Time floats by in Nong Khai, gently and irrevocably like the broad stately Mekong alongside. There's a lot of river and a lot of time at this laid back northeastern town and maybe that's why its history has got mislaid, like the old temple chedi that slipped into the river and now sits drowned in midstream, its spire just visible in the dry season.

Nong Khai is old. It's not that I have any definite proof of it, it's not that it's littered with ancient monuments like Sukhothai or Sri Satchanalai - it just seems that way. It seems well used to itself and at ease with the world, like a well-worn shoe or an old cart. There are, true enough, around a dozen kilometres to the south, the ruins of an ancient temple, Wat Bang Puan, suspected of being well over a millennium old, but in town things are just mellow: sleepy wooden house neighbourhoods along the river bank, elegant Indochinese colonial shophouses on the none-too-busy main street, bikes and carts and trishaws trundling about, a general air of nonchalance.

It's not that I didn't try to find out, to discover the date of founding or even a more indeterminate inkling of its age - I did, but historical scholarship was in short supply. What everybody does know, and loves to tell you, is the tale of the three Buddha images. Once upon a time, perhaps in the days when the Lao were as great as the Siamese, perhaps when the Lao ruled all of today's Laos and today's Isaan, when the Lao used to war with the Siamese and carry off their most prized Buddha images, and vice versa, three solid gold Buddhas were rafted from Vientiane down the Mekong and they were named after the three daughters of the great Lao ruler King Setthathirat: Princesses Sai, Souk and Seum.

Phra Seum eventually made it all the way to Bangkok, but Phra Souk fell in the river and sank to the bottom, while Phra Sai was brought to Nong Khai and to this day is the city's most revered image, seated high on a great multi-tiered altar within cavernous Wat Pho Chai, the town's principal temple.

Temples are the traditional repository of learning in Thailand, so perhaps Wat Pho Chai was the place to inquire? Perhaps there were murals? I made my way there, to a point where the busy main street lapses into a neighbourhood of frolicking kids and scratching dogs, and sure enough its walls spoke: stirring scenes of battle on elephant back, evocations of the journey of the Buddha images, caught midriver in a mighty storm, Phra Souk sinking, glug-glug-glug, bold portraits of King Taksin and King Rama I.

My own historical knowledge came to the rescue here: it was in the late 18th and early 19th century that newly resurgent Siam under these two monarchs took Isaan from the Lao rulers and eventually sacked their capital, Vientiane. So these three prized Buddhas were war booty from the subjugation of Laos, symbolic of the time when Isaan and its ethnic Lao inhabitants became subjects of the Thai kings, with weakened Laos soon to fall prey to the French.

But what about before all that, long before the Chakri dynasty: from which mists of time did Nong Khai emerge? The walls only spoke the ancient myth of the Ramakien, swirling its monsters, heroes and villains all over the front wall; on ancient history they were mute. So forget it, I thought, like the locals have. Drop it, like Phra Souk in the river, for the moment at least. Just figure Nong Khai began a long time ago and lots of things happened on the way and lots of things didn't happen too, probably rather more of the latter, and that after all is the charm of the place.

Which takes us back to old carts. Nong Khai has them in abundance, but not the big-wheeled oxcart kind, though one or two were lying about, probably sentenced to prettification with flower pots and bougainvillea. No, these were of the dogcart kind, pulled by bicycles or motorbikes, sometimes pushed by hand, and they went every which way through the narrow downtown streets.

"Downtown" is a bit of a misnomer, implying dynamism. Compared to the roar of Bangkok and even the buzz of nearby Udon Thani, Nong Khai just has a kind of funky busyness in its confined commercial centre of clothing emporiums and basketware stores, banks and photo shops. The most notable event of recent times took place here: the Burning Down of Downtown, or at least a fair chunk of it, which occurred in the early 80s, 1984 was it? Answers differ. Some time around then, anyway. Folk have not been in a hurry to fill the charred vacant lots, but little by little, concrete buildings replace grassy gaps, and some of the time-worn wooden shophouses fall to modernity too.

Sadly, so too do some of the beautiful French Indochina colonial-style shophouses with arched porches, shuttered windows and moulded stucco facades, built in the late 19th and early 20th century when ethnic Chinese merchants moved through the region, settling where they would. It may be sleepily provincial but Nong Khai is paradoxically a cosmopolitan place, ethnically diverse in population and an international crossing point. The French influence is evident not just in the architecture but equally enjoyably in the bread, the best and cheapest in all Thailand. What a marvel to eat crusty loaf in a noodle shop!

Just north of main street, where the laid back riverside communities meet downtown, is the ferry pier for Laos. From the immigration building, a great steep flight of steps goes down to the waiting boats and there is a constant criss-crossing of local traders and shoppers. This is also the only surface entry point from Thailand to Laos for non-locals, hence the traffic of Western backpackers and Indian cloth merchants.

Several riverside guest houses have sprung up to cater for budget tourism and Nong Khai has edged quietly, almost accidentally, onto the tourist map. One hostelry occupies a beautifully renovated old house in the main street. Cycling around, I took a pitstop there, admiring the antique- laden lobby, and so history once more reared its mysterious head. I resumed inquiries with a resident Australian but she'd not been in town long and suggested I quiz Khun Suwan. Showing me the way, she sped off on her bicycle at a furious pace unmatched even by the motor traffic let alone by my own trundler. She'll acclimatise eventually, I guess.

Khun Suwan is a Nong Khai institution, co-ordinator of the Village Weaver Handicrafts project, a Catholic self-help set-up begun a dozen years ago to provide local work for women in the hope of stemming their exodus "to urban misery", often as labourers or prostitutes in Bangkok. At the same time, the project perpetuates fine local craftswomanship in the beautiful mudmee tie-dyed cotton, employing the services of 350 families at last count.

The project's own brochure provides a bleak picture of life in the hinterland. "The majority of villagers in Nongkhai province are farmers. Living in wood and bamboo frame houses, they eke out a tenuous existence on the edge of poverty. Because the land is not productive and population pressure is great, families are often split by several members being forced to join the migratory labour force."

This opened a large window onto local economics and sociology, but history once more escaped from view. Suwan turned out to be a southern boy made good in Isaan, and therefore not immersed in its history. He suggested the City Hall for solid information. I pedalled off.

Nong Khai has a front door unique among Thai towns. A broad four-lane highway sweeps right up to the city hall front steps, the Friendship Highway from Bangkok built by US Army engineers in the Vietnam War era as part of a hearts-and-minds assault on Isaan. Before those steps stands another historical clue, a monument to soldiers who died putting down the Haw Rebellion. The plaque proclaims: "In memory of our beloved friends and soldiers who lost their lives in Puan Campaign for three times, in order to drive the dacoits known by the name of Hau out of our dominions in the years 1884, 85, 86."

So banditry was once a major threat in Nong Khai. Could the City Hall Information Office expand? Well, no, except that those were Chinese bandits. The helpful officials did have plenty of data: economic, statistical, geographic, scenic - pictures of waterfalls and the like - but history, well, that's water under the bridge. In fact, the big thing for officialdom these days is The Bridge, the first across the Mekong, the new Thai-Lao Bridge whose concrete pillars are already in place and which will open in 1994, after which Nong Khai will surely never be the same.

Already there is a rash of land speculation and construction along the river bank west of town towards the bridge, including a first class hotel. Another one has already materialised on the by-pass road south of town, rising six or seven storeys high amid cabbage fields. Balance and tranquillity resumes just a little further east where a great bamboo grove shelters a forest monastery, reached through a lane of tall thin shimmering eucalyptus trees.

In this cool calm place, Wat Nernpanao, another clue to Nong Khai's history emerges. The monastery is ringed with the tombs of Vietnamese people, some brightly painted in turquoise or pink, one of them curiously sporting a red star. The foreman tomb builder, wizened and shaded by a rakish straw hat, tells me the Vietnamese came in waves since the last century as a result of all the upheavals in Indochina.

Back in town night falls and the goats come out. The human ones go to the night clubs and brothels, at which trishaw drivers promise you "Lao girl, Vietnam girl, Thai girl, small one, big one, what you like" and the animal ones go to feed at the rubbish bins around town. Forming the night shift of Nong Khai's garbage disposal system, they are then the liveliest thing around, whole families out on the town munching at overturned bins.

And so to bed, forget history, forget thought. After all, tomorrow never knows, as the Beatles once said. If you're asking, I don't really know what it means either, but it sounds right for Nong Khai.

Copyright Keith Mundy 1993. All rights reserved.