Hi again.
It's been a while since our last post, but we've been experiencing some technical issues. We hope these will be resolved soon.
Anyway, on with Lao. It's impossible to travel around Lao (or Laos as it's also known), without encountering three things. Poverty, Unexploded Ordnance (aka UXOs) and Beer Lao (more about that later), but the other two, are both the direct legacy of 'The Secret War' which was a campaign of illegal bombing raids conducted by the United States between 1964-1973. And despite over 40 years having passed since the end of it the war, Lao remains paralysed by it, shackled to it, haunted with it and debilitated because of it.
If you don't know too much about it, I recommend you take a look. But, to briefly summarise, the neighbouring Vietnam war, with which, American involvement had been gradually increasing since the 1950's, (and ended with their ignominious defeat in 1973), was intended to contain the spread of Communism in South East Asia and prevent what was known as 'the Domino Effect' where each country that falls 'to communism' then leads to the next. This was despite the fact that Communism was spreading through democratic means, by free elections, in sovereign states. However, it became so important to the American administration at that time that they unleashed a secret and systematic campaign of bombing from 1964 - 1973 against the mainly agricultural population of Lao on a scale not seen since the dark days of Mr Hitler in WW2.
The interesting and shocking thing about this war is not that it was illegal (which it was), nor was it the sheer tonnage of bombs dropped onto Lao people per capita (.87 tonnes per person), from over 80,000,000 bombs dropped from over 500,000 sorties; nor America's (particularly Richard Nixon's symantic assertion that), "there are no combat troops in Laos", but there were plenty of CIA agents and bomber pilots; nor the total denial of any involvement there whatsoever until Bill Clinton admitted it in 1997; nor that the nuclear strike option was considered against Lao to halt the spread of Communism should it not have been possible for the CIA to equip a pro US counterforce in the country to 'stem the flow'.
Nope, despite all these facts (and that there are many more atrocities related to this 'conflict'), the shocking thing is that over 40 years since the end of the confict in 1973, it is estimated that over 30,000 men women and children have been killed or injured by some of the estimated 80 million remaining unexploded bombs from the staggering number of 280 million dropped during the 'conflict' between hi tech bomber planes and peasant rice farmers.
The legacy that remains does not only affect individuals by maiming them, but in this land of agriculture, it remains a painstakingly slow process to remove the remaining UXOs so that the land can be farmed. And, because there is less rice production as a result (which could have been sold abroad), the country has less cash. Now, that cash would've been generated and used to make roads, schools, hospitals or railways and gradually life Lao out of poverty. But hang on, there's the small matter of clearing the 80 million unstable unexploded bombs littered across almost the entire eastern side of the country, (which continue to degrade and become less stable and potentially more liable to detonate), which must be cleared prior to opening up of contaminated land for agriculture, infrastructure construction or literally any other use.
To assist in clearing the legacy of the bombing, the United States does currently provide somewhere in the region of a derisory $2.7m per year to clean up the UXOs, but this is considered as 'overseas aid' by the US and not formal compensation. Legal action seeking compensation brought by citizens of Lao remains ongoing.
Thankfully, work is ongoing to clear Lao of landmines by humanitarian organisations as the 'Mines Advisory Group' (MAG), the Mine Clearance Agency and Mine Action, whose commitment and courage is unquestionable. At current the current speed of clearance (rates from 1996-2009), it has been estimated it may take over 1,000 years (yes ONE THOUSAND YEARS), until the country is free of unexploded ordnance.
To see more check these links:
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
http://www.maginternational.org/
http://www.copelaos.org/ban_cluster_bombs.php
Our first stop in Lao was an overnighter in Huay Xai, on the Lao side of the Mekong river from Thailand. This was where, after pretty much a break of 15 years, I was reunited with my old flame Beer Lao. She looked just the same, but was a bit colder. Her body was full and the tart kiss on the lips was as pleasing and satisfying as I remembered. We got together for a few hours that night, with Eimear and her getting on like a house on fire.
From here, we took the two day river ferry down the Western side of the country to Luang Prabang. Interestingly enough, the secret war barely touched this side of the country at all and the absence of the conflict here suggests how the rest of the country may now be if the war had not happened.
So, how does one describe Luang Prabang (LP)? According to the guide books it could be 'The pearl of indochina' or 'The Shangri La of Asian cuisine' or even 'The achingly stunning fusion of Asian mystique and French chic'. Which frankly is nonsense. The people who write that kinda shite need chopsticks hammered up their noses until they come out of the top of their heads somewhere.
Weirdly though, LP is actually like a large scale model of a French colonial town, with grand colonial style buildings, dotted with vintage vehicles, but almost solely comprised of boutique hotels and high end restaurants. One of the things that gives LP its toy town feel is that it's almost impossible to find a shop that sells everyday items such as fruit or vegetables. You can get dry stuff (tins, packet noodles and bottles of water) in the occasional tourist 'mini-mart', but there are no real shops, no butchers shops, no fishmonger's, no florists. It's like a large resort, so the local population don't actually live there. It's feels like as you round every corner you expect to be met by a smiling French speaking Asian waiter, wearing a tightly pressed white jacket, with a black trouser ever ready to offer you a glass of chilled sparkling water. So, if you're gonna head to LP make sure you're looking for the type of holiday without that 'local feel' and are looking to eat paté de fois gras or a plate of snails.
So basically, LP really is a bit pants. Yes there are sights to see, yes there are tourist markets to browse, yes you can admire the beauty of the French influenced architecture, yes you can free a pair of birds at the top of the temple as a symbol of hope (we actually did that) and yes you can drink an ice cold beer and a glass of French red overlooking the mighty Mekong river (of course we did that too). Yes you can do all of these things. But that all of that still doesn't make it any fun, or any kind of experience of Lao at all. I think that those who really enjoy this place are 30 years our senior, arrive armed with a large wad of cash and a profound sense of entitlement and are of the ilk to expect access to Char Wallah's and Oompah Lumpah's as part of their holiday package.
An interesting thing we did witness upon our departure at 6am, was seeing many of the package tourists 'get the chance' to continue to be culturally insensitive as they make 'an offering' to the Monks at a 'pre-reserved' space outside the temple for the morning alms. If you've not been to a Buddhist country before, the alms ritual is a daily one where the monks walk the streets from dawn, collecting food for sustenance donated by the local population. It was a curious to watch as wealthy western tourists paid cash to 'donate' food under the auspices of observing Buddhist rites that they don't understand, whilst the procession of posessionless monks bend over one by one to lower empty bowl after seemingly empty bowl eagerly accepting the proceeds of this apparent act of prostitution. Then Eimear told me to shut up with my drivel as the scene I've just depicted wasn't like that at all and that I'd over-thought the whole thing.
Then we headed south on the 8 hour bus trip to another tourist town of Vang Vieng. Now some would describe this place as fun, particularly if you're early twenty-something and away from bitty for the first time. We sort of did too. Mainly, there are two things to do in Vang Vieng drinking and TUBING! (pron - Tooobing!) Now drinking is largely self explanatory, but I'll go through TUBING for you. You, an inflated lorry inner tube and about a dozen other people are driven 3km up the river. You jump into the river, sit on your tube and gently paddle your way via the many riverbank bars on the way who offer free shots of booze. The journey back nominally takes 2 hours and a further day to clear the hangover.
The downside to Vang Vieng is that like LP, most everyone is a foreigner, so all restaurants cater for us aliens by supplying burgers with chips and full fry-ups. So as we were in Rome (to use the phrase), we did as the Egyptians and decided to test the quality of a fry-up at 'Gary's Irish Bar', which boasted 'imported Cumberland sausages' and baked beans as part of the meal. Eimear enjoyed a cheese and bean 'toastie'. Overall, it was well worth the eight or so quids.
Supplement to the downside, most of the bars, restaurants and eateries show the God awful American TV series 'Friends' all day every day. As you walk the surrounding streets, you hear the monotone drawl of that feckless twat David Schrimmer punctuated with the endless pithy whine of Jennifer Aniston (and on and on and on). It's on all day every day, without pause. Someone said it was part of a 'secret' plot by the CIA to indoctrinate the communist Lao people into the glorious ways of consumerism, greed and self interest. But what was apparent was that no-one actually knows why it's on on this endless loop (as endless as all good loops should be) and certainly no-one bloody cares.
On the upside, Eimear discovered that bottles of 'Savannah' cider were available and since it had been some time since her forced withdrawal from Strongbow, it was considered necessary that we spend the remainder of our time here consuming a number of test samples to confirm that there had been no measurable reduction in her liver function.
Our next stop on the trail was the Lao capital city of Vientiane and 14-16 May marked 'Happy Pi Mai (New Year) in Lao. We'd bought a copy of the local newspaper 'Vientiane Times' on arrival which carried an interesting public information announcement from the Lao authorities to coincide with the New Year. The piece 'Asks motorists to drive safely, wear a helmet and follow traffic regulations at all times.' It just seemed a more mature and respectful request to the public to behave during the holidays. In the UK the authorities would never 'ask' for anything, we only get the usual threats of fines and imprisonment (or both).
Saying that though, on the first day of the celebrations, we saw a drunk bloke who could only remain upright because of the forward motion of the motorcycle on which he was riding on the pavement. It seems you just can't 'ask' some people.
The celebrations for the festival manifest itself much in the same form as 'Songkran' in Thailand which happens at the same time, where the vast majority of the city downs tools and copious quantities of the magnificent 'Beer Lao' before engaging in a city wide drunken water fight. The difference between Lao and Thailand was that in Lao, the festivities cease abruptly around midnight and begin again the following day, unlike Thailand where it goes on 24/7 for the duration.
The hotel in which we were staying also took the whole thing rather seriously, providing free lunch and booze to all guests checked in at the time. On the second day, the lunch provided was chicken and rice or stir fried noodles with seafood. Being a peskytarian Eimear opted for the noodles, but after a couple of bites indicated that all may not be well with the dish and so she asked a passing waiter "What seafood is in this please?" The waiter turned, smiled a genuine smile and replied "Pork".
in addition to the free food and drink, the hotel played music and encouraging dancing, starting with their own daily line dancing style routine to get everyone in the mood. They also hooked up a hosepipe and a provided a couple of dustbins of water for the increasingly drunken water fight outside the front of the hotel. We repeated this ritual for the three days of the holiday, which by the last day started to feel like a hungover groundhog day, but as we'd enjoyed it, we appreciated the memory reinforcement.
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| Picture by Therese Pechstein |
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| Picture by Therese Pechstein |
We had a couple of recovery days in Vientiane, during which we visited the COPE visitor centre (as you will have seen the link above), which helps to rehabilitate victims of UXOs and others who require prosthetic limbs for one reason or another. This was where we started to discover the true extent of the damage and legacy caused by the secret war.
Following this (and due to the heat we could stand the heat of Vientiane no more), we headed to Phonsavan on the overnight sleeper bus. The sleeping berth was more akin to a box cattle crate with a blanket and all the comfort you'd associate with it. The driver being cold blooded and nocturnal, decided that once we left the bus station at 7.30 p.m. he would switch all the lights in the bus off as well as the air conditioning. The 10 hours of this journey just flew by.
Phonsavan also has the unenviable description of being one of the most bombed towns in the world. Wherever you go in this town, you see unexploded bombs and bomb casings being used in the most everyday ways including decorations for cafes, stilts on which houses are built, window boxes and even as barbecues. Much of this metal has also been smelted and how has a new life as cutlery and cooking pots.
Phonsavan is also home to the 'Plain of Jars', an area of hundreds of square kilometres dotted with large man-made jars varying in size to over 30 tonnes. It is thought that the jars were fashioned from solid stone and it has been estimated they date from the Southeast Asian iron age, between 500 BC and 200AD and were used for either food storage or burials.
We visited the main sights for viewing the jars are situated at various points off of the main highway out of Phonsavan. By 'main highway' I mean the road was made up of a collection of rocky pot holes. We'd rented a motorcycle which naturally had no front suspension which caused the handlebars to vibrate like a jackhammer rendering my arms to the consistency of cream cheese by the time we'd reached the first site.
At the site, our resident photographer found the place simply so uninspiring that the camera didn't actually make it outside of the case at any time while we were there. I took some photo's, but they weren't up to much either, but perhaps convey how boring it was.
Phonsavan is also home to one of the best curry houses we've ever been to. It's called 'Nisha's' and the food there is just amazing. Admittedly, it's a long way to go for curry (considering you have to pass India when coming from the UK), but if you're ever in Phonsavan, you should make the effort to find it as the tomato and potato curry is spectacular.
Then we took the 8 hour bus trip onto the market town of Sam Neua where we'd decided to kill a bit of time before moving to our last stop in Lao. Everything went well as we paid £4 for 4 nights to stay in a hotel room as big as a cathedral, with a balcony and cable tv. But, our enjoyment was short lived as Sam Neua turned out to be the most boring town in the world. Sam Neua gets up when it gets light at 5am, sells whatever it can find in the market until dusk and is in bed with the lights out by 7.30 p.m.
We went crazy on the second day and walked the 300 metres or so across the river to check out the town's central market. After about 20 minutes or so it was evident you could buy most anything in this market, providing you didn't want it to come in a packet or box or be any kind of brand. Mainly, the things in the market were all kinds of fauna, including lizards, bugs, frogs, and furry things as well as the usual pigs, chickens, fish etc. All the creatures were in various states including alive (but soon to be killed), stunned (being fairly quickly killed), barely alive (being slowly killed) and dead, oh and there were of course vegetables. One lady, was apparently fanning a large wide eyed domestic looking cat, except, that the fur was like leopardskin. To our minds, the animal was probably of a species that was on some kind of endangered list, which was true as the thing was dead and up for sale as food. The woman was fanning away the flies. She declined our request for a photo.
All this animal welfare had us right in the mood for lunch, so we popped into one of the market stall restaurants for a quick bite. It turned out that the lady running the stall could speak Thai and so I asked as best I could if they could make us vegetable noodle soups with 'no meat'. She smiled and agreed 'no meat', so we thought we were on good ground. Midway through our meal, my chopsticks happened on a small firm squidgy something. Our lunch was not veggie, it was offal and the meaty morsel was a chickens heart. Eimear turned an unusual colour for her complexion and stopped eating. We had been wondering why the locals had considered us photo worthy as during our time in the restaurant, a number of persons had got their camera's out and snapped a quick photo. Perhaps they'd been waiting for our reaction to the food.
In the evenings, our two options of life were a mini-mart that sold everything at different prices for everyone depending on who was serving and what price they could get away with at the time; and a restaurant with an 'English' menu, run by a surly looking restauranteur who was clearly suffering from a very recent gunshot wound.
Even our efforts to stay indoors were thwarted by our rooms 'direct to sewer' air conditioning and Asian language only TV. We were delighted when those days were up and we took the further hour bus trip to Vieng Xai.
Vieng Xai was home to the Lao Politburo (command structure) during the domestic conflict in Lao during the 'Secret War' years. The town was selected due to it's remote location, the protective nature of the Karst topography and cave structure contained thereabouts. The crowded landscape of short steep hills and rice paddies also provided excellent military observation and defense options as well as the beauty that the small farming town (population 21000) is known for.
Once again it was the local Indian restaurant that saved the day here as no other restaurants in town had a menu in English, that was even if you could identify where the restaurants were in the first place. We ate there every day for the four days.
We spent one of our afternoon taking a bicycle tour of the caves that were occupied by both the leaders and community at large during the war. It was interesting and is basically a must see, but honestly, after you've seen one cave with a bedroom, bathroom and 'emergency room' (gas proof) etc... you've seen 'em all.
Now I'm not a fan of history at the best of times (in fact, I disdain it in general terms), but it was interesting to see how the people of Lao presented their account of the 'victory' after the war ended. Propaganda aside, the sheer determination demonstrated by the Lao people to fight for so long against the mighty mechanised malevolence of the US air force was incredible.
There was one other cave that made me think though. It was the one where about 245 men, women and children (people who lived in the cave), were killed in one go when a 500lb bomb landed right outside the entrance. Testimony from locals at the time stated that it took 3 days for the entrance of the cave to cool down enough to allow people to enter and search for survivors.
On this not so happy story, our time in Lao came to a welcome end. Our last walk was as we headed up to the outskirts of the town of Vieng Xai and hailed the once daily bus to cross the border to Vietnam. As the bus pulled up, we peered inside to see about 30 people inside the bus which was originally designed to seat about half that amount. This was going to be a long trip...
Bye for now.
Barry and Eimear
More photos from our trip and other things can be found here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eimearconnolly/
