Laos war time caves a new tourist attraction
Updated
During the Vietnam war, a secret and elaborate city of caves in northern Laos allowed many to survive nearly a decade of incessant U-S bombing. Now the government has opened up the caves to the public.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speakers: Colin Long, Asian cultural heritage specialist from Melbourne's Deakin University.
MCCARTHY: From 1964 to 1973, more bombs rained down on Laos, per person, than has occured anywhere else on earth.
American aircraft bombed every eight to ten minutes, hoping to cut off north Vietnamese supply lines and destroy the Lao insurgency.
The communist leadership survived thanks to an elaborate underground cave city, referred to by some as the birthplace of modern Laos.
LONG: It was really the strategic centre for the Lao communist movement, until 1975 effectively.
MCCARTHY: Colin Long is an Asian cultural heritage specialist from Melbourne's Deakin University.
He explains the Viengxay limestone caves were more than just bomb shelters.
They were a network of hundreds of caves that provided all the basic facilities for up to 20-thousand guerilla fighters, local villagers and politburo leaders.
LONG: There was a theatre cave, a very large cave that was used by Vietnamese visiting performing troops, to entertain soliders. There was what's called a bank cave. There was a radio station in the cave. There were schools for children. Hospital caves, as I said. Small factories, uniform factories to produce unforms. Factories to fashion rudimentary weapons. What is called a supermarket cave, which was like a small state shop where you could go and get whatever goods you needed. So pretty much everything you needed to keep a revolutionary base area going for nine years.
MCCARTHY: But day to day life was still a struggle.
LONG: They farmed basically at night when there was no bombing. Life was tough. The supplies were very minimal. Very rudimentary health care. Viengzay gets very cold in winter, so very basically living conditions, and the continual threat of bombing day in and day.
MCCARTHY: As Laos battles to overcome its legacy of war and economic decline, its government hopes opening up the caves to tourism will provide a lifeline for Viengxay.
It's one of the poorest and most isolated parts of an already impoverished country.
Unexploded ordnances litter the countryside and a once flourishing opium trade has only just been stamped out.
Colin Long says it's hoped tourism will replace the trade, with revenues carefully targeted at local communities.
He says while it will be slow and difficult, he's confident the tourism potential is there, particarly from those drawn to the region's history.
LONG: It's probably the most intact revolutionary base area you will find associated with any of the postcolonial liberation struggles of the cold war period. More intact that anything I would say in Cuba or Vietnam, Cambodia. So in that sense it's a really significant place and anyone wanting to understand that part of history, it's well worth going to see.
MCCARTHY: The Lao government's looking to other models of what's been called war-themed tourism, such as Cambodia's Killing Fields and Vietnam's Cu Chi tunnels.
But Colin Long says showing the grim face of war is not the government's intention.
LONG: The Lao government has actually emphasised the theme of peace associated with the cave. It's not a place that is really playing up to ... you know, you don't see a lot of weaponry or anything like that. The horror associated with the Killing Fields is not there. The main theme is around the survival and the ingenuity of people surviving under bombardment. Fashioning a life in these tough conditions over a long period.
MCCARTHY: And there's one aspect of the caves' history the Lao government won't be throwing open to public view.
After 1975, some caves were used as political re-education camps for senior officers of the former anti-communist army.
That's something one of the world's last surviving communist regimes is keeping under wraps.
MCCARTHY: It is very politically sensitive. One day perhaps it's something that the Lao authorities will talk about but at this stage, they want to interpret Viengxay as a place associated with the creation and the construction of the poscolonial Lao nation and the contemporary Lao nation and a place of celebration.
