Savannakhet

The Mekong bank here has been settled for a long time — the Khmer-era stone shrine at Heuan Hin downstream, dated to between the 6th and 8th centuries, shows how far the Khmer world reached up the river, and the stupa of That Ing Hang, rebuilt in the 16th century over an older shrine, was a pilgrimage site under the Lan Xang kings. The riverside village that became Savannakhet traded across the water with the Siamese towns opposite and fell under Siamese authority in the 18th and 19th centuries.

France took the east bank of the Mekong in 1893 and made Savannakhet a provincial seat. Colonial officials laid out a grid of streets behind the river, built a customs post, a church and schools, and encouraged Vietnamese migration; by the 1940s Vietnamese made up a large share of the town's population and ran much of its commerce. Rows of two-storey shophouses with shutters and arcades went up around the central square, and it is these, little altered and only partly restored, that give the old quarter its look today.

The province became a battleground of the wider Indochina wars: Route 9 ran east towards Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail crossed the uplands, and the bombing that followed left unexploded ordnance that is still being cleared. Kaysone Phomvihane, who led the Lao People's Revolutionary Party from 1955 and ruled the country from 1975 until his death in 1992, was born here in 1920, and in 2005 the city was officially renamed after him, though almost everyone still says Savannakhet. The Friendship Bridge to Mukdahan, opened at the end of 2006, and the Savan-Seno special economic zone reoriented the town towards cross-border trade.

Savannakhet is Lao and Buddhist, with temple life at its centre: alms rounds at first light, novices studying at Wat Sainyaphum, and a calendar of merit- making that peaks at the That Ing Hang festival in February, when pilgrims arrive from across the province and from Thailand. Boat racing at the end of Buddhist Lent in October is the town's other great gathering, with crews rowing in front of the embankment.

The town's mix is unusual for Laos. A Vietnamese community has been here since the colonial period, with its own temples, kitchens and associations; Chinese traders settled alongside; and a Catholic congregation still worships in the church on the square, making this one of the few places in the country with a visible Christian presence. Upland peoples from the east of the province — Bru, Katang, Mangkong and others, most of them Mon-Khmer speakers — come to the markets and keep languages and customs quite distinct from lowland Lao.

Proximity to Thailand shapes daily culture as much as anything: Thai television, music and shopping trips are ordinary, and the southern Lao spoken here is close to Isan speech across the river. Manners are gentle and indirect. Greetings are made with palms together, shoes are removed at doorways, open displays of anger are considered a loss of face, and conversation about politics is generally avoided with strangers.

About 126,000 people live in the city, which makes it the second-largest in Laos after Vientiane, though it feels far smaller: the old quarter is half empty in the middle of the day, and life concentrates around the market, the schools and the bridge road. The rhythm starts early — markets by six, offices by eight — pauses in the afternoon heat, and returns to the riverfront at dusk.

Trade and transport drive the economy. Freight moves along Route 9 between Thailand, Laos and the Vietnamese ports, the Savan-Seno special economic zone draws assembly and logistics businesses, and the bridge brings shoppers and traders both ways. Around the city, rice farming dominates the plain, with cattle, cassava and vegetables, and remittances from relatives working in Thailand support many households. Government offices, hospitals and schools provide the steady jobs.

The town's issues are those of a place on a corridor rather than a destination: young people leaving for work across the river, uneven investment that has brought casinos and warehouses to the outskirts while old shophouses in the centre decay, seasonal flooding on the Mekong, and the slow, continuing clearance of unexploded ordnance from farmland in the east of the province. Tourism is modest and mostly passes through on the way somewhere else.

The Mekong and the rice fields set the menu. Fish is grilled whole over charcoal as ping pa, minced with herbs, lime, chilli and toasted rice powder into laap pa, or steamed in banana leaf with dill and lemongrass as mok pa, and pa daek, the fermented fish paste at the base of Lao cooking, flavours soups and dips. Sticky rice, eaten by hand from a woven basket, accompanies everything, and tam mak hoong, the pounded green papaya salad, is made to order at market stalls, often searingly hot.

The Vietnamese inheritance is stronger here than in most Lao towns. Feu, the rice noodle soup served with a plate of raw herbs and lime, is the standard breakfast; khao piak sen, a thicker soup of soft noodles, is its rival; and spring rolls, grilled pork with cold noodles and khao jii, the baguette split and filled with pâté and pickled vegetables, are sold from carts and shophouse kitchens around the square.

In the evening the riverfront stalls grill skewers, chicken and fish, and Beerlao is drunk with them at plastic tables. Coffee comes from the Bolaven plateau to the south, poured strong over sweetened condensed milk and served with weak green tea, and cafés in restored shophouses on the old square have taken it up in a more Western form. Lao-lao, the village rice spirit, appears at weddings, house-blessings and festivals.