The Long Hitch Home

by Jamie Maslin

  “It is difficult to explain,” said Mao. “We are, how can you say, we do work for society.”

  “Social workers?”

  “Yes, we are Buddhists and help those with problems of drugs and alcohol, and other problems.”

  Mao was keen to know about my trip and asked where I’d been, so after reeling off some place names, I handed my digital camera into the front so they could flick through my photos. Suddenly a particular picture caused quite a stir—Owen, in his little shorts backstage at the Thai stadium, all oiled up, pecs and abs on display, ready to raise hell. The girls certainly approved. And who can blame them; a fine figure of a man.

  “Do you like Muay Thai?” I asked.

  “Oh, not really,” said Mao. “I always feel so pity for the loser.”

  We chatted for some time, but I was still tired from last night’s wandering, so when darkness fell I asked if they’d mind if I closed my eyes. They didn’t.

  When I awoke I checked my watch. It was late. Surprisingly so, considering we had still not reached our destination. If we didn’t arrive soon I would struggle to make it to the Laotian capital, Vientiane, tonight. If that happened, I would likely miss out on getting the visa application process rolling tomorrow, as the Chinese consulate was said to close at 11:30 a.m.

  “How far is Vientiane from where we’re going?” I asked, trying to work out if it was still feasible to get there tonight.

  “Urm, about five hours,” said Mao.

  Say what? That couldn’t be right. It had only been five hours away when we’d set off, and that was about five hours ago.

  I explained this, and that surely Mao had made a mistake. The mistake was all mine, at least in not checking which border with Laos the girls were going near, not Thailand’s northern one, a stone’s throw from the capital of Laos, but it’s distant eastern one, by the Thai town of That Phanom. Poor management on my behalf, for sure, although in my defense, the road we met on was the one that led straight up to the northern border, so on hearing the girls were going “near the border with Laos,” it was perhaps not unreasonable to assume it was the nearest one.

  “Oh dear,” said Mao, concerned at the misunderstanding. “What are your plans for tonight now?”

  It was a good question. I was significantly off course, heading along a minor rural road in the dark. If I terminated the ride here, then I would have, in all probability, little hope of getting another ride until the morning. Did it make more sense to trudge on and cross into Laos at the eastern border and then travel from there onto Vientiane, or head back to the northern border come daybreak?

  Mao strongly recommended the second option on account of the roads in eastern Laos, which apparently were “terrible.”

  A brief conversation in Thai ensued between Mao and Mai, which concluded with a mutual nodding of heads.

  “If you would like you can stay in Mai’s family home tonight. You must know it is not very big.”

  “So long as it’s got a roof and a floor it will be big enough for me.”

  This was good news. And in truth, I was borderline pleased to be heading east now; an opportunity to stay in a Thai home was not one to pass up.

  We drove on into the night and eventually made our way along a thin road running along the banks of a giant river.

  “You see those lights,” said Mao pointing to some random twinkles among the overall darkness of the other side. “That is Laos.”

  The river was the Mekong.

  We came to a stop at the start of a long thriving section of food stalls flanking the road—now little more than a path—constricting forward motion for all but scooters, that snaked their way through a chaotic crowd of people ambling merrily from stall to stall. In the distance dangled drapes of colored lightbulbs, highlighting clouds of steam and smoke that rose like great apparitions from multiple hissing woks and charcoal burners. Music blared and a vibrant party atmosphere was detectable in the air. Something big and out of the ordinary was going on.

  “Once a year for a week is a big festival and market,” said Mao, anticipating my question. “We will take you there. But first—” she gestured to her side with a smile, “—We are here!”

  Opposite was a simple two-story house with a little café out the front.

  As we got out, waves and greetings flowed the girls’ way from nearby stall owners, one of whom was Mai’s mother, running a pitch selling kebabs, noodles, fish, icy drinks, and other aromatic food. A quick introduction by way of Mao, and we headed inside.

  “Oh, you have to take your shoes off,” said Mao, bringing me up to speed with local etiquette before I blundered through her friend’s family home.

  We made our way across a sparsely-furnished ground floor to a flight of stairs that led to an empty upper area with wooden ceiling beams and decking. Window frames bereft of glass cut gaping holes in the upper structure, blurring the line between inside and out, while a light breeze drifted in off the Mekong. We dropped our stuff and headed out.

  Constructed mainly out of bamboo with tarps strung up above them, the stalls outside sold a bewildering variety of culinary treats, many coming our way from Mai’s kindly mother. These included chips made from dried fish skin used for dunking in a spicy noodle soup, and shavings of desiccated pork. Stuffed, we strolled on into the thick of a crowded rabbit-warren of alleyways, the surging crowd sweeping us along, washing us up and spitting us out in the center of town. Here, stretching as far as the eye could see, was the beating heart of the festival. It was enormous, positively heaving with thousands of people of all ages, who all looked so very happy. There were no Western tourists, at least that I saw. Everything from snake charmers, to fairground rides, from dancing girls to traditional musicians was crammed into the area.

  An elephant with its owner passed us by.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed. The girls laughed.

  “We see a lot of elephants,” said Mao.

  Making our way past a Ferris wheel lit up with multicolored lights, we came upon an odd display: a super-customized sports car, whose rear end and side doors were wide open, displaying the most ridiculously oversized speaker system imaginable. Practically half the car was boombox. It nearly burst my ear drums from fifty feet, so how the two bikini-clad dolly-birds gyrating next to it coped I’ve no idea. Mao, Mai and I covered our ears and quickened our pace.

  It was a circuitous route, but after taking in much fun of the fair we found ourselves at a large flood-lit, golden-gilded Buddhist temple, Wat Phra That Phanom, which overlooked the festival.

  “They say the Buddha bones are kept here,” said Mao as we took our shoes off on the temple’s forecourt.

  It was a curious structure and temple complex situated at the end of a long straight tree-lined avenue that led back towards the silty waters of the Mekong River. Within its walled confines stood several decorative temple buildings, embellished from top to bottom in red, white and patterned gold, serving as but a garnish to the site’s centerpiece: a tall, sharply pointed stupa tower that rose high above the site and was patterned with decorative gold in the shape of what looked like a stylized tree’s branches. Dotting the courtyard around the complex were neatly trimmed shrubs, golden lanterns and multiple shiny Buddha statues, some standing regally with perfectly straight backs, others lying down prostrate or meditating cross-legged in the lotus position.

  Mai collected some candles and yellow Chrysanthemums from a nearby section providing these to pilgrims, which we placed as an offering at the foot of the great stupa. The girls clasped their hands together and bowed. I followed suit.

  “You are allowed a wish now,” said Mao.

  I wished for a smooth visa application process at the Chinese consulate.

  We moved on to an area around the back where a huge golden bell hung within a small open-sided bell tower. Gathered around this was a group of people taking turns to swing a rope dangling from inside the bell to make it chime. I gave it a go, producing a rather lackluster result, but this,
apparently, was sufficient to receive a second wish. Having unintentionally stumbled upon such a wonderful and atmospheric spot, I was already pretty darn happy and satisfied with my lot, so simply repeated my earlier wish.

  We ended up spending a couple of hours taking in That Phanom’s sights, sounds, aromas, and tastes. On our way back to turn in for the night, we stopped at a food stall where the girls insisted I try some strange green-colored sugary bread, a delightful caramel-colored fruit called a lamoot, and the chilled milk from a fresh coconut that was fished from a huge slushy ice box.

  I tried to pay, but Mao was having none of it.

  “Maybe if we come to England you will help us too.”

  I promised that I would.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Evil from the Air

  I had been wondering when I might first spot it, a sign of latitudinal region change, from the year-round intensity of the tropics to the starker fluctuating cycle of the subtropics and the temperate zone. An unknown tree announced the beginnings of this gradual adjustment, its leaves mottled in crispy shades of light green, yellow and brown, their nutrients getting sucked away and reclaimed in readiness for a period of rest. That’s not to say the landscape wasn’t tropical, the abundant bamboo groves, rice paddies, and lush exotic flora made sure of that. Rather, that the subtle process had begun, and the further north I pushed the more these differing circles of latitude would become apparent.

  It had been a long hard day on the road. After spending a delightful farewell breakfast with Mao and Mai at the family-run food stall in front of Mai’s riverside home, I pushed westward and then north, backtracking slightly to reach Thailand’s northern border with Laos, which I arrived at as the last of the day’s remaining light slipped beneath the horizon.

  It proved a quick and painless crossing, with efficient corresponding border posts on either side of the Mekong River, spanned between no-man’s-land by a large “friendship bridge.” Some semaphore-like hand signals and map pointing got me a ride in the back of a pickup truck—driven on the right hand side of the road for the first time since setting off from Australia—to the country’s capital, Vientiane, roughly ten miles away. Multiple grandiose embassy and consulate buildings passed by en route, which contrasted with the overall humble, almost provincial, feel to other parts of this modest capital. Pretty Buddhist temples drifted by, as did the occasional remnant of Laos’ French colonial past: opulent European-style mansions, many built in Laos by its former colonial masters, now used as governmental offices or abandoned and slowly disintegrating from the cumulative effects of weather and time.

  I was dropped on the main tourist drag running parallel to the palm-fronted Mekong, outside an array of bars, restaurants and hostels. After sourcing a cheap but clean room in a basic hotel on the outer edge of downtown, I headed out to have a look at Vientiane. It might have been dark, but I was too wired to rest, and so made the most of the cooler nocturnal temperature by exploring the central district. I investigated the exterior of several locations that would demand greater exploration during daylight hours: a former French colonial mansion, now presidential palace; a one time royal temple with a tiered roof and pillared veranda, now a religious museum; and a colossal floodlit archway monument, a Laotian Arc de Triomphe that stood like a giant squat fortress in the middle of a park, sandwiched on either side by opposing main roads.

  For a long while I sat in the park just watching the world go by, then strolled beneath the archway where a sign caught my attention, prompting me to remember Laos’ tragic recent past.

  “It is the Patuxay or Victory Gate of Vientiane,” stated the sign. “Built in 1962 (BE 2505), but never complete [sic] due to the country’s turbulent history.”

  Turbulent indeed.

  It said no more on this but I knew it well, and it seemed an apt time for me to reflect upon it. And for those who have taken me to task in the past, in reviews and in person, for including political history in my books, as if this somehow has no relevance to a book of the “travel” genre, well, you can skip this bit or buy yourself another book, for as Czech writer Milan Kundera once stated, “the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” And I don’t intend to forget the hell visited upon Laos as a sideshow to the Vietnam War any time soon, and neither should anyone else.

  During America’s illegal bombing of Laos an astounding 260 million bombs87 rained down on this utterly defenseless, impoverished peasant society; over two million tons of explosives,88 substantially more than the United States dropped on both Germany and Japan combined during the Second World War,89 making Laos the most intensely bombed country on earth, with nearly a ton of ordnance dropped for every man, woman, and child.90

  In 1958 the Laotian left-leaning nationalist political movement known as the Pathet Lao (“Lao nation”) won nine seats in the country’s elections, forming part of a coalition government that saw them, along with other leftists, control a block of thirteen out of twenty-one contested seats;91 and their leader, Prince Souphanouvong, elected chairman of the National Assembly.92 The United States was not pleased; U.S. Ambassador Graham Parsons would later admit: “I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition.”93 With Laos inundated with American aid in an attempt to establish U.S. control—to the degree that Laos was “the only country in the world where the United States supports the military budget 100 percent”94—it proved easy to topple the government. “By merely withholding the monthly payments to the troops,” wrote Roger Hilsman, who worked for the C.I.A. and State Department, “the United States could create the conditions for toppling any Lao government whose policies it opposed.”95 A coup was triggered that saw the country’s “pro-Western” Prime Minister resign to establish a new government excluding the Pathet Lao. (He would later claim he was forced to resign due to America’s opposition to Laotian neutrality.)96 Things didn’t work out for him, with the C.I.A. opting to support another man, leading to a bewilderingly complex series of coups and counter coups over the next few years in which one discredited government after another rose and fell in quick succession,97 and the C.I.A. stuffing ballot boxes in farcical elections,98 rigged, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “so crudely that even most pro-U.S. observers were appalled.”99 Hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars were pumped into tiny Laos, a country whose economy was primarily based on barter, and was 99 percent agricultural, causing “unimaginable bribery, graft, currency manipulation and waste.”100

  The immediate U.S. goal was to bring to power a carefully selected right-wing strongman, Phoumi Nosavan, while crushing the Pathet Lao, an organization whose leader, Prince Souphanouvong, insisted was not a communist movement—describing himself and the party he headed as “ultra-nationalist.”101 As American historian William Blum has noted, “The Pathet Lao were the only sizable group in the country serious about social change, a characteristic which of course tends to induce Washington officials to apply the communist label.”102 Fred Branfman, who first visited Laos as an educational advisor in the sixties, wrote of the Pathet Lao: “For the first time . . . [Laotians] were taught pride in their country and people, instead of admiration for a foreign culture; schooling and massive adult literacy campaigns were conducted in Laotian instead of French; and mild but thorough social revolution—ranging from land reform to greater equality for women—was instituted.103

  Following the rigged 1960 election, civil war broke out,104 and in 1961 the United States began serious clandestine military operations105 against the Pathet Lao, with a secret mercenary force of about 30,000, the Armée Clandestine, made up of Meo hill tribesman (the same ethnic group organized in Vietnam), and citizens from the region’s U.S. client states: Thais, South Vietnamese, Filipinos, South Koreans, and Taiwanese. Added to this contingent were U.S. military trainers and C.I.A. personnel, especially pilots of the agency’s notorious Air America—infamous for its role flying heroin and opium across Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). Refined in a laboratory at the
C.I.A.’s headquarters in northern Laos,106 the C.I.A.’s drug running operations were undertaken to line the pockets of, and sway favor with, local allies, leading to an outbreak of addiction among American G.I.’s.107 To keep this army secret from Congress and the American people, multiple covers were created for the 2,000 Americans directly involved,108 including U.S. personnel working, on paper at least, as embassy attaches, and the C.I.A.’s Air America pilots contracting for USAID,109 fighting a war under the guise of development assistance. Americans killed in Laos were recorded as having died in neighboring Vietnam.110

  As their campaign against the Pathet Lao increased, the C.I.A. peppered the country with landing strips, hangars, radar installations, barrack buildings, etc.,111 to the extent that one secret base became the second largest city in Laos—an indication of just how underdeveloped, in an industrial sense, the country was; so much so that inhabitants of some villages were unaware they had a government. Loyalty in such remote regions was to the village or tribe, an allegiance cynically exploited by the C.I.A., who began recruiting local warriors “through money and/or the threat or use of force and/or promises of independent kingdoms which it had no intention of fulfilling, and then keeping them fighting long beyond the point when they wished to stop.”112 The most wanton exploitation of the populace began, where entire tribes were relocated; thousands of people, whole villages at a time, turfed out of their territories to cater for the C.I.A.’s strategic needs.113

  Despite the offensive by the U.S. and its mercenary forces, the Pathet Lao got the upper hand and, according to a U.S. government assessment, by the spring of 1961 “appeared to be in a position to take over the entire country.”114 Its policy in disarray, The United States agreed to attend a multination conference in Geneva in July 1962, aimed at securing an accord. Under newly elected President Kennedy, who described Laos as a country not “worthy of engaging the attention of great powers,”115 a settlement was signed, but this quickly broke down after both sides violated the agreement, leading to resumed fighting. After Kennedy’s assassination the following year, the Laotian coalition government was overthrown, and the C.I.A.’s old favorite, Phoumi Nosavan, rose to the forefront of a rightist executive excluding the Pathet Lao.116 The ferocity of fighting increased, with the Pathet Lao making sizable gains. It was now that the U.S. bombing began; a campaign of unimaginable ferocity that between 1964 and 1973 saw the U.S. carry out a staggering 580,344 bombing missions117 which equates to a plane load of bombs dropped on Laos every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years.118