Macchiato of Savannakhet

Shock.

That was what I felt the first time I looked up at the upper façade of this coffee shop and restaurant. Its name was emblazoned boldly across the front, striking from the main road. The signboard, perhaps made of stainless steel, gleamed in silver. The sunlight reflecting off it was bright enough to irritate your eyes.

The veranda of Macchiato De Coffee was dominated by dark tones, with glass windows scattered here and there. You could almost see the entire interior simply by standing on the terrace. On the right stood two classic British-style public telephone boxes, painted a vivid red and placed almost side by side. The parking area was remarkably spacious for a café.

My memory began to turn backwards. Several years earlier, when I travelled frequently between Vietnam and Thailand overland.

In my recollection, this coffee shop did not exist. Macchiato De Coffee had not yet come into being. There were only dusty roads, sluggish development, chaotic immigration posts, and stacks of passports from travellers crossing between Laos and Vietnam, stuffed with modest bribes slipped between their pages.

Throughout the town, noodle stalls, cheap bars and restaurants, and billiard halls were easy to find. All of that remains vivid in my memory, and not a single fragment of it contains a Western-themed coffee shop like Macchiato De Coffee.

Honestly, my memories of Savannakhet are only two.

First, the aridity that appeared almost deceitful under the blazing sun as it twisted together with the dust of the streets. Walking at midday in this town felt like military training — undoubtedly tedious for someone who despises militarism as much as I do. There were no shade trees, only cars passing back and forth, neglected crossroads, and worn-out cash machines.

Yet sometimes the fierce heat of Savannakhet, whose sting could melt a broken heart, reminded me of the islands on the northern peninsula of Sulawesi. A place where fish are laid out to dry, and fishermen sleep soundly beneath banyan trees, their snores overlapping, while others play dominoes in bursts of laughter. Those who come from concrete jungles, obsessed with work, would call such scenes unproductive and lazy.

That was why, in those days in Savannakhet, I so enjoyed an afternoon nap after lunch. Briefly affirming Paul Lafargue.

The second memory that cannot be erased concerns the small bars scattered across various corners of town. Such places were escapist spaces for pale-skinned migrants and those merely pausing in Savannakhet. A kind of temporal bus stop where beer drinkers encountered the characteristic generosity of Laos.

Beerlao, the national beer, was easy to find everywhere, sold at prices cheaper than in the capital, Vientiane. As a complement, peanuts were provided for those who could not stomach alcohol without chewing on something. I, of course, paired it with kretek cigarettes — companions along the road.

I first set foot in Savannakhet at the end of 2013.

In mid-November that year, I crossed over from Mukdahan, Thailand, with two companions. The three of us were hired hands contracted for three weeks by a research institute and tasked with observing and gathering information. Minor ivory-tower investigators paid a weekly sum whose total income was perhaps worse than the wages of sex workers in Bangkok’s red-light districts.

It was an operation to collect money cloaked in academic justification, even though we ourselves never knew how useful the research would be. I was part of an amateur team assigned to research the activities of communities living across national borders.

At the time, the ASEAN Economic Community was a hot topic in Thailand and major university towns such as Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Khon Kaen. According to rumours, then, considerable funds were available at some of Thailand’s top universities. These funds could only be accessed through research proposals, convincing donors that the work would contribute to the formation of a consumer society in Southeast Asia.

You did not have to be the cleverest in class. It was enough to be the most cunning, agile, and, of course, to understand how to flatter professors properly. Most importantly, you had to know how to pretend to understand something that was not yet entirely clear in your own mind. If everything went smoothly, you could extend your hand for a small share.

But never do this alone. There had to be at least one name to serve as collateral — assurance that the money spent could be transformed into a written report. Certainly not your own name, especially if you were an amateur researcher not yet thirty.

By a twist of fate, my background as a village boy from a border area, along with a modest CV, brought me into the fold.

This, although my Lao language skills were nonexistent, and my Thai communication skills were very poor. I still frequently mispronounced tonal inflexions — mistakes that caused not only confusion but misunderstanding. My vocabulary was limited to simple exchanges, not complex two-way dialogues. I could order food, but struggled to follow discussions about history or politics.

These weaknesses meant I had to accept being a second-hand recipient of information after my two partners from Thailand and Laos.

From the beginning of the research, each of us quietly harboured questions and suspicions about who was being paid more. Such questions surfaced with polite smiles whenever we accidentally mentioned our fees. Yet in the name of ethics and a dozen unimportant justifications, none of us dared confront one another about the figures. Unwittingly, we were model employees competing to keep company secrets.

The first companion, Lambai Souvanlorpaying from Luang Prabang, admitted he had never set foot in Savannakhet, despite being Lao. The thin-haired man, whose head appeared almost bald, ironically knew little about the place. Throughout nearly three weeks of research, Lambai talked endlessly about how Luang Prabang was far more beautiful than Vientiane or Savannakhet.

He compared Savannakhet’s dryness to the rivers, waterfalls, and vibrant night lights of his hometown. He constantly complained about food prices and poor hotel service. What irritated me most was his relentless disparagement of Savannakhet while drinking beer. It spoiled the atmosphere and once nearly provoked a quarrel with another patron.

I suspect this stemmed from the strong territorial pride rooted in Lao history. The country was a unilateral French unification project combining three major kingdoms: Luang Prabang, Vientiane, and Champasak — though previously united under the Lan Xang dynasty before fragmenting. Luang Prabang had once fallen under Burmese rule, while Champasak in the south had been controlled by Siam.

My second companion, Gwisanee Nata, was a woman from Mahasarakham in northeastern Thailand. The region, known as Isaan, speaks a dialect closer to Lao. Rather than acting as a researcher, Gwisanee functioned as our accountant and hostel matron. She arranged accommodation, ensured we ate well at reasonable prices, and saw that we could enjoy beer in moderation at night.

Historically, her region had served as an entry point for Lao and Vietnamese communist guerrillas during Thailand’s insurgency period. Arms and financial support from China, Vietnam, and Laos flowed through Isaan, including Mukdahan, which borders Savannakhet.

Vietnamese support cannot be separated from the fact that this region had ties to Ho Chi Minh, born Nguyen Sinh Cung. In The Soviet Union in Asia (1973), Geoffrey Jukes noted that the Vietnamese revolutionary once resided in Isaan while evading French pursuit, staying in Nakhon Phanom near Savannakhet.

Savannakhet borders Quang Tri and once served as a satellite base for Vietcong guerrillas. Even today, many Vietnamese immigrants reside here as Lao citizens. Several of our interviewees were former combatants in Vietnam’s war of unification.

Today, Vietnamese people in Savannakhet form one of the majority ethnic groups. They are easy to spot — sitting casually on pavements in the morning, drinking coffee, smoking, and chatting in Vietnamese.

The only land access to Savannakhet from Siam is via the Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge II spanning the Mekong River. After an eleven-hour bus journey from Bangkok’s Mo Chit terminal to Mukdahan, travellers transfer to a border bus. Crossings run from 7:15 in the morning until 9 at night, every forty-five minutes. Immigration clearance on both sides takes less than half an hour.

Macchiato De Coffee appears almost immediately after entering Savannakhet. Look to the left; its enormous signboard stands out.

Savannakhet is both a city and a province. According to Khamyad Rasdavong in The History of Buddhism in Laos (2006), the name literally means “City of Heaven”, referring to the fertility of its soil. Agriculture was once a blessing, and farming a source of pride.

Located along the Mekong, residents long relied on agriculture and the river’s abundant fish.

In the early years of the Lao Revolution, as noted by Vattana Pholsena (2006), agricultural products were exported to Quang Tri, while some were quietly smuggled to Mukdahan at low prices. Many smugglers failed to calculate production and labour costs against protective domestic markets.

Savannakhet’s residents witnessed Laos struggling towards self-reliance: calls for austerity, widespread poverty due to political and economic miscalculations, and limited infrastructure in education and health. International embargoes, Thai blockades driven by ideological sentiment, reduced Vietnamese support, and Chinese antipathy shaped by the Sino-Soviet split all contributed to Laos opening up in the early 1990s. Investment followed gradually after the Asian financial crisis. As Wayne Arnold wrote in The New York Times (2002), multinational mining companies were allowed in to extract resources.

Savannakhet was among the first regions opened to foreign investors, with Australia granted concessions to mine gold in the Sepone District.

After mining began in the early 2000s, money and mercury flowed in, transforming farmers into labourers. Sepone became the pride of Savannakhet, the largest gold and copper mine in Laos, now fully owned by MMG, a joint Australian–Chinese venture.

Yet gold is not what lingers most in local memory.

Savannakhet’s greatest pride is Kaysone Phomvihane. A native son who served as prime minister and later president after the civil war, he founded the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Born Nguyen Cai Song to Vietnamese immigrant parents, he later studied law in Hanoi but embraced Marxism and joined the Pathet Lao movement to liberate Laos. Backed by the Vietnamese communists, the Pathet Lao triumphed in 1975, establishing the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and shifting the capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.

Phomvihane later became president in 1991, serving until he died in 1992. Among his legacies were the creation of Sekong Province to honour ethnic minority contributions and the demarcation of the Laos–Vietnam border — a process lasting three decades.

Today, a museum in Vientiane honours him.

Coffee shops like Macchiato De Coffee are monuments of another kind. They reveal how a rural periphery once sustained by agriculture has transformed into a service town whose outskirts are driven by gold and copper extraction.

Macchiato De Coffee understands that nearby stands the Thai consulate — a primary destination for visa seekers, mostly European migrants who would never linger in Savannakhet were it not for expiring stays in northeastern Siam. Savannakhet offers a logical, affordable visa option.

Air conditioning, European-style coffee and snacks, and English-speaking staff signal that Macchiato De Coffee operates at a different level.

When the sun’s heat merges with visa anxieties, this café becomes the obvious refuge.

Upon entering Macchiato De Coffee, I realised I was looking at Savannakhet’s face of progress — a new visage nearly sweeping away its arid past.

Ordering a cup of coffee here was a conscious effort to update my memory of this place. Savannakhet is no longer merely dusty Sepone, exploited by foreign interests. The city now embraces European arrivals, turning them into sources of income.

Macchiato De Coffee is like colourful balloons and red ornaments hanging from a house’s veranda — a sign and invitation to stop by during festivities. It does not lament Laos’s perceived backwardness in the eyes of Thailand and Vietnam.

Though the coffee disappointed, I chose to smile and drink it. I was witnessing adaptation — the act of adjusting so as not merely to watch and be displaced. The macchiato I sipped was like a mischievous peck on the cheek after leaving a brothel at dawn. Macchiato De Coffee resembles a geisha laughing at those who underestimate Savannakhet. Because Savannakhet knows well: tomorrow or the next day, we will return to its embrace.

However parched its skin, pale-faced expatriates and visa hunters will keep coming to possess Savannakhet.