老撾:迴歸簡單的閒適生活 (上)

導讀：老撾人，無論其年齡大小，都是我見到過的最可愛的人。即使老撾是世界上最窮的國家之一，大多數老撾人不太關心鑽營斂財之道，也不關心現代化的種種發展。

I had envisaged a quiet time of reading and sleeping; our couple of days in southern Laos would be spent cruising 100 miles up the Mekong in a pretty, old teak boat. I was mistaken. Wonderfully mistaken. "Bye! Bye! Bye!" was the endless refrain, as groups of tiny children, some in twos and threes, some in their dozens, stood waving at us and practicing their one word of English from the banks. Or from small carved wooden boats. Or, on one occasion, from the top of a giant tree, before they all jumped one after the other into the waters below.

我曾經想象着，我們在老撾南部旅行的幾天裏會坐着一艘漂亮而古樸的柚木船在湄公河上巡遊100英里（約161公里），享受一段只有閱讀和閉目休息的寧靜時光。但我想錯了，驚喜頻頻出現。“再見！再見！再見！”是我們不斷聽到的一個詞，一羣羣小孩子，有些是兩三人一起，有些是十幾個一組，站在河堤上邊朝我們揮手邊練習着說他們剛學會的這個英語單詞。也有些孩子會站在小小的雕花木船上。或者，碰到那麼一回，是站在一棵大樹的頂端。隨後，他們一個接一個地全都跳進了身下的河裏。

To read or to snooze would have been to fail to wave back at the hundreds of small, smiling faces. That, one felt, would be letting down the children of Laos. On the last day, one fellow passenger laughed delightedly as she showed me the two pages she had read of the 400-pagedoorstop she had been planning to finish.

如果在船上看書或者打盹，那就不能揮手迴應那數百張微笑的小臉，如此一來，遊客們會感覺辜負了那些老撾孩子們的好意。在旅行的最後一天，我的一位旅伴快樂地笑着給我看那本她原本準備在旅途中看完的書，那本400頁的厚書她只看了開頭的兩頁。

It was just another example of what makes this mountainous sliver of a country—squeezed between its bigger, louder neighbors, Thailand, Vietnam, and China—such a remarkable place to visit. Laotian people, whatever their age, are some of the loveliest I have ever encountered. Laotians today seem happy with what little they have—theirs is one of the poorest countries in the world—and largely unconcerned by the mucky business of making money, as well as many other aspects of modernity. This is the kind of country where most Lao women still wear the traditional tube skirt, together with a neatly tailored jacket, just as most Lao families still live in traditional wooden houses on stilts and work in the rice paddies.

雖然老撾這狹長的山地之國擠在那些引人注目的鄰居們（泰國、越南和中國）當中，卻精彩處處，那裏孩子們的笑容只是其值得到訪的理由之一。老撾人，無論其年齡大小，都是我見到過的最可愛的人。今天，老撾人看起來都滿足於他們所擁有的一切，即使老撾是世界上最窮的國家之一，大多數老撾人不太關心鑽營斂財之道，也不關心現代化的種種發展。就是這樣一個國家，在這兒，大多數老撾婦女仍然穿着傳統的筒裙和整潔而剪裁講究的短上衣，同時，大多數老撾家庭仍住在傳統的木頭高腳屋裏，在稻田裏勞作。

Cars are a comparatively rare sight; bicycles and water buffalo, in contrast, are ubiquitous. Scooters are the transport of choice for the well-off, a brightly patterned umbrella nonchalantly held in one hand when the sun is hot or the rain is falling. Its rural landscape in the months from November to January is eye-poppingly verdant and picturesque. But equally beguiling is Luang Prabang, now a Unesco World Heritage Site, a pinch-yourself perfect time capsule of a French colonial town, caught in a fork between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Its main streets are filled with pretty French-built stone buildings with wooden fretwork balconies and terraces, its residential streets are lined with traditional raised Laotian wooden houses with their sweepinggables.

汽車相對少見；相比之下，自行車和水牛則到處都是，有錢人會選擇小輪摩托車做交通工具。無論是出太陽還是下雨，人們手裏總是拿着圖案鮮亮的雨傘。從十一月到一月這段時間，老撾的鄉村一片青翠，風景如畫。不過，同樣誘人的還有其首府琅勃拉邦，坐落於湄公河和南康河交匯處的這個城市，現在是聯合國教科文組織指定的一處世界遺址，其法國殖民時代的風情得到了完好的保存，讓人感覺恍如時光倒流。在琅勃拉邦的大街上，到處是法國人建造的漂亮的石頭房屋，帶有木質雕花陽臺和露臺，住宅區的街道旁是一排排有着大型尖頂山牆的傳統老撾高腳木屋。