What do you think?
Rate this book
Bamboo Palace: Discovering the Lost Dynasty of Laos
Twenty years after the Indochina wars, Christopher Kremmer visits Laos-at the crossroads of change in southeast Asia. He begins his journey in the tranquility of Luang Prabang, once the royal capital. With its ancient culture and stately airs, the town-like Laos itself-is a place of secrets, mysteries and nagging questions. Setting off in search of the lost royal family, a 600-year-old dynasty consumed by the violent troubles of the 1960s and 1970s, Kremmer reveals a small land-locked corner of Asia struggling to deal with the legacies of the US war and Asian communism. Bamboo Palace begins as a travelogue, turns into a mystery and ultimately redefines a nation's history as Kremmer journeys through Laos to uncover one of Indochina's darkest secrets.
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2005
7 people are currently reading
460 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 23, 2018
I found my dislike of the author distracting. It was not terrible, but sometimes he seems a little judgmental of the Lao in their differences, and then also sometimes he complains and gets mopey about things that are really kind of minor, especially in comparison to the people he is writing about.
It probably suffers some in relation to the other books that I have been reading lately, also about SE Asia but written by natives.
It probably suffers some in relation to the other books that I have been reading lately, also about SE Asia but written by natives.
July 15, 2022
“With the advent of World War II, the French colonial administration that had ruled Laos for fifty years in concert with the monarchy collapsed, and the king fled to Thailand. After a brief Japanese military occupation, the French returned, restoring the king to his throne, but the twilight of colonialism and birth of Asian nationalism had arrived. In 1954, Laos gained full independence as a constitutional monarchy, but the new nation, like so many others, was soon split by the Cold War. Rightists supported the United States and the monarchy, while the Left wanted a Soviet-style people's republic. In between, the Neutralists struggled to keep the two sides apart and preserve the fledgling nation's fragile unity. Civil war loomed. In the midst of the struggle, Khamphan responded to the new government's call by joining the army reserve. While the royalists held the Mekong towns, the leftist Pathet Lao retreated east, launching a guerilla struggle backed by the like-minded government of neighbouring North Vietnam. Despite several attempts to patch up the rift by forming national unity governments, the fighting would continue for twenty years”.
- Bamboo Palace - Rediscovering the lost dynasty of Laos
.
.
I actually wanted to read a book about Laos written by Laotian or at least by any Southeast Asian. However, it is proven to be difficult to find such books especially in a secondhand bookstore. When i found this book, i am contemplating whether i should get it or not given that it didn’t fulfill the criteria that i set. I decided to just buy it and see what it has to offer. Christopher Kremmer did well in introducing the history of Laos in a way readers did not feel overwhelmed by the amount of facts that they have to go through. This is also my first time encountering the ‘historical’ travelogue. We traveled with author in the process of researching what happened to the rest of Laos Royal Family and experiencing backlash from certain officials , strict bureaucracy and the risk of not being able to enter Laos anymore due to the sensitivity of subject matter. I think its fair to point while it is not strictly textbook-ish but some readers might have failed to distinguish whether we are currently travelling or whether we are transported to the past to get the glimpses of what have happened to the last Laos king and queen after being forced to abdicate. I know that one book is not enough to learn all about Laos but it is insightful enough to fill the gaps on what i should know about the country. That being said, its fair to say that the author is a royalist and anti communist or else we wouldn’t have this book.
I have highlighted few points about Laos that i can share with the readers.
1. Lao Classical Dance (Danse Sourya/The Sun Dance)
In the 1960s, Lao classical dancers were still performing danse sourya, the sun dance. It described the landscape at sunset along the Mekong, a river as important to the Lao Loum as the Nile is to the Egyptians. 'The sun at its setting falls slowly, spreading its rays; the dancers would sing. 'The red clouds watch the forest, where the colours of the trees mix with those of the sun.' In the spirit world too, women danced for the kinara, a strange creature with the head of a man and the body of a bird which lived on mountains and in caves. For six hundred years, the arts and religion and monarchy of Laos had formed a seamless whole, anachronistic perhaps, but indigenous. It was a world that collapsed with the abdication of the last king.
2. Crown Prince Savang Vatthana was never really king.
In 1959, five years after Laos regained its independence, King Sisavangvong died in Luang Prabang. Tradition demanded that preparations begin immediately to bury the king and crown his successor, the young French-speaking Crown Prince Savang Vatthana. But the Lao are a deeply superstitious people, and when a sudden storm struck Luang Prabang, tearing the roofs from many houses and demolishing the funeral arches, the soothsayers made an extraordinary prophesy. The new king, they said, would never be crowned.
"Savang Vatthana was never really king; Sisana said, dismissing the issue. 'The prince did not automatically assume the throne upon the death of his father. There should be a ceremony. The reason this did not occur was that at the time Sisavangvong died, there was still fighting in the country, from province to province, and it became worse later on. He was waiting until there was calm in the whole country.
3. The similarity Laos has with Malaysia
In Laos, politics was family business to be inherited, and sometimes squandered. Those without family connections survived any way they could.
4. One of the few pictures of the Last King and Queen of Laos
'This was taken in Viengxai; he said. The photograph showed two elderly people, a man and woman. I knew who they were, but had never seen them looking so wretched and bedraggled. Savang Vatthana and Queen Khamphoui were kneeling on the ground in the Lao style, legs tucked behind them and to one side, with their hands clasped in prayer. There was a rudimentary flower arrangement, a poor man's baci bowl, in front of them, and some battered oil drums behindthem. The queen's hair was dishevelled, and the king wore a plain black tunic. Gone was their regal dignity, replaced by distress and fear. This single image, passed hand to hand across the Lao diaspora and dissident networks, represented the agony of an entire people.
5. Religion were practiced based on region.
If you tire of seeing monks in Laos, go to Xam Nua. I hadn't encountered a bonze since arriving, although the drab streets would have benefited from their dazzling orange robes. Although Buddhism dominates the lowland areas, one in three Lao are not adherents, preferring to follow the animist tradition of the remote highlands. What little Buddhism had reached remote Xam Nua had
been all but snuffed out during the war.
6. Opium in Laos
Opium is nothing new in Laos, but successive generations insist on rediscovering it. For the Hmong tribes who left China in the early 1800s, it was the economic basis of their hopes for an independent homeland, and to this day many Hmong in Laos still depend for their living on opium poppy cultivation, which is not illegal. In some hill areas the number of people addicted to opium is greater than the number who can read. The French colonial administration was largely financed by it, with the opium harvest of northern Laos being sent to Luang Prabang's bouillerie, or boiler, while that of southern Laos went to Saigon. The processed product was sold to Ho traders travelling with mule trains from Yunnan in China. So vigorous was the industry during World War Il that Luang Prabang became 'rotten' with silver, the currency in which the Ho paid, and many of the solid silver necklaces worn by Hmong women to denote status and store wealth date from that time. In the 1960s, the planes of the CIA airline, Air America, were used to transport opium to Saigon for processing into heroin and subsequent sale to US troops.
7. Land of one million elephants
If Laos had ever truly been the land of one million elephants it was, sadly, no longer. Logging and clearing for agriculture and development threatened the pachyderms' continued existence. Their hides were coveted for making shoes and bags, their teeth were used in medicines, and ivory poaching--which targeted only the tusks of bulls--had severely upset the male-female ratio. The government had established the Nakai Nam Then National Biodiversity Conservation Area, which stretched across Bolikamsai
and Khammouane provinces east of Thakek. It was home to about 250 elephants, but even within the protected area, logging continued at a steady pace.
8. The ‘re-education’ camp set up by leftist
"To mend the damage of war, people needed to change their way of chinking; said Mr Khammouane, 'Feelings of hatred must be forgotten. When that person fully understands the situation, he can come back, This is the Lao way, the Lao system. Some countries use
weapons, but Laos doesn't use that sort of system. If the attitude of the person changes, then the sentence is quickly reduced. Those who understand the new situation are given jobs- for example, Dr Houy”.
9. Leave it to french when it comes to colonisation (look at Vietnam, Algeria, Niger just to name a few)
By the end of the nineteenth century, Vientiane's population was still only a quarter of what it had been at the time of the war, and so weakened was the kingdom that when French explorers arrived, they found a land
ripe for colonial exploitation.
10. The disappearance of Language
Communist semioticians saw language as the key to thought and attitudinal change, so they embarked on an ambitious campaign to rid the language of vestiges of the feudal past. The four forms of saying yes', each denoting a different level of respect, were abolished in favour of the proletarian jaow, or yeah. The humble form doi kanoi 'at your service' or yes, my lord', with which children had for centuries addressed their elders, was no longer to be used. In New Lao, yeah' would suffice for all occasions and for all people. Decades later, Lao like Sou who returned to their homeland found they no longer spoke the same
language as their compatriots.'They told me, "In the old days, we used to have lords and servants and slaves- caste structure. That's why people would say 'my lord' and 'your highness'. From now on, we are brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews. There isn't a caste structure anymore.
.
Overall, this has been an eye opening book on regards of Lao Monarchy itself and their deposition. Attached in the appendix, list of royal prisoners were highlighted one by one and the date of their demise in this re-education camp. As a citizen of fellow Southeast Asian country whereby constitutional monarchy are practiced, reading about 600 year old kingdom of the Million Elephant and the white Parasol disappeared in the favour of Republic is painfully nostalgic.
.
- Bamboo Palace - Rediscovering the lost dynasty of Laos
.
.
I actually wanted to read a book about Laos written by Laotian or at least by any Southeast Asian. However, it is proven to be difficult to find such books especially in a secondhand bookstore. When i found this book, i am contemplating whether i should get it or not given that it didn’t fulfill the criteria that i set. I decided to just buy it and see what it has to offer. Christopher Kremmer did well in introducing the history of Laos in a way readers did not feel overwhelmed by the amount of facts that they have to go through. This is also my first time encountering the ‘historical’ travelogue. We traveled with author in the process of researching what happened to the rest of Laos Royal Family and experiencing backlash from certain officials , strict bureaucracy and the risk of not being able to enter Laos anymore due to the sensitivity of subject matter. I think its fair to point while it is not strictly textbook-ish but some readers might have failed to distinguish whether we are currently travelling or whether we are transported to the past to get the glimpses of what have happened to the last Laos king and queen after being forced to abdicate. I know that one book is not enough to learn all about Laos but it is insightful enough to fill the gaps on what i should know about the country. That being said, its fair to say that the author is a royalist and anti communist or else we wouldn’t have this book.
I have highlighted few points about Laos that i can share with the readers.
1. Lao Classical Dance (Danse Sourya/The Sun Dance)
In the 1960s, Lao classical dancers were still performing danse sourya, the sun dance. It described the landscape at sunset along the Mekong, a river as important to the Lao Loum as the Nile is to the Egyptians. 'The sun at its setting falls slowly, spreading its rays; the dancers would sing. 'The red clouds watch the forest, where the colours of the trees mix with those of the sun.' In the spirit world too, women danced for the kinara, a strange creature with the head of a man and the body of a bird which lived on mountains and in caves. For six hundred years, the arts and religion and monarchy of Laos had formed a seamless whole, anachronistic perhaps, but indigenous. It was a world that collapsed with the abdication of the last king.
2. Crown Prince Savang Vatthana was never really king.
In 1959, five years after Laos regained its independence, King Sisavangvong died in Luang Prabang. Tradition demanded that preparations begin immediately to bury the king and crown his successor, the young French-speaking Crown Prince Savang Vatthana. But the Lao are a deeply superstitious people, and when a sudden storm struck Luang Prabang, tearing the roofs from many houses and demolishing the funeral arches, the soothsayers made an extraordinary prophesy. The new king, they said, would never be crowned.
"Savang Vatthana was never really king; Sisana said, dismissing the issue. 'The prince did not automatically assume the throne upon the death of his father. There should be a ceremony. The reason this did not occur was that at the time Sisavangvong died, there was still fighting in the country, from province to province, and it became worse later on. He was waiting until there was calm in the whole country.
3. The similarity Laos has with Malaysia
In Laos, politics was family business to be inherited, and sometimes squandered. Those without family connections survived any way they could.
4. One of the few pictures of the Last King and Queen of Laos
'This was taken in Viengxai; he said. The photograph showed two elderly people, a man and woman. I knew who they were, but had never seen them looking so wretched and bedraggled. Savang Vatthana and Queen Khamphoui were kneeling on the ground in the Lao style, legs tucked behind them and to one side, with their hands clasped in prayer. There was a rudimentary flower arrangement, a poor man's baci bowl, in front of them, and some battered oil drums behindthem. The queen's hair was dishevelled, and the king wore a plain black tunic. Gone was their regal dignity, replaced by distress and fear. This single image, passed hand to hand across the Lao diaspora and dissident networks, represented the agony of an entire people.
5. Religion were practiced based on region.
If you tire of seeing monks in Laos, go to Xam Nua. I hadn't encountered a bonze since arriving, although the drab streets would have benefited from their dazzling orange robes. Although Buddhism dominates the lowland areas, one in three Lao are not adherents, preferring to follow the animist tradition of the remote highlands. What little Buddhism had reached remote Xam Nua had
been all but snuffed out during the war.
6. Opium in Laos
Opium is nothing new in Laos, but successive generations insist on rediscovering it. For the Hmong tribes who left China in the early 1800s, it was the economic basis of their hopes for an independent homeland, and to this day many Hmong in Laos still depend for their living on opium poppy cultivation, which is not illegal. In some hill areas the number of people addicted to opium is greater than the number who can read. The French colonial administration was largely financed by it, with the opium harvest of northern Laos being sent to Luang Prabang's bouillerie, or boiler, while that of southern Laos went to Saigon. The processed product was sold to Ho traders travelling with mule trains from Yunnan in China. So vigorous was the industry during World War Il that Luang Prabang became 'rotten' with silver, the currency in which the Ho paid, and many of the solid silver necklaces worn by Hmong women to denote status and store wealth date from that time. In the 1960s, the planes of the CIA airline, Air America, were used to transport opium to Saigon for processing into heroin and subsequent sale to US troops.
7. Land of one million elephants
If Laos had ever truly been the land of one million elephants it was, sadly, no longer. Logging and clearing for agriculture and development threatened the pachyderms' continued existence. Their hides were coveted for making shoes and bags, their teeth were used in medicines, and ivory poaching--which targeted only the tusks of bulls--had severely upset the male-female ratio. The government had established the Nakai Nam Then National Biodiversity Conservation Area, which stretched across Bolikamsai
and Khammouane provinces east of Thakek. It was home to about 250 elephants, but even within the protected area, logging continued at a steady pace.
8. The ‘re-education’ camp set up by leftist
"To mend the damage of war, people needed to change their way of chinking; said Mr Khammouane, 'Feelings of hatred must be forgotten. When that person fully understands the situation, he can come back, This is the Lao way, the Lao system. Some countries use
weapons, but Laos doesn't use that sort of system. If the attitude of the person changes, then the sentence is quickly reduced. Those who understand the new situation are given jobs- for example, Dr Houy”.
9. Leave it to french when it comes to colonisation (look at Vietnam, Algeria, Niger just to name a few)
By the end of the nineteenth century, Vientiane's population was still only a quarter of what it had been at the time of the war, and so weakened was the kingdom that when French explorers arrived, they found a land
ripe for colonial exploitation.
10. The disappearance of Language
Communist semioticians saw language as the key to thought and attitudinal change, so they embarked on an ambitious campaign to rid the language of vestiges of the feudal past. The four forms of saying yes', each denoting a different level of respect, were abolished in favour of the proletarian jaow, or yeah. The humble form doi kanoi 'at your service' or yes, my lord', with which children had for centuries addressed their elders, was no longer to be used. In New Lao, yeah' would suffice for all occasions and for all people. Decades later, Lao like Sou who returned to their homeland found they no longer spoke the same
language as their compatriots.'They told me, "In the old days, we used to have lords and servants and slaves- caste structure. That's why people would say 'my lord' and 'your highness'. From now on, we are brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews. There isn't a caste structure anymore.
.
Overall, this has been an eye opening book on regards of Lao Monarchy itself and their deposition. Attached in the appendix, list of royal prisoners were highlighted one by one and the date of their demise in this re-education camp. As a citizen of fellow Southeast Asian country whereby constitutional monarchy are practiced, reading about 600 year old kingdom of the Million Elephant and the white Parasol disappeared in the favour of Republic is painfully nostalgic.
.
February 6, 2013
I first came across Christopher Kremmer in Uni. I had a friend who forced his book,The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes, on me.
Pete, the friend, wore an Akubra all the time and constantly played the harmonica. He was the stereotypical Aussie farm boy who was doing a degree in Middle Eastern politics and Arabic. He once turned up at my house trying to apologise to my Mum as he thought she had taken offence to something he had said or done, by bringing her an entire bucket of turnips, as he knew she was a librarian and this had once worked on his school librarian. Two weeks later he was trying to convince her over the phone to adopt a lamb. He was a very strange, amusing and intense guy. Strange thing is, is he and Mum do a lot of volunteer work together still. I haven't seen him in years. But the thing I still thank him for is intensely forcing that book on me and telling me I had to read it. He was right.
So I asked that next Christmas for Kremmer's new book, Bamboo Palace. It was on Laos, and the Lao royal family and their fate after they were overthrown by the communist regime. I tried reading it, and got bored and distracted, and it has sat on my shelf since.
I picked it up for this challenge and understood why I had put it down in that uni holidays so many years before. I had a hard time with the names of people in this book. It just made it rather hard to read. They were sounds I wasn't used to, and were very long and very similar. I had some background in Islamic history and faith with The Carpet Wars. I didn't so much with South East Asian history or Buddhism. Hinduism more, but that was only really mentioned as Buddhist appropriated rituals.
The beauty of Kremmer's writing is he makes everything accessible. He is so easy to read, and explains everything for you if you don't understand it. If you do, you read it as a recap rather than an annoying explanation. The writing itself in this book is perfect. And towards the end of the book, when he finally slips into what he does absolutely the best, which is retelling people's stories and experiences, I flew through it.
He is also the master of those little snippets of observation that are reasonably obvious, but you need someone to point them out to you. My favourite was right at the end of the book where he said:
"The US-led war on terror has given the Lao exile movement hope that small authoritarian regimes like the Lao PDR may face pressure to democratise. Yet America's use of detention without trial to hold suspected Islamic militants at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can only undermine Western protests against regimes that use similar methods against their own people." - p242.
He wrote that in 2003. The difference I see now, is that those same words could be applied to his own country 10 years on in 2013, to our Government's treatment of refugees. And that is rather heartbreaking, not just for what it is, but also as earlier in this book he talks about Lao people coming to Australia as refugees to escape the possibilities of Lao gulags. If this was happening now, these people would be fleeing one type of gulag, for essentially another.
While I loved the writing and the accessibility I have to be honest that the subject matter didn't grab me. Unlike The Carpet Wars, which I read in a couple of days, I struggled with this book. And that's not the authors fault. This ís his second book on Lao, so he personally obviously loves the region and this story. Just wasn't quite my cup of tea. But if it's yours, I highly recommend it.
For more reviews visit http://rusalkii.blogspot.com.au/
Pete, the friend, wore an Akubra all the time and constantly played the harmonica. He was the stereotypical Aussie farm boy who was doing a degree in Middle Eastern politics and Arabic. He once turned up at my house trying to apologise to my Mum as he thought she had taken offence to something he had said or done, by bringing her an entire bucket of turnips, as he knew she was a librarian and this had once worked on his school librarian. Two weeks later he was trying to convince her over the phone to adopt a lamb. He was a very strange, amusing and intense guy. Strange thing is, is he and Mum do a lot of volunteer work together still. I haven't seen him in years. But the thing I still thank him for is intensely forcing that book on me and telling me I had to read it. He was right.
So I asked that next Christmas for Kremmer's new book, Bamboo Palace. It was on Laos, and the Lao royal family and their fate after they were overthrown by the communist regime. I tried reading it, and got bored and distracted, and it has sat on my shelf since.
I picked it up for this challenge and understood why I had put it down in that uni holidays so many years before. I had a hard time with the names of people in this book. It just made it rather hard to read. They were sounds I wasn't used to, and were very long and very similar. I had some background in Islamic history and faith with The Carpet Wars. I didn't so much with South East Asian history or Buddhism. Hinduism more, but that was only really mentioned as Buddhist appropriated rituals.
The beauty of Kremmer's writing is he makes everything accessible. He is so easy to read, and explains everything for you if you don't understand it. If you do, you read it as a recap rather than an annoying explanation. The writing itself in this book is perfect. And towards the end of the book, when he finally slips into what he does absolutely the best, which is retelling people's stories and experiences, I flew through it.
He is also the master of those little snippets of observation that are reasonably obvious, but you need someone to point them out to you. My favourite was right at the end of the book where he said:
"The US-led war on terror has given the Lao exile movement hope that small authoritarian regimes like the Lao PDR may face pressure to democratise. Yet America's use of detention without trial to hold suspected Islamic militants at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can only undermine Western protests against regimes that use similar methods against their own people." - p242.
He wrote that in 2003. The difference I see now, is that those same words could be applied to his own country 10 years on in 2013, to our Government's treatment of refugees. And that is rather heartbreaking, not just for what it is, but also as earlier in this book he talks about Lao people coming to Australia as refugees to escape the possibilities of Lao gulags. If this was happening now, these people would be fleeing one type of gulag, for essentially another.
While I loved the writing and the accessibility I have to be honest that the subject matter didn't grab me. Unlike The Carpet Wars, which I read in a couple of days, I struggled with this book. And that's not the authors fault. This ís his second book on Lao, so he personally obviously loves the region and this story. Just wasn't quite my cup of tea. But if it's yours, I highly recommend it.
For more reviews visit http://rusalkii.blogspot.com.au/
April 6, 2016
I bought this book at Luang Prabang airport as I was leaving Laos. I was curious to find out what had happened to the last King of Lao because both of the guides I'd had there had said that no-one knew. That the royal family had been taken up North and never heard of again. Interesting that English-speakers could buy the book and find out but that the locals haven't been told/don't know.
The book itself is an interesting combination of travelogue and the story of the Lao gulags. Well worth a read if you have interest in that part of the world.
The book itself is an interesting combination of travelogue and the story of the Lao gulags. Well worth a read if you have interest in that part of the world.
December 3, 2008
The second edition to Kremmer's 'Stalking the Elephant King'. A lot more anti-communist that I recall. I understand not being sympathetic to the system that killed the subject of the book, but widely denouncing everything that the LPDR stands for is a overly harsh and judgmental.
Still, a good brisk read.
Still, a good brisk read.
March 6, 2015
Lyrical, well-written, an engaging real-life exploration of the Laos' lost royalty. (While reading this book, on a trip from Laos to Thailand, I even met one of the members of that royal family, totally by coincidence!!!).
May 2, 2018
Great read for anyone planning a trip to Laos. I read it whilst I was there and it was extremely helpful in getting my head around this country’s turbulent history. Written as part history book, part travelogue and immensely readable.
January 3, 2012
I recommend as a great read - but be wanred you will want to visit Laos.
Read the full review at OurBookClub
Read the full review at OurBookClub
July 27, 2011
Very moving and informative.
February 8, 2020
A little bit confusing to begin with with the unfamiliar names and where they fitted into the story. Quite a lengthy travelogue before getting into the heart of what happened to the royal family. Having visited Laos in 2010 it was good to get a different perspective of the history of this impoverished country.
February 13, 2023
This book was educational for me as I know very little about Laos and SE Asian history in general. It covers stories relating to the demise of Lao royalty rather than their history in general and can be disturbing at times as a result. It needs a family tree and a table relating all the generals as there are many people referred to.
March 23, 2020
Interesting and distressing, but much padding to make a book out of not much more than the account of one man.
July 10, 2020
Half travelog and half murder-mystery, Kremmer charts the demise of Laos' final monarchy.
Witty, engaging and poignant the whole way through.
I recommend reading it on a vacation to Laos! ;)
Witty, engaging and poignant the whole way through.
I recommend reading it on a vacation to Laos! ;)
August 8, 2023
‘The days grew longer in Vientiane, city of stolen arches and white elephants.’
May 22, 2007
I am preparing for a trip to Laos, I read this for information.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews