A History of Villa Maly

The renowned French explorer Henri Mouhot described Luang Prabang as a delightful little town when he rst visited in 1861.1 The town is as captivating today, perhaps moreso for an architectural heritage bequeathed by the colonial French. household, His Royal Highness Khamtan Ounkham was born 3 March 1909, the son of His Royal Highness Sisaleumsak (1883-1969), who was the son of the king of Luang Prabang, Khamsouk Zakarinh (1840 1904) and his rst of seven wives, the Queen Pheng. Like many well-to-do Laotians of the day, Sisaleumsack dispatched his son to Hanoi, where the boy made his way through the colonial educational system from the age of 7 to 20. His success as a student won him an appointment to France where he continued his studies for three more years.3

Upon his return to Laos, Khamtan pursued a career in government, the inevitable The Ounkham Family, former royal residents of Villa Maly. choice for a well-educated young man of royal pedigree. He served as prefect of the provinces of Vientiane, Luang Villa Maly is a sterling example of this colonial Prabang and Sayabouri. In a surviving photo, legacy. Built in 19382 by a member of Luang we meet Khamtan as a Prabangs royal family, the dapper administrator whose house remained in the hands fashion cues, from bow tie to of a single family through sport jacket, he took from the seven decades, from an Europeans. era when the kingdom was ruled by the French as a protectorate, through the end of colonialism, to the nightmare of the Second Indochina War and the wider worlds awakening to the enchantment of Southeast Asias least known region. The homes head of The young prefect married his cousin, Princess Khampieng (born 23 Sept. 1911). She herself was schooled in the colonial system. At the age of 18, she was named an auxiliary instructor in the girls school Ounkhams Wedding Portrait, c. 1935 of Luang Prabang. She

devoted her life to national education and climbed through the ranks until she became principal of the rst class in 1962. It was Khampiengs mother, Princess Vanthatmaly who built the villa, perhaps as her own residence or as a gift to her daughter.4 Given the sites proximity to the palace, the area was developing as a royal Khamtan Ounkham enclave. On the site of a pagoda, the Princess raised a residence of two generous stories, sheltered by a pitched roof of terra-cotta tiles and fronted by a portico. In this house, Khamtan and Khampieng raised four children. In 1966, the eldest married a French woman in France. Another was a doctor whose fate is uncertain; a relative says he disappeared. A third child studied in Thailand, and a fourth became a pilot in the Royal Air Force and later moved to the United States.5 In the early 1960s, Laos moved to the center of the world stage in the Wests ght against communism. Indeed, many observers thought

Laos would be the principal battleground in a war that, it turned out, was largely identied with Vietnam. As the Americans assumed a presence throughout Laos, they moved into Laos and into the Maly villa. A cousin, who was the daughter of the Laotian ambassador to the United States from 1961 to 1966, said that Americans occupied her aunts house shortly before the ambassador returned from the States and moved into his own villa across the street. Khamtan died in a plane crash on 24 Feb. 1968 in the Sayabouri region. The princess continued to live on in the house until her own death on 29 Jan. 1994. In her nal years, her adopted children lived with her. By 2001, the one-time private residence was in operation as Villa Vannida. After the death Khampieng Ounkham of the proprietor that year, his widow continued to run the six-room guest house for a year, but then shut down. A caretaker lived in the house until its acquisition by the Apple Tree Group in 2007.

Travels in Siam, Cambodia, Laos and Annam Henri Mouhot, White Lotus, p. 361 Annam, Date provided by Vong, husband of Marie-Helen Machevin, GM of Villa Maly. 3 Information provided in typed French document by Machevin. 4 Email from Machevin, 17 April 2008 5 Interview on 11 April 2008 with Tchao Latsamee, a relative and neighbor of Villa Maly at Ban Tat Luang.
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