Huay Xai

The bluff at Huay Xai has been a crossing point on the upper Mekong for as long as goods have moved between the Lao side and what is now northern Thailand. The settlement grew around a monastery built in 1880, and the Tai and Lao villages of the surrounding hills traded forest products, salt and cattle down to the river.

French officers arrived as the protectorate pushed its border up the Mekong, and in the 1900s a small fort was built on the ridge above the town, later known as Fort Carnot, to watch the frontier with Siam and the British territories beyond. Huay Xai became the administrative seat of the far north-west, a customs post and a garrison in a district better known for opium than for anything else. In the 1960s and 1970s the wider Golden Triangle, where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet a short way upriver, carried a large share of the world's illicit opium trade, and the Mekong here was a smuggling route as much as a trade route.

After 1975 the town settled into its role as a provincial capital; Bokeo was split from Luang Namtha province in 1983, with Huay Xai as its centre. The border reopened to foreign travellers in the 1990s, and the slow boat to Luang Prabang made the town the first stop in Laos for many. The Fourth Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge opened downstream in December 2013, replacing the ferry and changing the shape of the town.

Huay Xai is a lowland Lao town surrounded by a strikingly mixed countryside. Khmu villages occupy the middle slopes of Bokeo, and Hmong, Lahu, Akha and Tai Lue communities farm higher ground, coming down to the town's market to sell and buy. Bokeo is one of the more ethnically varied provinces in Laos, and the market is the place where that shows most plainly, in dress, language and what is on the stalls.

The Buddhist calendar still sets the year. Alms are collected at dawn, novices study at the hilltop monastery, and the big festivals are kept with care: Pi Mai in April, when water is thrown for days on end; Boun Bang Fai, the rocket festival before the rains; and the end of the rains retreat in October, when candle-lit floats are set on the Mekong. The baci ceremony, in which white cotton threads are tied round the wrist to call the spirits home, marks weddings, departures and welcomes.

Thailand is visible from every part of town and its influence is strong: Thai television, music, pop culture and consumer goods cross the river daily, and many residents have worked or have family on the other bank. The result is a border culture that is thoroughly Lao in its manners — soft voices, indirect speech, patience with delay — while looking outward in its tastes.

Huay Xai is a small provincial capital; the town and its district together hold only a few tens of thousands of people, and the built-up centre is barely two kilometres long. Life runs on the border. Customs, immigration, freight forwarding, warehousing and the trade in Thai food, fuel and manufactured goods employ a good share of the town, alongside provincial government offices, and lorries queue at the bridge for the crossing to Chiang Khong.

Beyond the town, households live from rice, maize, rubber and banana plantations, cattle and forest products. Chinese investment has reshaped parts of the province, from plantations to the special economic zone upriver, and sapphire mining gives Bokeo its name, which means gem mine. Tourism matters too, though much of it passes through: travellers arrive in the afternoon and leave on the boat the next morning, which supports guesthouses, ticket agents and noodle shops more than anything larger.

The day starts before six, when the market fills and the noodle pots go on, and much of the business of the town is done by mid-morning. Afternoons are slow and hot, the riverfront cools at dusk, and by nine the main street is quiet. Electricity, roads and mobile coverage have all improved since the bridge opened, though the province is thinly populated, with about 179,000 people at the 2015 census, and young people commonly look for work across the river.

Eating in Huay Xai is Lao with a strong Thai accent. Sticky rice, khao niao, is the staple, taken by hand from a woven basket and used to pick up everything else. Laap, minced meat or fish dressed with lime, fish sauce, herbs and toasted ground rice, is the dish of celebrations and ordinary meals alike, and tam mak hoong, the Lao green papaya salad, is pounded to order with chillies, lime and fermented fish sauce, hotter and less sweet than its Thai cousin.

The Mekong supplies the town's best food. River fish is grilled whole over charcoal, stuffed with lemongrass and coated in salt as ping pa, or steamed in banana leaves with dill and herbs as mok pa. Khai paen, the crisp pressed sheets of river weed from the upper Mekong, are fried and eaten with the smoky chilli paste jaew bong. Breakfast is a bowl of khao piak sen, thick rice noodles in chicken broth, or feu, the Lao version of Vietnamese pho, or the northern khao soi, flat noodles in clear broth under a spicy minced pork and tomato sauce, which is nothing like the Thai curry of the same name.

Coffee is drunk strong and sweet with condensed milk, and baguettes left over from the French period are split and filled with pâté and pickles as khao jii. Beerlao is the beer everywhere; lao-lao, the clear rice spirit, appears at every baci and celebration.