One Foot in Laos [Hardcover]

At 67, Dervla Murphy is still repairing punctures. Her tour of Laos was frustrated by an injured foot; when she tried to use her bike as a wheeled walking aid, it proved a recalcitrant companion, every bit as independent as herself.

From the first page, Dervla Murphy makes clear one of the tenets of her faith: if you travel, do so as an individual - don't allow the tourist industry to define you as a 'passenger' and package you like goods in transit. Assert your own individuality, that way you'll respect the uniqueness and individuality of the places you visit.

Murphy rails against the invasive nature of Western economies. Her fierce adherence to individuality and personal autonomy shines out against the efforts of slick tour operators. These market Laos to 'visitors', who are progressed routinely down the days of a holiday with anodyne efficiency. Murphy's is a rambling adventure - she could drive a tour guide to drink within the hour.

Laos is an ancient culture, knocked about a bit by various military protectors. It is now exposed to a more pernicious invasion - the get rich quick attitudes of Western-influenced tour operators. Sex tourism is on the increase. 'Wives' - of both genders - can be bought and sold. A pretence of cultural superiority - and a very real economic one - is maintained; Thai television advertises skin-lightening cosmetics!

Laotians are instinctively friendly. Over the years they've learned to resist, passively, with a smile. Murphy gleefully describes the pot-holed roads as "a plot to sabotage tourism".

But the roadside trees have been felled to make way for the automobile - people used to gather in their shade, linger, and talk. A slow life in which people had the time to respect one another has been eroded in favour of the hermetically-boxed speed of the car. Yet children in Laos still climb tress - they get to explore a world and take risks in ways denied Western children. Except now, of course, they're being sold cigarettes... and being sold to tourists.

Murphy reminds us there is more to travel than getting there fast, getting drunk cheap, getting laid easy, then getting back without either catching anything or being caught. She conjours the atmosphere and adventures of travel, has time to meet people - fellow travellers, businessmen, locals - and treats them as favoured guests who, like us, are welcome to enter her world for a while.

Beyond this I think "One Foot in Laos" is an inspiration to any traveller with a sense of adventure. Murphy seems to have boundless energy, a sympathetic approach to all she meets, a healthy disrespect for those driving the "progress" that is changing Laos so fast and irreversibly, and a talent to laugh at herself. Added to all this considerable bravery.

With long term scars left by the secret war, illegal logging, inadvisable damming and a headlong rush towards Western backed development it is quite hard to be optimistic about the country's future. Murphy is not - but her arguments against the whole "development aid" industry seem rational and well thought out.

I think I will now seek out some of her other books.

Her thoughts on the conundrum facing Laos of how to curtail the worst aspects of development - progress but at what social price - are, generally, accurate. But she is a little too quick to point the finger at external influences (whether foreign companies or individual consultants). There's no doubt that many donor country-inspired macro aid projects, whilst impressive on paper, have minimal impact at the micro-level. But the reasons for this are many and varied. The rigid bureaucracy of the Lao government certainly doesn't help. And much of the worst of the logging and associated degradation of the environment comes courtesy of army-run companies. I can't help but feel that the forests would be under siege irrespective of the interest of dam consortia. Also, too, the social and cultural threat from neighbouring Thailand gets a mention, but is understated.

But this is to nit-pick. 'One Foot In Laos' remains well-observed throughout and, for me, rekindled feelings of both nostalgia and melancholy. I have returned to Laos several times since 1997 and, whilst the people retain their characteristic good humour, the New Economic Mechanism has done little to improve their lot.

And finally, cats in Laos do not have their tails deliberately broken (p.28); it's a (presumably) genetic flaw. My cat had four kittens, three of which were born with deformed tails.