Thakhek

Thakhek's name means guest landing, a reference to the traders who used this stretch of the Mekong long before the town took shape. The area is tied in Lao tradition to Sikhottabong, a legendary kingdom of the middle Mekong, and the stupa of That Sikhottabong south of the town is said to stand on an ancient foundation and has been rebuilt more than once.

The modern town is largely a French creation. From the 1890s the protectorate developed it as a river port and provincial seat, laying out a small grid of shophouses, offices and villas behind a riverside square. Vietnamese merchants and clerks brought in under colonial policy came to dominate it: in 1943 some 85 per cent of the town's people were Vietnamese. Timber, tin from the hills and trade with Nakhon Phanom across the water supported it, and a railway from Thakhek to Tân Ấp in Vietnam was begun and abandoned, leaving traces near the town.

The mid-20th century brought war. The Mekong border was a line of Cold War tension, and eastern Khammouane, crossed by parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail network, was bombed heavily; unexploded ordnance is still cleared from the province. Many residents left for Thailand in the years around 1975.

Since the 1990s the town has grown again on trade and transport. Route 13 runs through it, Route 12 heads east towards Vietnam, and the Third Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge opened in November 2011, making Thakhek a corridor town for freight between Thailand and Vietnam. The Nam Theun 2 dam on the Nakai plateau entered commercial operation in April 2010, and the motorbike loop out to Kong Lor has made the town a fixture on the traveller route.

Khammouane is old lowland Lao country, and Thakhek keeps the customs of the Mekong valley rather than the uplands. Buddhism sets the calendar: the alms round at first light, ordinations, the rains retreat and the offerings at That Sikhottabong, whose February festival is the biggest gathering in the province and draws people from both banks of the river. The baci, in which white cotton threads are tied round the wrist to call the spirits back to the body, marks weddings, departures and welcomes.

The town has a mixed inheritance. Vietnamese families settled here under the French and a Vietnamese temple and community remain; Thai influence arrives daily across the bridge in television, music and goods; and Phou Thai and other Tai groups live in the valleys east of the town, with their own dress, weaving and spirit rituals. Khammouane silk and cotton weaving is a recognised craft, and villages in the province keep looms under the houses.

Life is conducted slowly and quietly. The riverside square fills in the cool of the evening, with food stalls, beer and families rather than nightlife, and the town is asleep early. Manners are conservative: modest dress, soft speech, no public displays of temper or affection, and shoes left at the door. Travellers on the loop are a familiar sight, and local guesthouses along the route have built a small industry around them.

Thakhek is a small provincial capital, the administrative centre of a province of some four hundred thousand people, laid out between the Mekong and Route 13 with the countryside beginning almost at once. Government offices, the market, schools, the hospital and trade across the bridge provide most of the work in town, alongside transport and warehousing for the freight that moves between Thailand and Vietnam.

Beyond the built-up area, households live from rice on the plain, maize, cassava, cattle and fishing in the Mekong. The province's other income comes from hydropower on the Nakai plateau, limestone quarrying and cement, mining in the hills, and tourism around the caves and the loop. Nam Theun 2 resettled several thousand villagers from the flooded plateau, and the long-term resettlement is still debated. Many young people from Khammouane work in Thailand and send money home.

The day starts before six at the market and ends early: offices open around eight, break for a long lunch through the worst of the heat, and the riverfront fills at sunset. Power supply and roads have improved steadily, but flooding along the Mekong and its tributaries in the wet season, rising prices as the kip falls, and the slow business of clearing unexploded ordnance from farmland are constants of life in the province.

Thakhek eats the food of the Mekong plain: sticky rice, khao niao, taken by hand from a basket at every meal, with laap, minced meat or fish dressed with lime, fish sauce, herbs and toasted ground rice, and tam mak hoong, green papaya pounded with chilli, lime and fermented fish sauce. Padaek, the thick fermented fish sauce of the Lao kitchen, gives the local cooking its depth, and the town's own fish comes from the river a few streets away.

Mekong fish is the thing to eat here, grilled whole over charcoal, salted and stuffed with lemongrass as ping pa, or steamed in banana leaves with dill and herbs as mok pa. Soups thickened with vegetables and herbs, grilled chicken pressed between bamboo sticks, and pork sausages are stall food; khao piak sen, thick rice noodles in chicken broth, and feu, the Lao pho, are the usual breakfasts. Jaew, a family of pounded chilli dips made with roasted tomato, eggplant or fish, comes with almost everything.

The French left bread behind: khao jii, a baguette split and filled with pâté, pickled carrot and chilli, is sold in the morning, and coffee is drunk strong and sweet over condensed milk. Beerlao is the beer, drunk with ice at the riverside tables, and lao-lao, the clear rice spirit, appears at any village celebration along the loop.