• 

• 

• 

The culture here is so rich and different that Don and I soak in all we can, knowing that we leave some behind. Laos looks a lot like northern Thailand – lush and fertile, with fields of tapioca, lychee, rice, eggplant, banana and rubber trees. We joked nervously as the two-hour drive east to the Thai-Laos border took us up into the mountains. The highway we were on was the only sign of modernity; twenty years ago, it had replaced a dirt road. We’d been told the border crossing could take two hours, as it is a complicated visa process involving $35 in new bills (they would, indeed, reject several we offered, making us a little worried), a passport photo, and a tiny form we had been given by the customs official in Bangkok. Each of our guides goes by a nickname: Alice, Dang (red), Sam (three), Fuk (pumpkin), La (youngest). Their English is very good and we talk about all kinds of things, from politics to history to regional differences in food and language. Buddhism is like most other religions, in that some people are strict followers, but most are content to respect the spirit of the law. At the same time, it more visibly permeates the culture in Thailand and Laos. This morning, Don and I fell into step behind a line of 6-7 young monks walking into a rural village barefoot and dressed in saffron robes tied with a rope. They carried their bowls (for collecting food) and staffs. They ranged in age from about 6 to 11. One little guy had moved up in line, but he had to scoot to the back when an older boy gave him a shove! I really do not want to generalize, but Buddhism, it would seem, accounts for the gentleness of these people. Thirty years ago, every young man stayed at a monastery (for a few days or up to 9 months) as part of his education. That is no longer the case, but locals still line up every morning at 6 a.m. to give alms to the monks. The spiritual element is apparent in the storytelling, effortless courtesy and easy smiles of these hard-working people.

• 

• 

We spent two days traveling down river (from Chiang Rai to Luang Prabang) on a long and narrow, but elegantly furnished wooden boat. The Mekong runs through five countries: China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. China has built seven huge dams on it, one in Laos, which has caused a lot of heartache. Farmers along the river are not told when the river will be flooded, so they often lose the gardens they are used to planting at the river’s edge. The watermark on our lodge indicated that the river had risen about 30 feet the last flooding. Yesterday we stopped at a village of lowlanders. On the ground beneath one wooden house on stilts sat a chunk of iron fitted between wooden blocks and used to sharpen tools and knives. It was part of a bomb. Ordinance can be found everywhere in Laos, especially close to the Vietnam border. In the War, the United States (in the “Secret War”) dropped 3 million tons of bombs on this tiny country, and 2 million tons still remain. Every year, 50-60 people are killed by bombs that detonate when they try to move them. In the markets, they sell jewelry and other objects made of parts of bombs. Our guide saw President Obama when he came to one of these villages as a private citizen, in 2016. Obama impressed the Lao people with his humble manner. When he tried to buy a coconut, the vendor wouldn’t take his money and finally Obama just put down $10. Through a translator, Obama asked the crowd that gathered to tell him honestly how they felt about Americans. No one would say anything, until finally one man raised his hand and said politely, “It makes us pretty grumpy.” That emboldened a couple more to contribute: “We hate Americans, I want to kill Americans.” Obama thanked them for their honest answers. When he got home, he raised $19 million to send back for de-mining.

Our guide was hesitant to share this story and any story that we might construe as “negative” (because he didn’t want us to feel “bad”). Yet he did say that many of the girls living in the village would go into the sex trade, because they couldn’t afford secondary school. We also learned that while the villagers appreciated the electricity and primary school the government provided, they used the condoms for anything but contraception, including as covers for Iphones. Boarding the boat to leave, we were met with a tray of rolled-up towels soaked in ice water and a glass of cool water. Don said it reminded him of the Bible verse “be kind to your enemies, because you will be heaping hot coals on their heads.” Yes.

• 

• 

• 

Staring out at the forest on both sides of the Mekong, I realized that these images were familiar to me, because they came from countless supposedly anti-war movies. Yet while they haunt the American conscience (including my own), they don’t produce any new revelations about the people who live here. The reason Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was so perfectly adapted to the Vietnam War is that we’ve only ever looked into a mirror here in Southeast Asia, finding only our own ugliness reflected back to us. American GIs knew this, which is why they, too, were a Lost Generation, returning home from a drawn-out conflict (1964-73) that they had little to no stake in, only (for some) the innocent belief that the American leaders that put them there knew what they were doing. Vietnam (and Cambodia, Laos) was not theirs to protect or defend; there was no gold to enrich themselves with, no larger purpose worth fulfilling, just a bunch of fishers and farmers eking out the barest existences and already exploited by the French and Chinese. There’s that scene in “Apocalypse Now” of the boat going up the river, with Pvt. Lance is holding foil trays up to face to tan; he will later be ordered by Col. Kilgore to surf the waves in the Mekong Delta. I now have my own sense of what the bored but tense GIs felt. There’s no there there in the jungle. You can look and look, but the canopy of trees is impenetrable. Hidden dangers lurk, filling you with fear and unease, but all you hear is the loudness of your thoughts. Even now, years later, we are well-meaning tourists like Mrs. Moore in the caves in A Passage to India, well-meaning but completely out of our depth.