M and I were in Laos, the Soviet way of doing things was still being preserved in the system of vouchers, chits, and receipts employed at every opportunity, such as in what should be the simple matter of getting breakfast in the auditorium-like dining hall (“Performance from 0600 hrs,” with riverfront roosters to ensure that we were there with time to spare). But then, to be fair, there were still everyday French cultural traits to observe. Yes, yes, baguettes — everybody always mentions the damn baguettes. More telling, because they indicate a style of administration rather than a quirk of cuisine, are the small red speed-limit signs, exactly like those in France. While I wandered about, M was trying to grapple with such matters as the carefully guarded minor distinctions between the programmes of, on the one hand, La Maison du Patrimoine and, on the other, those of L’ecole française Hoffet, which in this city of perhaps 160,000 people has 230 students enrolled in French-language classes. Both institutions are supposed to be operating at arm’s length from the French embassy.
My desire was to go north to the Plain of Jars, which is said to be the most heavily bombed spot on Earth: not in terms of lives lost or the level of destruction, as in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Dresden, for it is a sparsely populated place, but rather in terms of the sheer tonnage of ordnance that the United States dropped there between 1964 and 1975 — on a country that was officially neutral, mind you. I was eager to see it, not merely because I remembered when it was very much in the news, but also because it is an important archaeological site, the most tangible reminder of a lost (and therefore mysterious) civilization, which French ethnographers and other scholars had studied for generations. What’s more, it is a centre of one of the best-known ethnic minorities of Southeast Asia: the Hmong. Like their fellow mountain people, the Montagnards, the Hmong were fierce warriors who, while seeking autonomy, fought on the side of the French, first against the Japanese, then the Viet Minh, and later still on the side of the Americans against the North Vietnamese: an integral part of the CIA’s famously “secret war.” Their commander, Vang Pao (1929−2011), once a sergeant in the French army, later a nominal general in the Royal Lao Army, built and trained a guerrilla force of about forty thousand. William Colby, who headed the CIA in the mid-1970s, went so far as to call him “the biggest hero of the Vietnam War.” When he died, in exile in the United States, the Economist labelled him, without complete accuracy, the “Montagnard Moses.”
While still in Vientiane, waiting for our connection upcountry, M and I found a tiny so-called antique shop named Indochine, its name another proof that the term has become current again after shucking off decades of negative connotation, at least when divorced from France in particular. We had little doubt we’d find much detritus of French colonialism and thus benefit from a few minutes’ tactile understanding of the old empire. No, the shop was chockablock with broken picture frames and purported silver flatware made of aluminium. And there was a bin full of cigarette lighters: replicas, shall we say, of the sort purchased by uncountable numbers of American soldiers and marines during the Vietnam War. They were universally called Zippos, after the Zippo Manufacturing Company of Bradford, Pennsylvania. During General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation of Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, zippo actually became the Japanese word for cigarette lighter, but the things were even more ubiquitous among the next generation of U.S. troops in Asia. Such lighters were available at every PX (post exchange) at $1.80 apiece. Ten million American military and naval personnel served in the former French Indochina during the American War. Many hundreds of thousands of them carried Zippos, which curbside artists would engrave for them with regimental crests or, more commonly, with protest slogans, to be kept in one’s pocket, out of sight.
The wording on these ranged from bellicosity to bravado to well articulated fear. Examples include: GIVE ME YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS OR I WILL WRECK YOUR FUCKING HUT; STOLEN FROM A GOOK 5 11 67; 35 KILLS IF YOU'RE RECOVERING MY BODY FUCK YOU; and WHEN I DIE I'LL GO TO HEAVEN BECAUSE I'VE SPENT MY TIME IN HELL. Inevitably, there would be occasional outbreaks of complete nihilism as well, as with a Zippo that bears the following sentiment: FUCK HO CHI MINH/FUCK COMMUNISM/FUCK DEMOCRACY/FUCK UNCLE HO/FUCK UNCLE SAM/FUCK LBJ/FUCK V.C./FUCK SANTA CLAUSE [SIC], FUCK YOU TOO. I take these representative texts from Sherry Buchanan, an independent scholar who studied important U.S. collections of the genuine article for her excellent book, Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories 1965–1973, which we could tell instantly the ones at Indochine were not, being made of the cheapest tin rather than steel and with the wording stencilled not engraved.
Browsing in the shop, M and I could see the two apparent co-proprietors in the back room watching television cartoons, one on the sofa, and the other on a straw mat on the floor. We had been there quite some time before the latter bestirred himself to welcome us. He was Vietnamese, by ethnicity if not by nationality. As about one-third of the people in Vientiane are Thais, this made him a second-tier minority. His eyes were mournful. He was in his twenties and had some English, whereas his much older partner (they’re cousins, we discovered) spoke a little Russian.
And here lies the practical lesson we learned in Vientiane and took with us upcountry. Everyone in Laos seems to have a bit of a second language. With young people it’s English, with their parents it’s Russian, and with their grandparents it’s French. “Listen,” I said to M, who had never been in the region before. “When it looks like we’re getting into trouble — and we may well — I’ll grab the first kid I see and you find a grandmother quick.” I pass along this travel tip. It worked every time.
— THE MELTING BUDDHA —
The nearest town to the Plain of Jars is Phonsavan in Xieng Khuang province. There are two ways to get there from Vientiane. You can take Highway 13 north for 350 kilometres or so before turning east on Highway 7. About midway between Vientiane and the turnoff is Vang Vieng. On first acquaintance the place pleases you with the way it’s been kneaded in among the green-covered karst mountains. But it shocks you with its bigness as you’ve been passing through so many villages and hamlets along the way. They have names such Ban Phonmuang, Ban Senxum, and Ban Nammuang. Ban means village or simply dwelling. These are little brownish places, usually on some stream or river, with industrious but unhurried people (and animals). Laos has the lowest population density in Southeast Asia and one of the slowest metabolisms.
Vang Vieng is far enough south that it might be called the point at which the north begins. This is one factor that fills it with Western backpackers, including thrill-seekers hoping to be sold opium or lesser drugs. Or greater ones for that matter, such as, if reports are to be believed, powerful machine-rolled marijuana cigarettes soaked in liquefied heroin. These were one of the commodities that used to be available to American troops in Vietnam, presumably part of some secret North Vietnamese attempt to further demoralize them. Few activities are more dangerously illegal than drug-taking in Southeast Asia, but the practice continues all the same, despite constant pressure from the United States and some of its allies. (Other allies have begun to rethink the issue, given that 40 percent of the population of Laos are tribal people and that many of them are dependent on opium, which is a commodity in decline in the face of amphetamines — which the Lao call by the Thai name, yaa baa or “craziness drug.”) Young Westerners, particularly those who push farther north and try not to stand out too starkly, have been known to lose all track of time. Doing so, they court a second kind of trouble, as long overstaying one’s visa is another of the most felonious crimes under the Lao criminal code, which has existed only since 1990.
The alternative way of getting to Phonsavan from the capital is to fly in on a reconditioned Twin Otter. I passed on to M the warning not to be alarmed if the cabin suddenly filled with dark grey smoke, for that would be nothing more than the air conditioner catching fire again. The pilot followed the mountaintops, climbing and descending according to the height of each successive range. Every few minutes we would break out of cloud cover and see an ochre-coloured serpentine river twisted out of shape and getting smaller. At long intervals there would be a tiny village on the concave side of an elbow. The mountain ridges looked like sharp pieces of
