Laos: The White Elephant

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Gallic Grace. Throughout its history, as now, Laos has been buffeted by powerful neighbor states. It has been invaded so many times by the Vietnamese that the present King habitually refers to the threat from the north not as the Communist but as "the Annamese problem." About 1700, Laos split into three kingdoms, run by rival royalty, and it was still split two centuries later when the French, the last and by all odds the gentlest of the conquerors, arrived in 1893, seeking a buffer state against Siam and British Burma. The French looked around and proclaimed Laos living proof of Rousseau's theories about the noble savage.

With Gallic grace, the French colonials joined in the almost weekly Laotian festivals. They range in riotousness from the spring fertility rites known as Bang Fai, when the men wave bamboo poles topped with phallic symbols and copulating puppets and the girls look on and giggle, to New Year's, when the King's elephants are gathered and lectured on good conduct. Many a Frenchman learned to play Laos' unchaperoned game of love, conducted to the music of khen pipes, and one French administrator in southern Laos chopped down all bridges into his domain once a year out of fear that the annual inspection might include an inventory of his concubines. According to British Author Norman Lewis, French officers after a tour of duty in Laos are marked forever after by "gentle, rapt expressions" and a "vaguely dissolute manner."

In this land of love and laughter, the French showed little interest in social reforms. In the first 50 years French schools in Laos turned out just 61 high school graduates. But playing an old colonial game, they skimmed off the sons of the monarchy and subsidiary princeling families, sent them off to Paris for a taste of progress and the good life.

Puritanical Heir. Savang Vatthana was plucked away from home at the age of ten. He attended a lycée in Montpellier, got a degree from Paris' Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, where French diplomats were trained. After a decade, Savang Vatthana returned home both flattered and baffled by the experience. He no longer could speak Lao, and had to be instructed by a palace functionary for years.

Savang Vatthana, a rather puritanical fellow, found himself at sharp odds with his father. King Sisavang Vong, who considered polygamy a foundation stone of the Laotian way of life. Once a year it was his father's royal pleasure to take a leisurely 40-day boat ride down the Mekong to Vientiane, picking and choosing from the new crop of maidens in the villages as he passed. The palace swarmed with royalty who were all half or full brothers and sisters of the future King.

(The old King's offspring today hold posts ranging from doormen at the palace to the governorship of Sayaboury province; the governor, a bit of an oddball, recently decreed that every elephant in Sayaboury had to wear a license plate.) In total rejection of his father's strenuous love life, the prince married one woman. Princess Khamphouy, a plump cousin, stayed faithful and sired five children. The old King proved totally uninterested in Prince Savang Vatthana's new ideas about agriculture, science and education. "My people only know how to sing and make love," he said.