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Because of the mountainous terrain and thick jungles, rivers are the "main roads" in Laos. Everybody knows how to handle themselves on a boat on the river. Life is lived, and dictated, by the river. For the next three days, Ing, Noy and I were heading down the Nam Hin River and staying in local villages along the way.
Water means life. You can drink, use it to irrigate crops and fish are abundant in it. Rivers tend to follow the path of least resistance as they travel downstream, but in times of flood, the contain tremendous force; force enough to create floodplains. It is here on the banks of the river where there is relatively flat land that the villages are found.
Although there were plenty of times that we drifted and kayaked through completely uninhabited sections of mountains and river, there were also plenty of times when there seemed to one tiny village after another!
Here was a place that I expected Indiana Jones from the Raiders of the Lost Ark to appear; his seaplane could easily have been anchored just around the corner while he was escaping the rolling ball! But it was also a place where the haunting music from The Mission could be echoing round the mountains.
When we landed at the beach beneath the village we were staying at, the children were incredibly shy. Every now and again, you saw some eyes from behind a fence, or a face suddenly disappear from view. This was a place where kids hadn't really seen too many white faces! But it doesn't take long to forge a bond and get them to play! Not long after a playing an extended game of me trying to catch them, with all the adults and elders cheering us on from their verandahs, we were swimming in the river together. Them trying to mimic my bomb drops and somersaults rolls and us marveling at how pure a lifestyle that these kids had!
Even though we had a blast with the kids; swimming with them and chasing them and bringing out a ball to play with them, we were reminded of a more serious topic. On the banks of the river was an old 500 pound bomb casing slowly rusting away. This is a pretty big bomb. The casing stands six feet tall and is about a foot wide. It is capable of making a five feet deep, ten foot wide crater in the ground. One B-52 bomber can drop sixty of these in one go!
Out here the Vietnam War is known as the American War. The Americans were seen as invaders that were eventually beaten off. Through the very heart of Laos was the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was a series of roads, trails, paths that the Northern Vietnamese used to transport everything do to the battle areas in the south. Although the Viet Cong denied its existence. The Americans dropped about 15million tons of explosive ordnance the trail over the course of the war. It is said that at one time, the Americans flew 900 sorties a day to try and put this trail out of action! They denied ever overflying, and even bombing Laos. Laos was officially not part of the war between the US and the VC.
But now, there is an estimated 280kg of unexploded ordnance (UEO) for every person is Laos today and there are plenty of places where you must remain on the worn path at all times because of the potential UEO! That is scary. What puts it into frightening perspective is that since 1975 36 000 have died from this UEO and countless more are maimed every year. There are plenty of NGO's clearing the land, but it is painfully slow work in the middle of nowhere.
Even our guide told us of his father who was a soldier in that war; of his uncle killed by Americans and of his mother who still suffers from injuries that she received. Noy told us that the older generation's families had many missing people who had gone off to fight and who never came back.
Although the day had been awesome (how often can you go to a part of the world where it feels like you are the only people there and nobody has been before you?), it ended on a somber note recalling the stupidity and futility of war.
Out here, you generally sleep when the sun goes and when the animals start to wake. The villagers have learnt that it is best to build your house on stilts. That way when the floods come, they sweep underneath you causing no lasting damage. But when it is dry, the animals sleep here. Water buffaloes, cattle, dogs, pigs, cats and chickens. Morning is started with a symphony of animal calls just beneath your bed. As you doze on the verandah in the dawn light under the mossie net, you can hear the village menagerie begin.
So much for a lie in! The fact that the verandah of any house is the main focally point of the family also means that when they are up, you are up!
Even though we didn't get going in the Sunday morning monsoon rain, it didn't mean that the fishermen, farmers, hunters and monks were not going about their business. It was just school that was shut. But every school is shut on a Sunday anyway!
But like any place, anywhere in the world, Sundays are always a slow start and this village was no exception. So it was with complete pleasure that I was greeting the inhabitants of the houses that I walked past and recognized the faces of the kids that we played with yesterday. It was truly like I was on a National Geographic assignment. The rain clouds were swirling around the mountains that bordered on the river and the rain that continually fell made a stunning backdrop to an out of world experience. And far off in the distance, amidst the rolls and claps of thunder, I heard the music from The Mission. La-la, leh-la-la-la, deh-da-dum-dum………
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