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History of Villa Maly

The renowned French explorer Henri Mouhot

described Luang Prabang as a “delightful littletown” when he first visited in 1861.1 The town

is as captivating today, perhaps moreso for

an architectural heritage bequeathed by the

colonial French.

Villa Maly is a sterling example of this colonial

legacy. Built in 1938 by a member of Luang

rabang’s royal family, the

house remained in the hands

of a single family through

seven decades, from an

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

world’s awakening to the

enchantment of SoutheastAsia’s least known region.

The home’s head of

household, His Royal Highness Khamtan

Ounkham was born 3 March 1909, the son ofHis Royal Highness Sisaleumsak (1883-1969),

who was the son of the king of Luang Prabang,

Khamsouk Zakarinh (1840 – 1904) and his first

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 colonialeducational 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.

Upon his return to Laos,

Khamtan pursued a career

in government, the inevitable

choice for a well-educated

young man of royal pedigree. He served as

prefect of the provinces of Vientiane, Luang

Prabang and Sayabouri. In a surviving photo,

we meet Khamtan as a

dapper administrator whose

fashion cues, from bow tie to

sport jacket, he took from the

Europeans.

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

of Luang Prabang. She

e un am ami y, ormer roya resi ents o i a a y.

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amtan un am

devoted her life to national education and

climbed through the ranks until she became

principal of the first class in 1962.

It was Khampieng’s

mother, Princess

Vanthatmaly who builtthe villa, perhaps as her

own residence or as a gift

to her daughter.4 Given

the site’s proximity to

the palace, the area was

developing as a royal

enclave. On the site of a

pagoda, the Princess raised a residence of twogenerous 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

rench 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

orce and later moved to the United States.5

In the early 1960s, Laos moved to the center

of the world stage in the West’s fight against

communism. Indeed, many observers thought

1 Trave s n S am, Cam o a, Laos an Annam, Henr Mou ot, W te Lotus, p. 3612 Date prov e y Vong, us an o Mar e-He en Mac ev n, GM o V a Ma y.3 Information provided in typed French document by Machevin.4 Email from Machevin, 17 April 20085 Interview on 11 April 2008 with Tchao Latsamee, a relative and neighbor of Villa Maly at Ban Tat Luang.

Laos would be the principal battleground in a

war that, it turned out, was largely identified

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 thatAmericans occupied her aunt’s house shortly

before the ambassador returned from the

States and moved into his own villa across the

s ree .

Khamtan died in a plane crash on 24 Feb. 1968

in the Sayabouri region. The princess continued

to live on in the houseuntil her own death on

29 Jan. 1994. In her

final years, her adopted

children lived with her.

By 2001, the one-time

private residence was

in operation as Villa

Vannida. After the death

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.

ampieng un am