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Rt. 13 to Luang Prabang
We left Vang Vieng in a mini van -- we've been traveling long enough to fork out a few extra bucks for comfort. We've had enough 'local bus' experiences to last a lifetime. Normally we like to go for the authentic transportation, the way the locals go... but after our rice sack bus ride to Vientiane, it was time for luxury. Not that the mini van was all that luxurious. There was hardly any leg room and we spent the 6 hours to Luang Prabang with our knees knocking against our ears from the bumpy road.
But the scenery was stunning. Laos is the least populated country in SE Asia and there is a lot of protected land. Our travels through Laos have taken us through amazing amounts of untouched nature and along Rt. 13, up into the mountains, it was no different: Black limestone outcroppings, some streaked with white and the palest shade of pink as if a giant bear clawed the darkness off the mountainside; villages snug against the road's asphalt and perched upon a precipice of rock high above a valley; textures and shades of green too numerous to name; clouds, like mountains in the sky, above us... and, as we climbed, below us like a fluffy rug; farms with fruit trees, vegetables, and scarecrows made of shirts on sticks or plastic bags tied to poles like flags. The views of the mountains - an expansive horizon of rippled rock, carpeted in trees, shrubs, and grass. Along the road, markers sign the kilometers... markers that look like tombstones.
That's one thing about Asian highways that has bothered me during this trip. The road markers look like tombstones -- not a fortuitous shape to adopt as signage on the roadway. They're a constant reminder of the peril in which you have put your life because Asian highways and drivers are not safety conscious. I read somewhere that drivers in Laos figure that whatever happens on the road is just part of life's divine plan. It's some kind of Buddhist driving philosophy. I don't know that this is such a great idea, though, to adapt Buddhist principles to the roadway. I mean, Buddhism teaches that life is all about suffering -- and suffering in a pile of twisted metal is not a necessary part of life if you ask me.
Our guidebook advises that one should look for an aisle seat in the middle of the bus to reduce the amount of damage (or death) incurred in one of these accidents. It also suggests we have the phone number of our embassy and the phone number of a hospital in Thailand should we survive the accident with enough sense and limbs left to make it to a phone. I don't think this advice is very sound, though. It's impossible to choose a seat on a Laos bus (you're lucky if you're not sitting on the floor of the aisle) and it's probably pretty difficult to find a phone in a rustic old village or in the valley of the mountain range the bus has plunged from.
Anyway. Accidents aren't the only danger. There are Hmong rebels in the hills, left over from the war against the Pathet Laos (communists who now run Laos). The war ended in 1975 -- these guys really know how to hold a grudge. Once in a while the Hmong insurgents stop busses speeding along Rt. 13, from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, and kill people. After a period of quiet in the early 2000s, an attack in February of 2003 resulted in 13 dead Laos passengers and 2 Swiss cyclists who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another attack in April 2004 resulted in 12 dead.
That's the problem with war (are you listening Mr. Bush?)... they don't just end nice and neat like a movie or TV program. They go on and on and on years after the war has 'officially' ended. You know how it is when you're in a fight with your S.O., he (or she) might say he's sorry, but you may not feel like smiling at him again for another few hours, if not the rest of the day... Well, after wars, people don't smile at each other again for decades.
Laos was used as a pawn in the Vietnam war. Both the US and Vietnam operated in opposition of the Geneva Convention, which forbade foreign military presence in Laos -- it was supposed to be neutral. The US got around this by posting CIA agents in foreign aid posts and temporarily turning airforce personnel into civilian pilots. Clever bastards. Dishonest, but clever. In this capacity, the US trained the Royal Laos Army and Hmong tribe guerillas to fight their evil commie enemy, the Pathet Laos. The US were not really interested in helping out the RLA and Hmong hilltribe people -- their aim was to take advantage of the conflict in Laos to establish a military presence so we could kick some major Vietnamese butt. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, on the Eastern border of the country, was really annoying President Johnson.
The sad part about all of this is that as a result, Laos got the shit bombed out of it. At the end of the war (1964 - 73), approximately 1.9 metric tonnes was dropped on Laos. I don't know what a metric tonne is, but it sounds like a lot. There was over 1/2 tonne of ordnance dropped for every man, woman, and child in Laos, making it the most heavily bombed nation per capita in the history of warfare. Today, there's a lot of UXO (unexploded ordnance) in the Eastern countryside. Unexploded munitions, mortar shells, phosphorous canisters, land mines and cluster bombs from France, China, USA, Russia, and Vietnam litter the earth. People are deprived of land that could kill them, and accidental injuries and deaths occur each year -- 40% of the victims are children who find a friendly looking ball in a field that turns out to be live ordnance.
If you're not mad about all of this yet, especially the duplicitous actions of the US, think about this: the American people never even knew about this war. It's called the 'Secret War' (obviously it was secret because we weren't supposed to be there in the first place -- just like Cambodia, but there's another story). I've read that the bombing of Laos cost American taxpayers $2 million per day. $2 million per day! For something they didn't even know was happening.
Not mad yet? The thing that ticks me off the most is that American pilots used to drop bombs on Laos during missions from Thailand to North Vietnam just because they were ordered to return to Thailand without bombs. They used the countryside of Laos as a dumping ground for excess bombs -- killing innocent people, destroying homes and villages, and all because the didn't, for some reason, drop them on the intented target. And then there's the defoliants (agent orange) and herbicides that laid bare vegetation, poisoned civilian crops, and made water systems unusable -- even for irrigation. All this, to people in a 'neutral' country, fighting their own war that was cultivated and fanned by the US.
Sorry -- I got a little off track -- I was talking about the Hmong rebels with chips on their shoulders so heavy, they have turned to bus attacks for relief. It makes no sense to me why they attack busloads of innocent people, their fellow citizens. Perhaps it is just to show the Pathet Laos that they're still there. Rt. 13 is now paved, but it used to be that attacks happened with more frequency because government presence was restricted by mountains and bad roads.
Benjamin and I, of course, saw no action... and I wondered if we did, would the Hmong insurgents take pity on us and spare our lives, being Americans and all... people from the country who put weapons in their hands and trained them how to use them...
If you'd like to read more about 'The Secret War', Roger Warner wrote an excellent book called, "Shooting at the Moon."
But the scenery was stunning. Laos is the least populated country in SE Asia and there is a lot of protected land. Our travels through Laos have taken us through amazing amounts of untouched nature and along Rt. 13, up into the mountains, it was no different: Black limestone outcroppings, some streaked with white and the palest shade of pink as if a giant bear clawed the darkness off the mountainside; villages snug against the road's asphalt and perched upon a precipice of rock high above a valley; textures and shades of green too numerous to name; clouds, like mountains in the sky, above us... and, as we climbed, below us like a fluffy rug; farms with fruit trees, vegetables, and scarecrows made of shirts on sticks or plastic bags tied to poles like flags. The views of the mountains - an expansive horizon of rippled rock, carpeted in trees, shrubs, and grass. Along the road, markers sign the kilometers... markers that look like tombstones.
That's one thing about Asian highways that has bothered me during this trip. The road markers look like tombstones -- not a fortuitous shape to adopt as signage on the roadway. They're a constant reminder of the peril in which you have put your life because Asian highways and drivers are not safety conscious. I read somewhere that drivers in Laos figure that whatever happens on the road is just part of life's divine plan. It's some kind of Buddhist driving philosophy. I don't know that this is such a great idea, though, to adapt Buddhist principles to the roadway. I mean, Buddhism teaches that life is all about suffering -- and suffering in a pile of twisted metal is not a necessary part of life if you ask me.
Our guidebook advises that one should look for an aisle seat in the middle of the bus to reduce the amount of damage (or death) incurred in one of these accidents. It also suggests we have the phone number of our embassy and the phone number of a hospital in Thailand should we survive the accident with enough sense and limbs left to make it to a phone. I don't think this advice is very sound, though. It's impossible to choose a seat on a Laos bus (you're lucky if you're not sitting on the floor of the aisle) and it's probably pretty difficult to find a phone in a rustic old village or in the valley of the mountain range the bus has plunged from.
Anyway. Accidents aren't the only danger. There are Hmong rebels in the hills, left over from the war against the Pathet Laos (communists who now run Laos). The war ended in 1975 -- these guys really know how to hold a grudge. Once in a while the Hmong insurgents stop busses speeding along Rt. 13, from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, and kill people. After a period of quiet in the early 2000s, an attack in February of 2003 resulted in 13 dead Laos passengers and 2 Swiss cyclists who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another attack in April 2004 resulted in 12 dead.
That's the problem with war (are you listening Mr. Bush?)... they don't just end nice and neat like a movie or TV program. They go on and on and on years after the war has 'officially' ended. You know how it is when you're in a fight with your S.O., he (or she) might say he's sorry, but you may not feel like smiling at him again for another few hours, if not the rest of the day... Well, after wars, people don't smile at each other again for decades.
Laos was used as a pawn in the Vietnam war. Both the US and Vietnam operated in opposition of the Geneva Convention, which forbade foreign military presence in Laos -- it was supposed to be neutral. The US got around this by posting CIA agents in foreign aid posts and temporarily turning airforce personnel into civilian pilots. Clever bastards. Dishonest, but clever. In this capacity, the US trained the Royal Laos Army and Hmong tribe guerillas to fight their evil commie enemy, the Pathet Laos. The US were not really interested in helping out the RLA and Hmong hilltribe people -- their aim was to take advantage of the conflict in Laos to establish a military presence so we could kick some major Vietnamese butt. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, on the Eastern border of the country, was really annoying President Johnson.
The sad part about all of this is that as a result, Laos got the shit bombed out of it. At the end of the war (1964 - 73), approximately 1.9 metric tonnes was dropped on Laos. I don't know what a metric tonne is, but it sounds like a lot. There was over 1/2 tonne of ordnance dropped for every man, woman, and child in Laos, making it the most heavily bombed nation per capita in the history of warfare. Today, there's a lot of UXO (unexploded ordnance) in the Eastern countryside. Unexploded munitions, mortar shells, phosphorous canisters, land mines and cluster bombs from France, China, USA, Russia, and Vietnam litter the earth. People are deprived of land that could kill them, and accidental injuries and deaths occur each year -- 40% of the victims are children who find a friendly looking ball in a field that turns out to be live ordnance.
If you're not mad about all of this yet, especially the duplicitous actions of the US, think about this: the American people never even knew about this war. It's called the 'Secret War' (obviously it was secret because we weren't supposed to be there in the first place -- just like Cambodia, but there's another story). I've read that the bombing of Laos cost American taxpayers $2 million per day. $2 million per day! For something they didn't even know was happening.
Not mad yet? The thing that ticks me off the most is that American pilots used to drop bombs on Laos during missions from Thailand to North Vietnam just because they were ordered to return to Thailand without bombs. They used the countryside of Laos as a dumping ground for excess bombs -- killing innocent people, destroying homes and villages, and all because the didn't, for some reason, drop them on the intented target. And then there's the defoliants (agent orange) and herbicides that laid bare vegetation, poisoned civilian crops, and made water systems unusable -- even for irrigation. All this, to people in a 'neutral' country, fighting their own war that was cultivated and fanned by the US.
Sorry -- I got a little off track -- I was talking about the Hmong rebels with chips on their shoulders so heavy, they have turned to bus attacks for relief. It makes no sense to me why they attack busloads of innocent people, their fellow citizens. Perhaps it is just to show the Pathet Laos that they're still there. Rt. 13 is now paved, but it used to be that attacks happened with more frequency because government presence was restricted by mountains and bad roads.
Benjamin and I, of course, saw no action... and I wondered if we did, would the Hmong insurgents take pity on us and spare our lives, being Americans and all... people from the country who put weapons in their hands and trained them how to use them...
If you'd like to read more about 'The Secret War', Roger Warner wrote an excellent book called, "Shooting at the Moon."
posted by Cheryn at 3:14 PM
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