Stray - Vang Vieng to Vientiane

We slowly perspired watching butterflies dance between flower buds in the early morning heat. Those who had gone tubing on the river yesterday, joined us nursing hangovers and injuries resulting from slipping in the wet conditions whilst drunk. Most quickly fell into a stupor as the bus bounced its way out of the town to the nearby Tham Jang caves.

We climbed up the 147 steps up to the caves in the thick air, which quickly cooled as we moved into the dark mouth of the entrance. Wandering between stalagmites and stalactites along a small pathway, lit in places by electric light, we came across a large stalactite that when hit echoed like a drum through the cavern. At the other end, the cave opened out onto a shelf in the cliff, giving views back across the rice paddy fields to Vang Vieng and beyond.

It was a long hot journey to the Lao capital, Vientiane, broken up by short breaks and a comedy moment when one the group, Vicky (a 31 year old British woman living in New Zealand), disclosed that she had been using a bidet hose to shower with. These hoses are attached to the wall next to the toilet cistern and are something we have come to use for the toileting and affectionately call ‘bum guns’. Vicky tried to explain through our laughter that she had done so because the actual shower had very little pressure and bum guns are by their nature fire powerful jets of water…

Once in Vientiane we visited the COPE Centre, a charity supporting victims of the legacy of the country’s ‘Secret War’. Prior to coming to Laos neither of us had ever heard of this war but were hugely saddened by what we learnt at the centre. Between 1965 and 1975, with the Vietnam War raging and the Viet Cong using the Ho Chi Minh trail that passed through Laos, the US military responded by dropping millions of bombs on Laos. This became known as the ‘Secret War’ as war against Laos was never formally declared by the U.S. Furthermore if the U.S. bombers could not locate their targets in Vietnam, they would drop their payloads on Laos because it was deemed too danger to land back at base with munitions still aboard.

This resulted in Laos now being the most bombed country in the world per capita, despite having never been at war with the U.S. More bombs were dropped on Laos during this time than all the bombs dropped by all sides during the Second World War. One third of the country was hit and an area of 87,000 km sq. remains contaminated by unexplored ordinances. Whilst work is being done to clear these areas, it is only currently possible at a rate of 40km sq. per year, leaving much land uninhabitable or unusable for agriculture. Unexploded ordinances continue to blind, maim and kill men, women, children and whole families. It was sobering experience and one we will not forget.

Afterwards we briefly toured the rest of the city, stopping at the Pha That Lang, Laos’ most sacred Buddist site, and the Patuxai, Vientiane’s version of the Arc de Triomphe. The Patuxai was built to celebrate the departure of French colonial rulers, using money the U.S. had given Laos to build airfields for its bombers against Vietnam (probably another reason the U.S. felt they could carpet bomb the country).Read more