Personal requiem: Asia's lost gems

Take Pai, a village embedded in an expansive, mountain-encircled valley of northern Thailand. It used to be a great escape into an easygoing, exotic world, with tribal settlements scattered in the hills — until the global migratory tribe appeared in droves, dragging its own culture along.

Bamboo and thatch tourist huts hug the meandering Pai River as far as the eye can see, gobbling up rice paddies and clambering up hillsides on its left bank. On the right bank, high-priced resorts have begun to mushroom.

The short downtown strip is jammed with Apple Pai and nine other Internet cafes, video and tattoo parlors, bars, yoga and cooking classes, countless trinket shops and an eatery featuring bagels and cream cheese.

There's even an English-language newspaper, published by Joe Cummings, an author of those Bibles of shoestring travel, the Lonely Planet guides, which probably did more than anything to put Pai on the circuit. In a wicked daydream, I condemn Joe to eating nothing but banana pancakes and lugging a 500-pound backpack through all eternity.

Even those who make their living from tourism lament the growth. "It's too developed now. Too much concrete everywhere, too many guesthouses," says Watcharee Boonyathammaraksa, who, when I first met her in 1999 had just fled Bangkok's frantic advertising world to start a cafe, All About Coffee, in what is one of the only old wooden houses left in town.

Luang Prabang has done better in not tearing down its past. UNESCO has kept a close watch after declaring it a World Heritage site in 1995. The agency described the urban jewel as "the best preserved city of Southeast Asia."

Still, former UNESCO expert and resident, Francis Engelmann, says: "We have saved Luang Prabang's buildings, but we have lost its soul."

The traditional community is dissolving in tourism's wake, with those taking over the old residences interested in profits rather than supporting the monasteries, which exist largely on the offerings of the faithful.

One monastery, Engelmann says, has already closed down and abbots of others complain that tourists enter uninvited into their quarters to snap photos "right in their noses" while they study or meditate. The senior clergy report drugs, sex and minor crimes, once virtually unknown, among young novices as imported enticements and titillations swirl around their temple gates.

"Sustainable, ethical, eco-tourism." Tourist officials in Laos and elsewhere in Asia chant these fashionable mantras. But their operational plans push for "more, more, more." Nothing plunges the region's governments and marketers into a deeper funk than a drop in arrivals because of a tsunami or outbreak of bird flu.

In Luang Prabang, by official count, more than 160 guesthouses and hotels are already in business, with the Chinese and Koreans planning some really big ones for the wholesale trade.

Along the long block of Sisavangvong Road, at the old town's core, every building caters to the sightseers in one fashion or another. What a pleasure to finally discover one that doesn't, even if it's one housing the Luang Prabang Provincial Federation of Trade Unions.

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A lean, old man, barefoot and clad only in a checkered blue sarong, would have been a common sight a few years ago. Now, as he shuffles across Sisavangvong, among the trekking boots and fancy parkas, he seems like a stranger in his own hometown.

Nearby, at the Cultural House Puang Champ, my friend Prince Nithakhong Tiaoksomsanith is hoping to somehow act as a conduit of authentic Lao culture between a globalizing generation and the passing one. His traditional wooden house, propped on stilts, serves as a center where old masters teach music, dancing, cooking, gold thread embroidery and other arts.

This, Nithakhong says, may help avert Luang Prabang's possible fate: "Disneyland."

So, on a late afternoon, four teenagers under the guidance of a musician who once performed in the royal palace, practice. On strings and percussion, they play "The Lao Full Moon," a mournful, romantic song.

But even this private compound is vulnerable. As the youngsters play, a tourist tries barging in. And who's that over the wall, craning their necks?

More tourists, clicking cameras in hand.

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