导读：老挝人，无论其年龄大小，都是我见到过的最可爱的人。即使老挝是世界上最穷的国家之一，大多数老挝人不太关心钻营敛财之道，也不关心现代化的种种发展。

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.

我曾经想象着，我们在老挝南部旅行的几天里会坐着一艘漂亮而古朴的柚木船在湄公河上巡游100英里（约161公里），享受一段只有阅读和闭目休息的宁静时光。但我想错了，惊喜频频出现。再见！再见！再见！是我们不断听到的一个词，一群群小孩子，有些是两三人一起，有些是十几个一组，站在河堤上边朝我们挥手边练习着说他们刚学会的这个英语单词。也有些孩子会站在小小的雕花木船上。或者，碰到那么一回，是站在一棵大树的顶端。随后，他们一个接一个地全都跳进了身下的河里。

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.

如果在船上看书或者打盹，那就不能挥手回应那数百张微笑的小脸，如此一来，游客们会感觉辜负了那些老挝孩子们的好意。在旅行的最后一天，我的一位旅伴快乐地笑着给我看那本她原本准备在旅途中看完的书，那本400页的厚书她只看了开头的两页。

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.

虽然老挝这狭长的山地之国挤在那些引人注目的邻居们（泰国、越南和中国）当中，却精彩处处，那里孩子们的笑容只是其值得到访的理由之一。老挝人，无论其年龄大小，都是我见到过的最可爱的人。今天，老挝人看起来都满足于他们所拥有的一切，即使老挝是世界上最穷的国家之一，大多数老挝人不太关心钻营敛财之道，也不关心现代化的种种发展。就是这样一个国家，在这儿，大多数老挝妇女仍然穿着传统的筒裙和整洁而剪裁讲究的短上衣，同时，大多数老挝家庭仍住在传统的木头高脚屋里，在稻田里劳作。

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.

汽车相对少见；相比之下，自行车和水牛则到处都是，有钱人会选择小轮摩托车做交通工具。无论是出太阳还是下雨，人们手里总是拿着图案鲜亮的雨伞。从十一月到一月这段时间，老挝的乡村一片青翠，风景如画。不过，同样诱人的还有其首府琅勃拉邦，坐落于湄公河和南康河交汇处的这个城市，现在是联合国教科文组织指定的一处世界遗址，其法国殖民时代的风情得到了完好的保存，让人感觉恍如时光倒流。在琅勃拉邦的大街上，到处是法国人建造的漂亮的石头房屋，带有木质雕花阳台和露台，住宅区的街道旁是一排排有着大型尖顶山墙的传统老挝高脚木屋。