishly thought that crossing Bosnia on bombed-out roads in 1997 in our Belfast-bought Skoda was a bit of an adventure, but really there’s no comparison. It’s a fascinating read, and you can get it here.
We got this book because, as a regular Oxfam donor, Anne was invited to Laos in late 2019, twenty-two years on from Dervla Murphy, to see what the NGO money is being spent on. It’s her story to tell, not mine, but they made a promotional video about the trip which features her several times (starting at 0:19, and you can hear her speaking Dutch at 5:06).
This was my top book acquired in 2019. Next on that pile is The Lost Puzzler, by Eyal Kless.
