- 1 I have avoided using the term “Western customers” here, as international visitors to Laos are not h (...)
1The aroma of coffee emanates from dawn across central Luang Prabang. From around 6.30 am, bakeries and coffee shops open their doors. Over the course of the day, they will serve small numbers of foreign workers, smaller numbers of Lao people and a large number of international tourists, who flock to the premier tourist site in Laos. Customers will come for breakfast, some after seeing the monks process through the streets to collect their daily food offerings, a ritual that happens at dawn each morning and produces a particularly high concentration of monks passing through the historic centre. Unlike the monks, who receive vast amounts of sticky rice and packaged cookies from Thailand, coffee shop customers will consume coffee grown in Laos alongside croissants, baguettes, or pastries in the French style bakeries, and/or a choice of bagels in others. As the menus are in English or at least never entirely in Lao, such needs are met easily. Coffee is offered in drinking styles that are familiar to international customers including Espresso, Latte, Mocha, Flat White, and retails at prices not dissimilar to those of major cities in the global north. Other customers will come sporadically throughout the day to sit, often in air-conditioning, and eat fare based around bread and cake combined with coffee. They may be offered English language newspapers and are enthusiastic consumers of free high-speed Wi-Fi.1
2Customers usually pay at the point of order and enjoy their beverages seated in substantial wooden seating in these old houses. The interior décor is often based around a traditional wooden structure sometimes across two floors with a wider area for seating above. The upstairs areas are generally quieter, away from the sounds of ice blenders whirring to make smoothies and Frappuccino and the hum of imported coffee machines grinding fresh coffee. In the early morning while the weather is cool, customers usually cluster indoors, and this intensifies during the hotter months where the interior of such places is a welcome respite from the hot temperatures outside. Groups, even sometimes tour groups for whom prior reservations are possible, will peak over lunchtime. Bags of coffee are available to purchase as souvenirs to those who wish to take a piece of Laos home with them. For those not wishing to eat in, takeaway containers, which now emphasise their reduction in plastic, are also possible. The doors close finally after the sun goes down, typically late in the evening by Lao standards at around 9.00 pm.
- 2 Luang Prabang City is the capital of Luang Prabang province.
3These are old buildings, located in the historic centre of Luang Prabang and in the very centre of the area UNESCO has recognised since 1995 as a world heritage site. They are often built from timber in traditional Lao style but combine their traditional Lao features with European traditions. This is an area with French colonial buildings alongside traditional Buddhist temples, and it is this mixing of the two that justifies UNESCO’s certification of Luang Prabang as a place of intangible world heritage. Described over four decades ago as a city “whose surface beauty is only the outward evidence of an inner charm which has captivated numerous visitors” (Barber 1979: 10). In another description, “Luang Prabang continues to inspire and delight many visitors with its ‘nostalgic charm’ tinged with Western notions of romanticism, orientalism and Buddhism” (Berliner 2012: 772–773). The intersections of splendour and tradition combine in what Edensor (2001) terms a symbolic stage for particular forms of national storytelling, and one where claims to heritage (tangible and intangible) are made. In 2018, just over 4 million tourists visited Laos, generating revenue of over $ 800 million, with over 750,000 tourist arrivals to Luang Prabang province (Ministry of Information, Culture & Tourism 2018).2
4My argument here is that desires for the strange and familiar have transformed the centre of Luang Prabang into a space that celebrates this combination of European and Lao features in a way that values the former over the latter and refers to it as fusion. This fusion of styles, cultures and ideas is fundamental in considering what is prized as heritage in Luang Prabang. Taking Hannerz’s observation that culture is a process or a “traffic in meanings” (1980: 11), then convergence of traditions is a useful departure point for thinking through heritage and questions of what constitutes it, who performs it, for whom and why. Like the colonial architecture for which Luang Prabang is prized, coffee in Laos is a colonial product, and is marketed to consumers as something traditionally Lao. That argument can be extended one stage further, with the observation that much as coffee does not have a history in Laos beyond the colonial period, it was also not grown in northern Laos until very recently. However, as with discourses over heritage generally in Luang Prabang, detailed consideration of what constitutes heritage and power relations of whose interests and agenda it serves is not encouraged (Berliner 2012; Dearborn & Stallmeyer 2009). I suggest here that coffee, coffee culture and performance is an excellent case study through which to understand heritage in Luang Prabang given the priorities and agendas of heritage and coffee culture mirror each other. Here, I utilise Low’s (2014) notion of spatialised culture as a way to think through interpretations of space as a means to understand much about the social relations that produce heritage in Luang Prabang.
- 3 Research for this paper was conducted through a mixture of participant observation and interviews w (...)
5Staiff & Bushell (2013) argued for the crucial importance of fusion in understandings of food and heritage in Luang Prabang. They note that fusion in this context has specific connotations of power, with the European part of what is fused prized over and above the Lao. Lao fare, as in what much of the population would eat, is surprisingly difficult to find in central Luang Prabang. In fusion restaurants, produce presented as Lao is mediated through European experience and expectations, almost sanitised and made safe for its largely international consumers. I suggest here that this argument can be extended to coffee, a product presented as being Lao. This is a narrative that appeals to many tourists and allows them to experience the familiar sense of coffee and connect it with heritage, and Luang Prabang without encouragement to scrutinise just how Lao, or local that coffee is. Finding Lao coffee in Lao style in central Luang Prabang is not always easy and amongst my local interlocutors, most had never drunk coffee in the style it is served in the coffee houses of the city centre. This means that fusion, or fusing styles together, is a loaded process, which casts Lao traditional in a subservient role to the European colonial style. An emphasis on fusion idealises Luang Prabang and Laoness yet sanitises and excludes aspects of it at the same time. In sum, heritage space in Luang Prabang is loaded, selective and politicised. What is presented as coffee culture encompasses all these things too.3
6The most casual look at Luang Prabang reveals a strong and overt connection with heritage. Signs welcome visitors to “Luang Prabang, the World Heritage City”. This is true, yet the actual area of the city that is recognised as being of intangible world heritage is relatively small and is focused on the city’s historic core, based around a peninsula.4 The UNESCO certification of Luang Prabang as a World Heritage site since 1995, is justified on the grounds that:
is an outstanding example of the fusion of traditional architecture and Lao urban structures with those built by the European colonial authorities… Its unique, remarkably well-preserved townscape illustrates a key stage in the blending of these two distinct cultural traditions. (UNESCO 1995: 46, cited in Dearborn & Stallmeyer 2009: 252)
7The keywords here are fusion and blending and value a type of heritage that speaks of combining traditional styles. In other words, Luang Prabang’s value lies in its ability to put together and present Lao and European traditions. Such a statement also hides an important power imbalance. It glosses over hardship of that colonialism entirely and speaks instead to the importance of safeguarding, presenting, and promoting European traditions in how these interact with local traditions and products. This interaction, and interpretation of Lao traditions mediated through European means, is to be celebrated and prized. As Staiff & Bushell (2013) contend, this means that ideas of combination, connection of Lao/French are:
crucial to the imaginary of Luang Prabang as a distinctive place of “universal significance” and yet, in this process of making distinction, the primacy of “the West” remains pivotal (Staiff & Bushell 2013: 136).
8This analysis contrasts with the image of Luang Prabang as a place of serene and beautiful heritage and, according to its official tourism website, “a place where the traditional ways are respected” (Tourism Luang Prabang n-d). But as Hobsbawm argues, traditions are often a way to “establish continuity with a suitable historic past” (2012 [1983]: 1). Nor are traditions abstract and there are very human agendas behind what is valued and what is not. Scholars have long argued that particular versions of heritage are presented in Luang Prabang. These focus on beauty and nostalgia, without inviting scrutiny of the politics of that nostalgia (Berliner 2012; Wilcox 2019). Crucially, as Long & Sweet (2006) recognise, the celebration of the colonial period as part of UNESCO’s recognition of heritage in Luang Prabang, supports the ongoing emphasis on fusion as something of value. Nor is this only a matter for the physical architecture, with interlocutors in Luang Prabang keen to reflect official sentiment from the Lao authorities and UNESCO that heritage is “not just about the buildings”. Such power dynamics are visible in the city’s culinary scene.
9Dearborn & Stallmeyer (2009) argue that preservation agendas and tourist interest in central Luang Prabang has the effect of turning the area into more of a museum space than an actual living town. As Berliner (2012) notes, while heritage experts, elite Lao and expats may deplore the depopulation of the historic centre and the relocation of locals to the suburbs, the practice of heritage in Luang Prabang has had the unique effect of making visitors the focus of the heritage zone and the everyday business of life such as markets, and businesses patronised by locals pushed to the suburbs. Yet with rising property prices and buyers happy to pay what are very large sums of money in a very poor country to live in this area, there is little that is surprising here. The appeal of this area to foreigners and its depopulation by locals continues to lead to grumbling that central Luang Prabang has become more Falang (foreigner) Prabang than Luang Prabang. This is usually done by those who wish Luang Prabang to be preserved, frozen in time and bemoan its loss primarily as a living town in ways that they would wish and the discontented are most likely to be those with the strongest stake in specific discourses of heritage (Berliner 2012). This has created an idealised old town, but one with a relatively small permanent population, a large transient population of visitors and a large number of local people who travel to work in the historic centre.
10In addition, since Laos reintroduced a market economy and encouraged tourism since its economic reforms in the mid 1980s and as tourism is central to the Lao economy, this has produced businesses aiming at attracting specific types of customers in Luang Prabang. While some backpacker businesses remain, the city has orientated itself more to higher end tourists, with equivalent spending power. In general, the further up the peninsula one travels, the more expensive the city becomes. This area houses boutique hotels and restaurants and examples of heritage architecture are particularly pronounced. Of the two most prominent coffee places in Luang Prabang, “Joma” and “Saffron”, both have popular stores in this area with smaller outlets in a busier part of town lower down the peninsula, but still within the heritage area. There are also other bakeries and coffee outlets within the heritage area, notably a French bakery, “Le Banneton”, that receives excellent reviews for its French baked products and patisserie.5 Its exclusive location in the city’s most expensive area, at nearly the top of the peninsula, its menu and even its packaging emphasise its French sophistication with which Luang Prabang markets itself.
11Coffee was first introduced to Laos by the French colonisers in the early 1900s who recognised that the distinctive red soil and climate of the Boloven Plateau in the southern part of their newly acquired territory was conducive to growing coffee plants. This imported a tradition of coffee and made for an explicit link between the colonisers and coffee consumption. Following independence from France, coffee farming in Laos underwent significant upheaval during the Lao Civil War as the whole country descended into chaos. The Boloven Plateau was also subjected to heavy bombing and coffee production fell by well over half (High 2014; Sprenger 2018). In the years since, the Lao coffee industry has recovered and regenerated in the contemporary period. Laos hosted its first ever Coffee Festival in 2014.6 Coffee cultivation still remains focused on the south and this is where the headquarters of the Lao Coffee association is located. Thanks to a history of coffee growing in this area, overall poverty is lower in this region of Laos than in the country overall (Delang, Toro & Charlet-Phommachanh 2013).
12In recent years, coffee production has shifted away from its traditional heartland in the south and into Northern areas. While the Northern provinces were known for tea cultivation, the higher altitude allows for the more highly valued and financially lucrative Arabica coffee production. This allows for the possibility of coffee production as an alternative crop for opium. As Boonwatt (n-d) notes, coffee production has become intertwined with strategies of alternative development and towards legal rather than illicit agriculture. This is a strong illustration of what Sahlins (1999) and Vellinga (2006) have termed the inventiveness of tradition, in that a product with a pre-existing history is utilised in a new way. Today, according to one coffee company in Laos, across the country coffee farming forms at least part of the livelihood of about 20,000 families in Laos in over 250 villages.7 Many of these producers of whom are ethnic minorities and represent some of the poorest in an already very poor country. Laos is what the UN describe as a “Least Developed Country,” a status from which the country intends to graduate by 2025 (United Nations economic analysis & policy division 2018). As with those working in agriculture generally, coffee farmers generally are vulnerable to risks to their livelihoods including poor harvests and fluctuating prices. In February 2019, the state-owned Vientiane Times reported on a slump in prices for coffee and resulting additional poverty and hardship for producers.8
13Critics, foodie tourists and culinary experts are generally complimentary about the quality and taste of Lao coffee, with one food travel blog noting its robust flavours and its high caffeine content.9 The growing reputation of Lao coffee, presumably the Arabica variety, is a positive sign for the future of coffee in Laos, and the country now produces approximately 20,000 tonnes of coffee per year, making it the fifth largest export. Approximately one third of the Lao coffee yield is Arabica and the remainder lower quality Robusta coffee. According to Lao Mountain Coffee, an artisan roastery based in Vientiane: “the Arabica coffee beans from the [Boloven] plateau are known for their medium body and a combination of mild citrus and floral tones”.10 Such a statement speaks of a sophisticated, quality product whose appeal would only be truly appreciated by discerning consumers. This description fits the sort of tourist that Luang Prabang generally is keen to attract. Coffee, particularly Arabica coffee for export consumption by foreigners in Laos and to take home, is largely regarded as a win-win product, that is a product that benefits both farmers and delivers a luxury and familiar product.
14There are also several Lao coffee brands, including Dao and Sinouk Coffee, both of which sell coffee from the south of Laos and which are more popular with Lao consumers and retail at lower prices, usually without the café culture outlined above for consumption onsite.11 Fans of cheaper coffee in Laos can also buy Nescafe or similar instant blends for easy consumption, much to the disgust of some Western tourists who consider this a junk-quality drink, and even an insult in a country which grows its own coffee. One French tourist shared with me that she had been horrified to find sachets of Nescafe in her guesthouse: “here! And in a country that grows its own coffee!” Such products have few —if any— pretensions to be Lao but that is not the point. Instant coffee speaks to the cheap convenience of quick coffee with which instant coffee, however branded, is synonymous and, as Monson (1991) argues, has traded on this formula of quick flavour and convenience throughout its history. Lao friends often commented on the need for instant coffee for its caffeine content, especially when tired. Most had never tasted the sort of coffee served in the coffee houses in central Luang Prabang, where a single cup of coffee costs more than the cost of a basic Lao meal in a noodle shop or basic local eatery (see Figure 1).12
- 13 See the website of TAEC
15Much as coffee growing has a long tradition in Laos, so too does coffee drinking. Coffee offered for sale outside tourist venues in Laos is roasted and prepared in a different way and produces a very thick, almost viscose drink. Lao coffee is heated and brewed traditionally in a bag, through which it is then filtered into drinking utensils. Similar to Vietnamese coffee in flavour, this is served with sweetened condensed milk and may be offered hot or over ice. It is still possible to find coffee prepared and served in this manner in Luang Prabang in markets and places frequented by Lao customers. It is also possible in the few places where tourists are outwardly encouraged to try a typically Lao drink, such as the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre (TAEC) in Luang Prabang, which showcases traditional cultures of Laos and is environment such as museum space in which enquiry into Lao culture and society is encouraged.13 It is not however a mainstay of the coffee houses aiming to attract foreign customers in Laos. When I asked why it so unusual to be offered coffee as Lao people drink it in central Luang Prabang a Lao friend told me: “foreigners drink coffee differently. Not like how we drink it”. Western coffee drinking habits of cappuccino or latte were alien to many of them, and even my own habit of drinking coffee strong, black without sugar was often commented on with concern for my health and dismissed by Lao friends as “not delicious: too bitter!” One of the coffee houses in Luang Prabang does offer what it terms a Signature Lao Iced Coffee, which is one of the most expensive drinks on their menu. Yet what makes this particularly “Lao,” especially when it offered under a heading that offers customers the option of decaffeinated coffee, as well as whole milk, low-fat or soy, is left unexplained. But as an example of an imported tradition of a Lao product served in a foreign style to mostly non-Lao customers, it works well.
Figure 1. Joma’s complete coffee menu.
Joma’s complete coffee menu caters to international visitors and offers different types of milk according to customer preference.
© Marie-Pierre Lissoir 2020
16Joma Bakery and Café has operated in Luang Prabang since 1999 and has branches both in Vientiane and Luang Prabang, as well as others in Vietnam and Cambodia. As with many of Luang Prabang’s other coffee businesses, it was started by a foreigner and describes itself on its website as “a little slice of North American café culture transplanted into Southeast Asia”.14 The two in Luang Prabang are both located in traditional buildings within a short distance from each other inside the UNESCO Heritage zone. Joma’s menu is entirely in English and one usually orders in the same language (see Figure 2). My attempts to do this in Lao met with mixed success, and one Lao speaking expatriate told me that she felt it pretentious to try ordering such obviously foreign food items such as Cappuccino and croissant in Lao and very few visitors to Laos speak any Lao. Joma serves only Western style food and coffee. Those seeking gluten free food, decaffeinated coffee, syrup, or non-dairy milks are also well catered for here (see Figure 3). Some of the Western style dishes are very unfamiliar to the Lao staff. A member of Joma staff was disbelieving when I told her that what is offered as an “egger bagel” is not an item with which many foreigners would be familiar. I suggested that this was probably conceived of as a word that is easy to say and thus acts as an umbrella term for a range of egg-based products, rather like branding. To her, this was typical foreign fare, consumed by customers of indeterminate nationalities, with this understood as the sort of food they want.
Figure 2. Joma offers a pumpkin spiced latte
© Marie-Pierre Lissoir 2020
Figure 3. Joma’s menu
© Marie-Pierre Lissoir 2020
17In Joma as elsewhere, customers pay on ordering at the counter and receive a receipt with the all-important Wi-Fi code. They receive their order directly to their tables. In contrast to most food and drink establishments, at several of the coffee houses customers order and pay at the counter, and Joma has notices on the tables to remind customers to do this. One can even obtain loyalty points via the Joma app, which rewards customers with a free drink after the acquisition of 200 points or around ten drink orders. The staff are mostly young, with branded T-shirts over jeans and matching Joma aprons, not dissimilar to the uniforms worn by workers in Starbucks, Costa Coffee, or any similar chain. As Cameron (2018) notes, the overall message here is one of ambience, efficient interaction, in which the customer can obtain something special.
18In a recent TripAdvisor review, a customer of one of Joma’s cafes in Luang Prabang advised other potential customers that “if you become nostalgic for a lush latte or delicious cake, then this is THE place to come!”15 A review of another coffee house in Luang Prabang that operates along similar lines compliments the falafel wrap, breakfast bagels, great scenic location, and excellent service. These comments, clearly written by visitors to Luang Prabang for an audience of other visitors, tells us a considerable amount about who the target customers are and that Joma and the like are providing what those customers appear to want: coffee served in ways with which they are familiar, deli home-style food while away, good hygiene standards and with efficient service. This latter point is important, because visitors to and some foreign residents of Luang Prabang complain vociferously of Lao inefficiency and ineptness. Such practices are neither encouraged nor wanted at these establishments. Like the manner in which coffee is served, familiar rituals of home standards of service play a significant role in connecting consumers and product, even if they pay in unfamiliar currency.
19Many tourists complain at what they pay, arguing that as a poor country, coffee should be cheap. While local food and drink in Luang Prabang is cheaper, establishments targeting tourists are the exception. Non-Lao food, which may use imported ingredients may even share parity with costs in the visitor’s country of origin. The consumption of fresh milk is not part of a traditional Lao diet. For travellers, Laos is more expensive than Thailand and Vietnam. This is particularly so in Luang Prabang, where prices are the highest in the country. Some German tourists shared with me that they felt Luang Prabang, itself an upmarket tourist destination in a poor country, did not match their ideas of what a poor, and a communist country, would look like. But this is one of the consequences of changing uses of space in Laos. Private businesses are now possible since Laos adopted a market rather than centrally planned economy in the last three decades, and coffee houses such as Joma will charge whatever customers are willing to pay. These may be public space in the sense that anyone can actually walk through the door, but few local people do.
20An obvious reason for that is pricing, which renders the spaces too expensive for most Lao. Several interlocutors told me about being invited to these coffee houses by foreign friends but were more enthusiastic about the cakes on offer than the coffee. As Strigler (2019) notes, the ability to purchase imported food items is demonstrative of a new Lao middle class having greater purchasing power and is pronounced with commodities that have some overlap with local dietary norms. I suggest here that the style of coffee drinking is sufficiently different for it not to be attractive to many local consumers even if they can afford it. Overall, this means that tourists are unlikely to meet Lao customers in the coffee houses and bakeries of Luang Prabang. To meet locals outside of a service context, one must go elsewhere. At stalls who serve coffee around the morning market, where customers perch on stools around stalls, one can encounter Lao customers. Often these are drivers hoping to be hired by tourists for excursions, and is in contrast with establishments such as Joma, where drivers linger around the entrances waiting for customers to emerge. Openly bidding for customers inside places such as Joma, would be regarded as unwelcome by customers, but starting a conversation at a stall is commonplace. These stalls are welcoming to the few foreign customers who stop but their hours are often limited, and the stalls may appear dirty to foreign tastes. At one located next to a busy junction, the owner was happy to tell me that very few falang (foreigner) stopped to drink there, despite her having a menu in English. She considered that other places were more for foreigners and that her stall was more of a local space. The stall clearly has none of the luxury trappings of Joma but it also has none of Joma’s prices. A cup of coffee at such a stall costs around a quarter of the price of the more upmarket coffee shops. When I ordered a cup of traditional coffee it was served with a chaser of tea and I could help myself to Chinese style doughnuts from a communal plate on offer on the tables. I would then pay at the end for my coffee and any doughnuts consumed. I noted the washing up of dirty crockery happening right behind the stall, those working there using their phones in quiet moments, and the ambience of the space heightened by the presence of a cat sleeping on one of the tables. Some travellers might find this a more authentic travel experience (MacCannell 1976), but also consider its hygiene standards off-putting.
21Coffee is an activity in which significant sums of money are exchanged. Much as in the countries from which many visitors to Luang Prabang originate, coffee consumption at least in coffee shops is largely a middle-class pursuit (Cameron 2018; Yodanis 2006) and contrasts significantly with this coffee stall, even if it is arguably the sort of authentic experience many tourists seek out (MacCannell 1976) and have the means and capital to do so although may choose otherwise (Bauman 1996). These more expensive coffee houses are the same ones who often promote their ethical credentials particularly prominently, with one house having entire wall displays about coffee as a product that makes a meaningful difference to people in poverty often referred to as hill tribe farmers. Saffron coffee, in central Luang Prabang and directed by a foreigner, invites customers to sponsor trees in a bid to include them in the “Saffron Story” and to consider their coffee consumption as making a difference in the livelihoods of former opium farmers now growing a high-quality crop.16 This is clever marketing and taps into narratives of ethical and buying fair trade coffee that are familiar to many Western consumers from their home countries. As West (2012) demonstrates, these discourses are very effective in allowing consumers to construct and participate in narratives about the producers of their drinks, which often feature strong sentiments about coffee growers living in poverty and how one’s consumption choices can make a difference. This again, brings the other closer to the tourist, mediated through the affected, sanitised atmosphere of the coffee house. One can experience Lao coffee, but with little interaction with Lao people.
22Visitors to Luang Prabang are encouraged to participate and consume a fusion that privileges the European over the Lao in substance and form. This is in its buildings (Lao-European): a tangible blend of architectural style but also in its cuisine. Central Luang Prabang houses a plethora of food and drink options. At the time of writing, the top 10 rated restaurants according to TripAdvisor offer Korean food, pizza, French food, and Italian fare. While some of these places may also serve Lao food, very few specifically Lao establishments make the top ratings. Even when Lao food restaurants exist, it is far more likely to find Lao working rather than dining in them. This raises a question about why, in what is often expressed by Lao people to be the centre of Lao culture, is it so difficult to obtain Lao food, and similarly, genuine Lao style coffee? Surely, the answer is that this is not promoted because it does not fit wider discourses of heritage in Luang Prabang. Instead, Luang Prabang represents a symbolic stage (Edensor 2001) for a particular version of heritage culture that pushes aside the Lao in favour of the European. With coffee, the connection between coffee and heritage amongst visitors is officially unsaid but made clear. A recent visitor to one of Joma’s outlets summed up their experience with: “Oh my god: the French heritage comes through in these bake shops”.17
23Fusion manifests in what Staiff & Bushell term a “cuisine hierarchy” (2013: 138) which pushes Lao culinary practices to the periphery of the prized heritage zone in an apparently authentic Lao space. These sentiments of promoting significant European heritage as part of the heritage scape of Luang Prabang create an ambivalence about what is valued, by whom and for what. The consequence of this culinary landscape is that once again European food, or food with European influences, are promoted but Lao fare is pushed mostly to the periphery. Staiff & Bushell (2013) recognise, rightly, that there are noodle shops in central Luang Prabang, yet these are frequented mostly by Asian tourists, or by Western tourists seeking apparently authentic experiences but for most visitors' access to this is limited. During the time that I lived within the heritage zone in Luang Prabang, I usually bought breakfast from the food stalls in the morning market and was asked regularly by tourists to move out of a photo they wished to take. My breakfast was novel enough to merit a photo but the presence of a white person in the same shot would spoil the effect. Very few of these tourists would buy from these same vendors, and indeed why should they? They are not encouraged to source genuine Lao fare from a market, particularly when there is nowhere to sit and eat it. This is food to take away, to eat at home and/or share with others. Nor do the stall holders usually speak English. Lao food is for constructions of Orientalism, not genuine consumption for the majority of visitors. Such places are, however, excellent for opportunities to see otherness, or as Qian (2014) and Goffman (1959) argue, for presenting the self against a background of the other and to encounter such spaces with the privilege of tourism (Bauman 1996).
24Culinary experiences can become a medium for armchair travel mediated through a safety net of the familiar. Where Lao food does appear on a menu in Luang Prabang, it requires extensive explanation about its ingredients and techniques to make it comprehensible to its would-be consumers. This is an almost perfect reflection of heritage discourse generally in Luang Prabang: the blending of cultural styles that attracts celebration, but the more exotic ones require an explanation and mediation in a way that is rendered comprehensible to international consumers. This also entails using fewer key Lao ingredients such as Lao fish sauce (paa-daek) or a minimum of chillies. In coffee terms, this explains the use of fresh rather than condensed milk. More generally, it also means that what is presented as heritage in Luang Prabang is somewhat sanitised for foreign tastes and that Luang Prabang is a stylised picture and one that is largely driven by people who are themselves atypical of the local population (Berliner 2012; Dearborn & Stallmeyer 2009). Some of Luang Prabang’s cafes and restaurants contribute to this sense of familiarity by playing easy listening music to customers, or of offering apparently traditional music for customers to enjoy while eating but in the case of the latter, usually with explanation to mediate between the familiar and strange for visitors. As Smith & Waterton (2012) note, there is often a significant disconnect between the meaning of heritage and its consequences on the ground. Here, local people are not particularly involved in the preservation of heritage on their own initiative. In the words of one of my interlocutors, after apologising for knowing little about UNESCO, he suggested that people come to Luang Prabang “because they want to see nature and old stuff” and must be preserved so that people will continue to come. As an interpretation of heritage discourses, this is as vague as it is broad, but speaks to heritage as something that comes from above, rather than the local population, and seeks to attract visitors who look for this as one of its primary aims, transforming space towards that agenda in the process. He had little concept of being a stakeholder in that heritage.
25Like many other drivers of heritage in Luang Prabang, coffee drinking in the heritage zone is largely the remit of foreigners or foreign owned businesses selling to other foreigners. Similarly, this also means that coffee houses contribute to the production of spaces that are implicitly inaccessible to the local population. This happens through the adoption of foreign conventions in both beverage and style of service and side-lining local practices that do not fit this narrative. Practically all the bakeries and coffee houses in Luang Prabang emphasise that they sell Lao coffee but being Lao does not mean coffee grown in the vicinity of Luang Prabang. But as with heritage discourse generally, arguably this detail does not really matter. Its connection with the colonial allows for a connection that is celebrated as part of heritage, and nobody, tourists, and locals, is encouraged to give that much scrutiny. Coffee is still a Lao product being marketed and consumed in Laos, even if it is a product that is drunk in a style that is very much an imported tradition, and a doubly imported one at that —into Laos by the colonising French and then from South to Northern Laos.
26This new hybrid tradition of coffee from the north and south also makes an appearance in the heritage zone. One new fashionable coffee house, Formula B, in central Luang Prabang and also located in an old building offers what they term a “North-South Coffee”.18 This is a double shot of Espresso coffee grown in Northern Laos and combined with one from the south. That this is an entirely new invention made of combining two things, one of which is a very recent production, is a good example of an invented tradition of an invented tradition. So too is a Lao latte, an offering in some coffee houses, which is not a Lao coffee but made here with condensed milk. That this product is a blend of traditions is unimportant. That is what heritage in Luang Prabang is about. Coffee is a colonial gift to Laos; coffee in Northern Laos a government innovation, which extends an already imported tradition. An Espresso is an entirely foreign way to drink coffee, a double Espresso combining two different types of Lao coffee even more so. It is also an example of how this does not matter in relation to the overall picture. This is surely what tourists wish to experience in Luang Prabang: the fabled Shangri-La city of idealised nostalgia; the strange made beautiful, generally safe, and accessible.
27Coffee in central Luang Prabang fuses the familiar and the strange, much as discourses of heritage in the city do the same. This is apparent in its buildings, but also in food or coffee-scapes. Luang Prabang is the perfect blend of the exotic but also the familiar. This terminology of what I have called unequal fusion also conceals a significant power imbalance: the European aspects are generally prized as part of heritage discourse. The Lao aspects are more likely to be pushed to the periphery. Luang Prabang is beautiful, yet unequal. Like its architecture, blending the traditional with the European, this adds up to a heady mixture of exotic difference, but not different enough to be unwelcoming or off putting. Its coffee houses are officially open to all, yet in reality are closed to the majority partly on the grounds of price and drinking style. This exclusivity demonstrates that they are open, yet also closed; apparently inclusive, yet also selective. In Bauman’s (1996) terms, they are examples of spaces that are experienced in very different ways. The doing of coffee drinking in Luang Prabang also renders further contradictions visible. Coffee is now local, yet also foreign. Like much of the stunning architecture in Luang Prabang itself, it would not exist without the efforts of French colonisers. Coffee in Laos, like heritage, has a long history of external influence that mediates coffee consumption, decides what is important, and packages it for the consumers who have sufficient capital to pay the price it commands. This is marketed as a Lao product yet is presented in ways that are familiar to many consumers and entirely unfamiliar to most Lao people. In the historic buildings of central Luang Prabang, it is this blending of tradition that is prized, and visitors can experience a caffeinated and liquid form of the city’s presentation. I have sought to argue here that Luang Prabang’s tourism focused coffee houses act as a bridge between the familiar coffee places of those of where tourists come from yet present a product with which tourists are unfamiliar. Lao coffee, especially outside Laos, is still a niche product. Coffee as presented in Luang Prabang is familiar, special yet strange. I noted that it is a doubly imported tradition, both to Laos from the colonisers, and then to Northern Laos.
28Thinking about coffee means thinking about a spatialised food geography in Luang Prabang. It is no accident that the strongest claims to Lao coffee are done in some of Luang Prabang’s oldest buildings and their narratives of coffee and coffee culture emphasise the same values as prevailing heritage discourse. I have argued here that those claims mirror discourses of fusion in Luang Prabang heritage generally, which are themselves problematic and paradoxical. It is in the blending of styles and traditions that Luang Prabang gains what is deemed sophistication and elegance and has made its historic centre into what it is today. Here too, we can see cuisine and coffee practices. Once these things are unpicked, it is unsurprising that questions emerge such as where Lao food culture and cuisine is actually located in this apparent centre of Lao culture, whether an Americano really is part of Lao culture anyway, who performs heritage in this way, and for whom? It is startling how far this has transformed space in central Luang Prabang. But for consumers unconcerned by this, coffee houses act as a bridge between the familiar and the exotic in space and time, fuelling fantasies of exoticism in Luang Prabang while allowing caffeinated encounters in both travel, heritage, and nominally socialist spaces.
I would like to thank the Bielefeld Young Research Fund who provided a generous award for the fieldwork for this project. Also, thanks to Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh, Marie-Pierre Lissoir, Sonemany Nigole, Amanda Silberling, Inka Stock, the editors, and four anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice and suggestions.
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