October 2016

Sabaidee from Laos. My wife, Disty, is spending a month here volunteering at the Luang Prabang Friendship Hospital for Children. I came for a week to carry her bags, and I am meeting up with old friends and making new ones.

Last year, I had the privilege of hosting Khamchanh Souvannalith (Ton) for a weekend in Boston. He was a visiting fellow brought to the United States by the Asian Cultural Council in New York. He was interning at the American Museum of Natural History and wanted to come to Boston to experience the Lao New Year at a Lao temple. We had hosted another artist from Laos before, and Ton spent the Lao New Year with me. Disty was out of town, and Ton and I spent the weekend together visiting the Lao Buddhist temple, Wat Buddhabhavana, in Westford, Massachusetts, only 20 minutes from Applewood Books’s office in Carlisle, Massachusetts. From that weekend together, we have become close friends, and when I knew I would be traveling to Luang Prabang, I wanted to connect with Ton, his family, and his work.

Ton is the Collections Manager and Education and Outreach Manager at the Traditional Arts & Ethnology Centre (TAEC) in Luang Prabang. TAEC collects, preserves, and interprets the traditional arts and lifestyles of the country’s many and diverse ethnic groups. The Museum was co-founded in 2007 by Tara Gujadhur and Thongkhoun Soutthivilay and currently employs 22 people. I am hoping to volunteer there for a few days during my visit.

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Saturday, October 15, 2016
Sabaidee, Laos

As we approach the airport in Luang Prabang at sunset, the clouds and red-gold smoky dusk hugging the round green-canopied mountains, the muddy river below winding through the lush countryside, I feel like I have arrived home. After a 30-hour flight from Boston to Dubai, Dubai to Bangkok, Bangkok to Luang Prabang, I walk off the plane and onto the tarmac. The smell of the place—incense mixed with burning wood and charcoal—brings back so many memories. It can be oppressively hot and humid in Laos, but not this October evening. With the full moon already rising, this evening marks the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the dry season, when temperatures drop and tourists return in larger numbers.

From the airport we share a taxi van with the medical director of the children’s hospital where Disty is volunteering. She is arriving back from a trip to Australia.  We check into our accommodations, the Coldriver Guest House, a beautiful little inn tucked down an alleyway that is run by a charming young French couple with two little children. A few minutes after our arrival, we were met at Coldriver by Phet, a former monk who was a friend of our older son Andy. We are here for Andy and ourselves. In 2009, at the age of 24, Andy died in a motorcycle accident in northern Laos where he was working for an NGO teaching English and pursuing his dream to create sustainability for the Lao people. Disty and I have made it our priority to return here often. Andy’s friend Phet, now married and a tour guide, has become another son to us, and it is comforting to see him. We went to dinner at KhaiPhaen, had some of the tastiest food ever in Laos, and, finally, went to bed.

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Sunday, October 16, 2016
Boun Ok Phansa

Ton let us know by facebook that TAEC was having a special event to celebrate Boun Ok Phansa and Boun Lai Heua Fai. Boun Ok Phansa marks the end of Buddhist Lent. It falls on the full moon of the eleventh lunar month. Buddhist Lent lasts for three months during the rainy season from July to October. Long ago, Buddha instructed his monks to stay in their monasteries, practicing meditation and studies, during this time. Since then, Lao Buddhist monks continue this tradition. Bout Ok Phansa celebrates the end of Lent. In Luang Prabang, the religious center of Laos, the day after Boun Ok Phansa is Boun Lai Heua Fai. Literally “boats of fire drifting down the river,” this holiday celebrates the river and pays homage to ancient dieties of the river: Phra Mee Khon Kha and the Naga. Families and villages make fire boats using banana tree trunk slices, banana leaves, flowers, incense, and saffron colored candles. Lighting the candles and incense, making a wish, and setting the boats afloat in the Mekong helps to wipe away sins and give good luck.

In early morning, Disty and I head over to the museum, where we are in time to make our own fire boats. We pay our admission and find Ton in the gift shop, where he is working. It is so wonderful to see him, and he takes us on a quick tour of his new exhibit, Seeds of Culture: From Living Plants to Handicrafts, a special exhibition exploring the importance of nature to culture (http://www.taeclaos.org/exhibitions-current.html). During the tour, Ton lets me know that I have a meeting scheduled on Tuesday at 11:30 with Co-Director Tara Gujadhur and Kristy Best, the museum sales and marketing director, to discuss my volunteering. We finish the tour, we head to the outdoor cafe. It is set up with banana leaves, banana trunk slices, reeds, and flowers. We sit down on a grass mat with a young Lao docent who shows us how to make each part of the heua fai. Disty and I test our finished boats in the tub of water to make sure they are seaworthy for their long lighted journey down the Mekong River to bring us good luck.

We proudly carry our little boats across the street and visit the Children’s Hospital Friendship Center, where we buy tickets for a traditional dance performance being held as a fundraiser for the hospital that evening. We wander back to the guest house to rest up.

At 6 pm, we arrive of the Friendship Center and find people from the hospital whom Disty knows. Disty and I leave the group and head in to find seats, and we are told by our Lao host—who is the head of the dance company, the usher, the bartender, and the greeter—to follow the sound up the stairs. We climb the steep stairs two flights and find a door behind which we can hear a lot of excitement. We open the door. Oops, that’s the dressing room. We head up another flight of stairs to a rooftop where we are looking out over all of Luang Prabang. Someone is lighting candles around the perimeter and long the top of the decorative cement railing. The full moon rises as we are standing there, a large mango-orange. All around us in the city and countryside below are lights, electric and flame, celebrating Boun Lai Heua Fai. I have never seen this view of Luang Prabang before. It is both intimate and exposed, high above the city on the fourth floor, perhaps the tallest building in Luang Prabang.

We are entertained by an hour of traditional music and dance. An older woman is the singer; the orchestra, three young men in their 20s and 30s; the dance troupe 5 women and three men, including our host. The performers are in traditional costume. The dances are short—welcoming guests, retelling classic Lao stories, nostalgia for home, and one that celebrates love, conjuring “gallantries exchanged under the moon.” We head into town and discover a world of lights. The Buddhist temples are ablaze—shining paper stars, candle-illuminated paper boats, lanterns, days and weeks of preparation. We are lucky to have arrived on this weekend. Around each corner, another surprise view—a blood-red tile rooftop glowing with moonlight, a secret candlelit room with a golden buddha, rows of paper lanterns like a cemetery of light, people everywhere taking pictures, young monks relighting candles blown out by the warm breeze. It is a feast for the eyes and the soul.

On the main street, we find our favorite crepe stand. I have a banana crepe, Disty chocolate and mango, and we head home for sleep.

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Monday, October 17, 2016
Boun Lai Heua Fai

Awoke early to roosters crowing along the river and sounds of motorbikes crossing the wooden bridge that spans the Nam Khan river. I have crossed that river on the back of Phet’s motorbike, and later today I am hoping we will go again to the arts village 15 minutes away, where there is handmade paper and a former-monk-turned-sculptor named Souk who carved for me a 18-inch high ebony statue of Nang Thorani. When Buddha was near to reaching enlightenment, Mara, “The Evil One,” brought an army to stop him. Buddha, seated in meditation, touched his finger to the earth and from there arose Thorani. She had been washing her hair with all of the water that had and would ever be poured in honor of Buddha. With one twist of her hands Thorani wrang out a torrent of water so powerful that it washed away The Evil One and his armies and allowed Buddha to continue on the Path.

Today is Disty’s first day at work at the hospital. We have breakfast and she takes a tuk-tuk from the guest house. I have made a few plans for the day, but I am focused on tomorrow’s meeting at the museum. First to the market to buy a local phone. In addition to meeting Phet in the afternoon, on my list are a visit to the temple President Obama visited when he was here last month, Wat Xieng Thong, to look at the mosaic stories on the walls. I also want to drop in at the TAEC Boutique in the middle of town to visit Ton and his wife Noi, and find a coffee shop, where I can cool off and write. My goal for the day is to discover something surprising.

As I was walking down the main street heading for Wat Xieng Thong or a coffee shop, whichever came first, I saw a sign for a photographic exhibit on meditation. It was in a temple, Wat Suvannakhili, and featured the photos of German photographer Hans Georg Berger. Inside the 20 x 40 foot room with gilt-decorated red walls, a dark green wooden planked ceiling with gold crown molding hung a gallery of photos that spoke to me: a parade of monks coming towards me through a forest path deep in walking meditation, an older monk, a young monk, a Buddhist nun, images that, as Hans Berger later told me, have meaning for the Lao monks and people. And, of course, there is a gift shop here; and behind the counter a young man who is cataloging and transcribing palm-leaf manuscripts containing the lost literature of 130 years of colonial rule and a disregard for the rich traditional literature that is, in this Wat, now being rediscovered. I would like everything in the shop, and I would like to meet the photographer. As a publisher I am drawn to the beauty of the books; as a human being I am drawn to the calm loving beauty in the faces, postures, and places of the subjects of the photos. If only we could learn from this. I do not meditate, but I long for inner calm and happiness. The young man gives me Mr. Berger’s phone number, and tells me he is just arriving today and that I should call him tomorrow morning to arrange for him to sign the books I hope to buy before I leave. This is my amazing moment of discovery. Where I have stumbled by fate and the hand of some unforeseen force, maybe Andy, to find a connection. When we open ourselves to these moments and allow them in, they appear.

I met up for a late lunch with Ton and Noi and their two beautiful children, Nang Fa, a 5-year old girl, and View (a 1 1/2 year old boy) in a noodle restaurant overlooking the Mekong. Noi is the manager of the TAEC Boutique shop, and we talk a little about the shop, but mostly about how they met and their aspirations. Ton has a car, unusual in Luang Prabang, and he and Nang Fa drive me back to the guesthouse to meet up with Disty. We arrange to all meet back at the boutique to watch the Boun Lai Heua Fai parade; each village sending a 20-30 foot long illuminated boat and accompanying reveler villagers down the main street and into the Mekong River for the fire boat’s hopefully long lucky journey.



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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

I arrived for my meeting at TAEC a bit before 11:30 and ask for Ton. The museum is located slightly off the mainstream of town, where the night market is held every night. It is located up a steep hill in a beautiful old colonial building. Up nine stone steps each a little different in height I arrive at the front desk on the right where there are two young women who greet me. I ask for Ton. We walk through the museum—past the first room with its general displays of Lao ethnic minorities and through a second room with displays of . The Special Exhibition, “Seeds of Culture” is on a room off to the left and we pass through a doorway into the gift store. As we pass through the 75 square foot store, we head into an open porch overlooking the city with a cafe with two tables for drinking tea and water, a seating area for relaxing, a discovery area with clothing and hats to try on, and a weaving loom. I sit at the table and wait for my meeting. Someone in a house below is playing a western folk tune on a guitar. There is a cooling breeze from two ceiling fans moving the animal mobiles above me. I sit at one of the tables, facing the exit from the gift shop and Ton brings me a glass of water.

Kristy Best, the sales and marketing manager, comes out to meet me. She is from California and has recently arrived to work with the museum. She suggests we go out to lunch with Co-Director Tara Gujadhur to talk about how I might help. We pick up Tara at her office and wander down to a noodle place a few blocks away.

The restaurant we go to is like many small family-run outdoor eateries in Laos. The food is prepared beside the tables in a small area of the storefront. There is no indication that the food is safe to eat, but I think Tara and Kristy eat here often, so I am not concerned. We sit at one of the three cement tables. I have put aside my vegetarian diet for the week, and I order Khaopiak, a noodle soup with chicken. Over lunch I learn about TAEC and its retail business.

TAEC has an approximately 75 square foot shop in the museum and a slightly smaller boutique space on the main street of town which sees the foot traffic of most visitors to Luang Prabang. The new boutique has been growing in sales and is now almost equivalent to the main store, although that may be seasonal. It is managed by Ton’s wife Noi, a very capable young woman who brings a high degree of customer care to her store. The boutique space is brighter and more modern in its design and layout. Both stores carry the same goods. These are mostly provided by village artisans. The few exceptions are a museum souvenir mug made in Thailand, a few books, and a museum t-shirt.

Tara and her team are much more sophisticated in their approach to business than I expected. I learn that they have recently started tracking KPIs (key performance indicators): visitors, percent of visitors making a purchase, revenue per visitor, revenue per purchase. The numbers are very impressive. One of the most interesting is the revenue per visitor, which at $30 is significantly higher than the $4.75 average for museums in the United States. They are dependent on earned revenue. There are few donors to the museum and no endowment to fall back on. They are thinking of ways to increase their earned revenue. For a few minutes I put on my business advisor hat and suggest they catalog all of their opportunities for increased revenue. They are thinking of doing a catalog, but they are challenged by a lack of reliable and inexpensive shipping to international customers. There are other opportunities we discuss, and they will go back and visit these with renewed strategic thinking. Their challenges are remarkably similar to those of many other museum stores, retail operations, and small businesses everywhere in the world. However, they exist in a poor country, isolated by being landlocked, with expensive shipping capacity only through DHL. They compete with others in the region to sell the handicrafts of Lao ethnic minorities, and they must charge a high price for the goods even before they add the high expenses of shipping.

I spend the day reviewing KPIs and understanding the structure of their website, so that I can help update the content. While I am sitting in the cafe area, I meet Alai Sayawed, the Gift Shop Manager. He is very busy, and I ask if I can interview him. He asks if we may do it tomorrow, and we agree to try for Wednesday.

At 4:30 I meet with Tara, Thongkhoun Soutthivilay, Kristy and we discuss the KPIs and possible ways that they can grow their retail business. They are in need of an ongoing way to try out ideas and increase their earned revenue. I suggest that a membership in the Museum Store Association (MSA) would be the perfect way for them to connect to ongoing ideas and advice, and I agree to donate this to the museum. The MSA’s newest member and first member from Laos will be Alai, and I will let him know on Wednesday. I am hopeful someday we will have Alai join us at a conference. Even better would be to have the conference here.

I head back to my guesthouse and meet to Disty for dinner. We take a tuk-tuk to a Western restaurant hidden off a rutted dirt road, Secret Pizza. There we see Tara and family and have dinner with doctors and nurses from the children’s hospital.


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Wednesday, October 19, 2016

I am excited to interview Alai. I spend the morning writing and checking out my video and sound equipment. I arrive at the museum about 11:00. I find that Alai has got to cover for lunch at the boutique, because Noi needed to come to the main store to pick up inventory. He will be back after lunch. During this time I take many pictures of the museum and gift shop to use in the video interview. At 1:00 he returns and we agree to do the interview at 2:00.

Alai is so charming. He is very mission driven and customer oriented. The interview goes well. Lots of work to do to put together the audio and video, but I am very excited about the results.

I need to leave by 2:45 for a 3:00 meeting with Hans Berger, the photographer whose photos are in the meditation photo exhibit. I had called him on Tuesday morning, and he agreed to meet me and sign books. I arrive a few minutes early, and I wait in the gallery under the ceiling fan. I’ve learned to cherish these places. I am sitting on a bench looking at a photo of a monk meditating. On the glass of the frame is reflected the garden outside. The monk is floating in the image of the reflection. I take a photo of the photo.

Hans Berger comes downstairs and greets me. We spend some time together and he tells me about his background, his photography, and the project he is involved with to digitize photographs taken over the last 120 years by Buddhist monks of Luang Prabang. The monks have been photographing each other, documenting monastic life. These photos have survived thanks to Phra Khamchan Virachitta Maha Thera, an abbott of Luang Prabang. Since 2006, more than 35,000 photographs have been treated and put into safe storage.

I went to the small gift shop and purchased a number of books, some for myself, some as gifts for my staff. Mr. Berger kindly signed these, and I walked away with a very special souvenir of a very special moment.