By Seth Mydans
Published: April 15, 2008

Sightseers jockeying for position to take snapshots of Buddhist monks in Luang Prabang, Laos. David Longstreath/Associated Press

LUANG PRABANG, Laos — As the sky grows light along the Mekong River here, it is no longer the quiet footfalls of Buddhist monks that herald the day but the jostling and chattering of hundreds of tourists who have come to watch them on their morning rounds.

“Here they come! Here they come!” a tour guide cries over his loudspeaker. “Hurry! Hurry!”

	Luang Prabang, a 700-year-old city, has 34 temples.

The monks appear, a column of bright orange robes as far as the eye can see, walking quickly and silently with their begging bowls. The tourists cluster around them with their cameras and reach out to hand them food.

Luang Prabang, a place of mists and temples in the mountains of central Laos, was until recently one of the last pristine remnants of traditional culture in a region that is rapidly leaving its past behind.

Today, Luang Prabang displays preservation’s paradox. It has saved itself from modern development by packaging itself for tourists, but in the process has lost much of its character, authenticity and cultural significance.

Like some similar places around the world, this small 700-year-old city of fewer than 20,000 people is being transformed into a replica of itself: its dwellings into guest houses, restaurants, souvenir shops and massage parlors; its rituals into shows for tourists.

“Now we see the safari,” said Nithakhong Somsanith, an artist and embroiderer who works to preserve traditional arts. “They come in buses. They look at the monks the same as a monkey, a buffalo. It is theater.”

The Buddhist heart of Luang Prabang — the tranquillity that attracts visitors from abroad — is being defiled, he said, adding, “Now the monks have no space to meditate, no space for quiet.”

Luang Prabang was chosen as a World Heritage Site in 1995 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, which determined that its architectural ensemble was culturally significant and worthy of protection by the United Nations.

Its strict guidelines on renovation and new construction have helped preserve the narrow streets, small structures and relatively light traffic of a past era. No tall buildings mar the cityscape.

“The problem is that they took care of the hardware but not the software, the culture,” said Gilles Vautrin, a restaurant owner from France who has lived here for nearly a decade.

“The city is being gentrified,” he said. “It will be a museum city. It will be a hotel city. Maybe the tourists will like it, but it won’t be the same Luang Prabang.”

The morning scene of monks seeking alms is spectacular, a seemingly unending procession that includes the occupants of the city’s 34 temples.

But as they walk down the main street, Sisavangvong Road, they must thread their way through crowds of tourists and food vendors who call out their price, “Dollar! Dollar!”

Looking straight ahead, the monks pass Pizza Luang Prabang, Pack Luck Liquor, Walkman Village, German Ice Cream, Café des Arts Restaurant and Bakery, Khmu Spa and Massage and Tatmor Restaurant n’ Bar.

The scene may be jarring, said Rik Ponne, a program specialist with Unesco in Bangkok, but “it is not a complete disaster.”

“This is a very interesting moment in time in Luang Prabang, when we have probably reached the carrying capacity,” he said. “It is a question of whether the Lao government is willing to make policy decisions about maybe limiting tourism on the site or limiting its impact.”

That would be a difficult choice in one of the poorest countries in Asia, where tourism is a major source of foreign exchange.

But if steps are not taken to control the changes, Unesco warned in 1994, Luang Prabang could become “another tourist town where soft-drink billboards dominate the landscape, where the sound of tour buses drowns out the soft temple prayers, and where the city’s residents are reduced to the roles of bit-players in a cultural theme park.”

Already the core of the city is losing its population as development drives up prices and local residents move away, leasing their homes as guest houses and restaurants.

“You cannot find people living in houses like family,” said Vilath Inthasen, 25, a native of Luang Prabang who is a manager at Couleur Café. “Now we start to live outside the city.”

Mr. Vilath spent eight years as a monk here and, like many others, he used his time in the temple to prepare for what has become the city’s only industry.

“If you are a monk, you can learn English and go into tourism,” he said. “Most of the people who work in restaurants are former monks.”

Traditionally, young men in Laos become monks for several months or years before returning to life outside the monasteries.

While the tourism brings jobs and money, he said, it disrupts the way of life he grew up with.

“I am afraid our culture will start to disappear,” he said over the sound of a buzz saw next door. “Now bars can stay open until midnight. Normally we don’t do this in Laos.”

This loss of culture is critical because Luang Prabang is not simply an architectural monument, like the temples at Angkor in Cambodia.

“There is nothing really outstanding in Luang Prabang,” said Laurent A. Rampon, the former chief architect and director of the cultural preservation office here.

“When you look at the architecture, it is interesting but normal, very normal; the temples are a little bit rough, not refined,” said Mr. Rampon, who is now an independent architect and consultant to the city.

“What is really interesting in Luang Prabang is all that together,” he said. “It is the ambience of the city, the daily life, the temples and the monks. In Luang Prabang, when the ambience is gone, it will not be Luang Prabang any more.”

As in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, decades of war and repression held back the development that is now despoiling cities and historical sites.

A poor, landlocked nation with a population today of 6.5 million, Laos was a battleground during the Vietnam War and its aftermath and has been isolated from the world economy since then by a Communist government.

Tourist brochures describe Luang Prabang as a place where “time stood still”; poverty and hardship have allowed the past to linger.

“The paradox is that Unesco gives out the Heritage Site label partly to reduce poverty, but reducing poverty is reducing heritage,” Mr. Rampon said. “If you want to preserve heritage, you must keep poverty.”

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