のどかな田園風景、自然豊かな景勝地

　Well supplied with mineral water and crisp pate baguettes, a Lao breakfast favorite, I join a handful of locals who are boarding bus No. 24, which leaves the capital, Vientiane, every morning for the small town of Vang Vieng.

　It's not such an early hour for the tropics, but the Lao taking their seats on the old Russian bus look even more sleepy than I am, as if they are still in the final frame of a dream.

　A little attention to the appearance of my fellow passengers tells me that we are about to enter the heartland of Laos. Most are country folk, cheerful groups of rice and vegetable farmers who, having just sold their produce in Vientiane, are now returning home with newly bought textiles, kitchenware, and much-needed mosquito nets. One man nurses several bottles of lau lau, a strong liquor made from rice.

　The elderly gentleman in the next seat introduces himself as a doctor by the name of Khen Siri. He asks if I speak French before he continues. Laos was a former French colony, and the influence of its language remains among older Lao who were taught it at school. Dr. Siri, who works for the government, tells me he visits a different province every month, checking up on the health situation in local villages that don't have clinics.

　I ask him about malaria, the fear of every traveler to these remote parts of Laos.

　"There's no malaria in Vang Vieng itself now," he tells me, "but you can see the jungle from the town. The villages there have many health problems."

　Pleasantly sited on the Nam Song River, Vang Vieng fulfills the image many people have of what Indochina should look like: neat rice paddies, women in conical hats, dragonflies, bare-chested boatmen, children riding water buffaloes. The vignettes are timeless, even dreamlike.

　The most dramatic feature of Vang Vieng is its extraordinary natural landscape. Steep limestone and karst rocks, covered in dense green jungle, erupt out of the flat rice fields.

　"The landscape," the author Christopher Robbins observed on his first visit to the area, "was primeval, a million years out of its time, the settling for a pterodactyl to come flapping out of the dripping rocks."

　Nobody, as far as I knew, had ever tried to climb to the top of these jagged mountains, where the views would surely be stunning.

　増えた観光客

　Visitors, though, have discovered the charm and beauty of the area in recent years. When I first stayed here in 1992, there were only two guesthouses, and just one restaurant. Now there are dozens of places to stay and eat. Thankfully, the scale of these places has remained small and well suited to the surroundings.

　How did the locals, though, feel about all the changes? Some farmers I spoke with complained of visitors causing damage to crops by walking off the paths into their fields, but most appeared to welcome the opportunities. Nhan Som, the elder daughter of parents who have lived here for more generations than anyone can remember, expressed a positive view of recent developments in the area.

　"The tourists have helped," she said. "We can sell some of our vegetables straight to the restaurants instead of taking them to Vientiane. It's much cheaper that way, and the food is fresher."

　Despite the new wave of visitors, Vang Vieng has remained rural. Even at town level, you can look out across rich, green rice paddies, crisscrossed by a network of earth paths and bamboo foot bridges. Narrow wooden boats, called dugouts, ferry locals and visitors across the swift but shallow Nam Song River, to more fields and mountains.

　Vang Vieng's water courses are one of the best ways to get a sense of the region's geology. On my trip I took a dugout down a channel of the Nam Song River, where the water was blue, spring-fed and full of blossoming water hyacinths. Stopping the boat at the foot of some steps, I climbed to Tam Cham, a sacred cave temple full of Buddha images. A Laotian dreamland.

　Inspired by this trip to see more of the area's nature, and thinking that the extra business might be welcome, I asked the owner of my guesthouse if he would be interested in organizing a trek up to the peak of one of the bigger rocks here.

　"Not a good idea," he quickly replied. And why not? "Many risks up there," he explained. "Malaria, snakes, poisonous plants, ghosts." Ghosts?

　Vang Vieng may finally be on the map, but it is still, it seems, a wild, even unexplored place.