The Land of a Million Elephants

Alas, though I'm primed to shop in one of the few countries where dollars still have value, the renowned night market is canceled because of the rain. So we head for a performance of the Royal Ballet troupe, revived after a communist-imposed hiatus.

Before the traditional dances begin, members of a group of older Laotians chant a blessing, then fan out into the audience to tie white strings around both wrists of every spectator. This is the basi, a ceremony to ensure that guardian spirits essential for good mental and physical health are bound to a person's body.

The spirits clearly realize that my mental health is tied to dry weather, and when we emerge, the rain has ended. We celebrate with tall bottles of Beerlao at Tum Tum Cheng, a restaurant named for the sound of temple drums and cymbals. We sample Mekong catfish, beef stew made with pungent galangal root and huge bowls of "Secret Soup," packed with chicken and vegetables, including eggplants the size of cherry tomatoes.

There's a French culinary influence here, too, left over from colonial days. In the market, we see baguettes and filled beignets, while bakeries are stocked with oddly evolved pastries, Galapagos versions of French desserts.

For authentic Laotian fare at lunchtime, we seek out Tamarind, a tiny restaurant where we pick up bites of sticky rice with our fingers, dipping it into small bowls of vegetables and chili sauce. We sample chewy dried water buffalo and fried, pressed sheets of "river moss" (which I suspect, after investigating the Mekong, starts life as green slime).

Curiously, a jolly-looking, solitary man is at both Tum Tum Cheng and Tamarind when we dine. Sure enough, he turns up at Tum Tum Cheng when we return to feed my newfound Secret Soup addiction. "I'm going to ask him where else he's eaten," Paul says. "Every place we've seen him, the food has been great." As Paul invites the fellow to join us, I ponder whether he's a spy.

"Australian Bob" has been adventuring along the Mekong, traveling like a backpacker, despite his crisp shirt and spotless khakis. He regales us with tales of $2-a-night lodging and prodigious (but refused) offers of drugs. "And the women!" he says. "There are lots of them traveling alone." Then, sotto voce, "They keep propositioning me."

We nod politely. It's tough to picture this portly, 60-something engineering professor as a sex object. But, almost on cue, a tour group of eight women-of-a-certain-age passes through the restaurant, all of them ogling our chap. "See?" he says.

With a bit of sun, everything is transformed. We marvel at the graceful, sloping, tiered roofs of the town's temples, or wats. Teenage novice monks sit outside, intent over their lesson books. For poor boys, wats offer the only chance of education. For tourists, they offer a chance to stalk the perfect monk photo: orange robes and shaved heads artfully arrayed on temple steps.

We climb Mount Phousi, the steep, 330-foot-high sacred hill in the midst of town. From the top we can look down on gaggles of slender, long-tail river boats and dozens of temples and also chat up young novices hanging out to practice English. "Do you like Laos?" one asks. "Where are you from?" I might as well be from Mars, I think, wondering how to describe what he might see from my city's hills. "Do you have any books," he asks, "or notebooks?" Those are rare commodities, we learn, and I wish I'd come with a satchel of reading material.

We ease that regret by tutoring young monks at Big Brother Mouse, an organization that prints books and provides a meeting place for local kids to speak English with foreigners.

Wandering tranquil Kounxoa Road, popping into temple complexes that catch our fancy, Paul and I happen upon Wat Xieng Muan, where wood chips fly as young monks carve Buddhas. It's a UNESCO program to revive traditional arts that were squelched in the early communist era. At the small shop, we pick out a lithe Luang Prabang-style Buddha, happy to support the monastery's work.