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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.
un am s e ing ortrait, c.
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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