Another Quiet American

by Brett Dakin

  Or so it seemed. Route 13 remained off-limits to all employees of UN agencies and foreign embassies. These same institutions had also declared the national airline, Lao Aviation, unsafe, so it was essentially impossible for most expats to travel north of Vientiane without getting someone in trouble. Development aid workers, already reluctant to leave behind the comforts of the capital—with its Italian restaurants, imported French camembert, and air-conditioning—had even less motivation to get out of Vientiane.

  UNDP employees working on provincial aid projects hadn’t even seen the areas they were charged with developing; their knowledge was limited to what they read in the project documents and feasibility studies that lined their office bookshelves. No one really had any idea what was going on outside of the capital. Every so often, reports of bandit attacks and gruesome traffic accidents would trickle down the Mekong from the northern provinces and onto the Vientiane grapevine. In the absence of any reliable information from the state media, and without a free press to turn to, foreign residents in the capital found themselves chasing desperately after these small drops of information. Living in Vientiane, we were cut off from current affairs not only in the rest of the world, but in the rest of the country as well. A rancher in Amarillo had a better chance of being informed about goings-on in Northern Laos than did the average Vientiane resident. The capital’s news vacuum allowed us to go about our lives as normal, blissfully unaware that innocent citizens were being killed elsewhere in the country. Often, Party officials were among the last to know; even in 1999, entire swathes of the country remained outside the grasp of the central government’s control.

  The only way to get to some of Laos’ most remote provinces was by helicopter, which wasn’t always an inviting prospect. A few years before, the Lao Women’s Union had organized a sightseeing trip for a group of ambassadors’ wives up to Huapanh, where Dan had been sent for re-education. Huapanh had been the cradle of the Lao communist movement, and when the Pathet Lao took over, there had even been talk of establishing a new national capital in the province. But today, the only reliable route to Huapanh was by helicopter—no regular air service was available, and the roads in the northeast remained barely passable. So the wives were piled into a Chinese-issue Lao People’s Army helicopter and sent on their way. The trip went smoothly enough until they approached Huapanh’s makeshift airport and found themselves in a fog so thick that the runway wasn’t even visible. As the pilot circled, waiting for an opening, rumor spread among the wives that the gas was about to run out. Panic hit. The Union officials appealed for calm, but the women were hysterical. Some began to scream. Eventually, the pilot gave up, turned around, and flew back to Vientiane. Better luck next time, the wives were told.

  As I wasn’t associated with the UN or any other legitimate outfit, the only restriction on my travel was my calculation of the risk involved. Having spent the summer on the highways of the US, cowering in the shadows of the 18-wheeler trucks that regularly hurtled past my small sedan, I figured Route 13 couldn’t be so bad.

  The day before we left for Sainyabuli, Khit had told me that the NTA van would swing by my house at six o’clock in the morning to pick me up. I woke up just in time to leave at this ungodly hour—I didn’t want to miss the van. Who knew when I’d have another opportunity to travel north? I sat outside my front door and watched as an elderly man from my village took advantage of the cool early morning breeze to perform his daily exercises inside the grounds of the temple across the street, and waited. Six o’clock came and went. I paced back and forth in my living room, and waited. Seven o’clock came and went. I walked out to the main road to make sure the NTA crew hadn’t missed the turn, and waited some more. . . .

  Finally, at 7:45, my blessed chariot arrived, barreling down the small alley that passed for my street. Without further ado, we set off north.

  Once you pass Vientiane’s airport, any signs of urban life quickly disappear, and all that can be seen for miles around are large expanses of green. As soon as we hit Route 13, our driver, Noxay, put the pedal to the metal. Noxay was a quiet man but absolutely ruthless behind the wheel; he stopped for nothing and no one. Whenever a child, cow, dog, or chicken so much as approached the center of the road, he blew his horn and raced on through. Oblivious to the chaos outside, Khit popped a cassette of his favorite Lao comedy performance into the car stereo.

  This sketch involved only a single joke, but it managed to sustain the comedians for hours and to send my colleagues into hysterics. It consisted of a dialogue between two characters, a Lao man and a visiting foreigner, a falang, who spoke broken Lao in an absurdly nasal voice. The hilarity resulted from the tendency of the foreigner to mix up the pronunciation of the words meuai—“tired,” and moi—“pubic hair.” You see, in Lao, the word lai means both “very” and “a lot.” So if you don’t watch out, you might end up saying something truly uproarious like “I have a lot of pubic hair” when what you meant to say was “I am very tired.” This joke re-surfaced as a constant refrain throughout our trip, only increasing my desire to say that I was very tired.

  In the van, I managed to tune out Laos’ own Two Ronnies and turn my attention instead to the extraordinary scenery. As the road climbed up into the mountains, an occasional limestone karst would jut unexpectedly out of the landscape. Forested hills sheltered small village communities whose way of life seemed to have remained unchanged since well before the French first laid the groundwork for Route 13. This was a fragile environment, and I could feel the specter of development encroaching on its pristine beauty. But not just yet. Today there were only a handful of vehicles on the road: rickety trucks transporting goods, and large passenger pick-ups to which wooden benches had been precariously attached.

  As I was shifting in my own comfortably padded seat to get a better view of the countryside, I felt something sharp and metal dig into my ankle. I checked under the seat and found a Lao People’s Army AK-47 resting on the floor near my feet. Khit noticed my surprise from the front seat and gave me a silent wink. This wasn’t the last weapon I’d see on Route 13.

  Just then, the van abruptly slowed down. Up ahead, a soldier standing by the side of the road had signaled for us to stop. He was dressed in a basic green uniform, torn at the seams, and wore sandals rather than proper boots. A rifle was slung over his shoulder, but he seemed very young. As we approached, I grew worried; he looked more like my idea of a bandit than a member of the Lao People’s Army. What did he want with us? I wondered. Khit and Noxay, on the other hand, weren’t the least bit fazed. After we stopped, they warmly greeted the soldier and pulled him into the van! The soldier gave me a quick nod and a polite smile, and took a seat. Stranded without any means of transportation, he had just needed a ride up Route 13.

  All along the road, in fact, soldiers were policing the troubled route. When the second soldier flagged us down, though, I remained wary. I worried about my immigration status; my visa had run out the week before, and my passport was stuck in Vientiane, hopefully in the hands of a well-intentioned Foreign Affairs bureaucrat. What if this soldier asked for my papers? But I had nothing to fear. We gave him a ride as well, and he barely noticed me sitting quietly in the back corner of the van. By the time we picked up the third hitchhiking soldier, all I had to worry about was holding on to my place in the van.

  Whenever we encountered a soldier along the way to Sainyabuli, even if he didn’t flag us down, Noxay and Khit would invariably stop, offer words of encouragement, and hand out a few packs of cigarettes. Was their magnanimity a manifestation of Lao patriotism of the most genuine sort? I wondered. Or was it a result of the strong military connection between General Cheng at the NTA and the Lao People’s Army? In the end, I decided it was simply a way for my colleagues to smooth the path to our destination. Considering what we all knew about possible bandit attacks, and the crumbling condition of the pavement beneath us, we certainly didn’t need any more unexpected bumps along the way.

  By the time noon
rolled around, we were hungry. But not many people lived along Route 13, and finding a place for lunch was an almost insurmountable challenge. The few restaurants we encountered along the road were either closed or had simply run out of food. Eventually we came to a small shack just beside a waterfall that acted as the shower, swimming pool, and communal sink for nearby villagers. Inside, a woman of at least seventy and her daughter relaxed on the bamboo mats that lined the floor. They were happy to offer us a meal, but they weren’t about to prepare it for us. It was long past lunchtime, and they were finished working. “Baw pen nyang,” we said. “No problem.” Khit simply commandeered the kitchen and set about preparing a marvelous meal of tam mak hong, a spicy papaya salad, omelets, and fresh sticky rice.

  As we devoured this small feast, our talk unexpectedly veered into the realm of the political. Most conversations in Laos stuck strictly to the mundane; politics was an area you never ventured into. But there were ways to get people to express their thoughts on the matter. This time, when I attempted to use the official Lao term for “socialism” in a sentence, I unintentionally confounded my colleagues. They didn’t know what I was talking about. When I whipped out my handy Lao-English dictionary and vocabulary notebook, a simple Lao-language lesson evolved into a discussion of the central concepts in modern political life. Communism, capitalism, socialism, democracy—what did they all really mean?

  “What is capitalism?” I asked.

  “It means rich, like America!” Khit responded.

  “And what about communism?”

  “Oh, that means poor, very poor.”

  Khit’s equation of communism with dire poverty struck me as interesting. Wasn’t the government committed, at least on paper, to bettering the lives of its citizens through the socialist experiment? Was Khit, a member of the Party and an officer in the army—arguing that Laos was consigned to a future of poverty under the communist system? I wondered what his boss, General Cheng, would think of that. Wisely, I decided not to pursue this line of questioning, and instead continued to munch away. If you ask too many questions, people quickly stop talking.

  ___

  The banditry problem along Route 13 might have been solved, but that didn’t mean a trip on the road was risk-free. Route 13 was an endless series of sharp curves twisting through the mountains of Central and Northern Laos. This was a two-way road with only one lane, and it was often impossible to see who was coming around the bend from the opposite direction. After we had finished lunch and were back on the road, we picked up a soldier who had heard from a number of vehicles traveling south that there had been a serious accident up ahead. He needed to see the crash for himself, but had no means to reach it.

  At the site of the accident, we came upon a huge truck turned completely on its side. Cartons of cigarettes, the truck’s cargo, littered the road. A demolished motorbike lay in the center of the road. Any human victims were nowhere to be seen. We stopped to gawk, take photographs, murmur our disbelief, commiserate with the responsible soldier—and “shoot the rabbit,” the Lao euphemism for relieving oneself in the bush. Presently, the soldier, doubling as a policeman, wrote up his official report. A report? I wanted to ask. What could possibly be the point? It probably wouldn’t even be filed for weeks. But I knew that the soldier was just doing the best he could with next to nothing. His predicament mirrored that facing most police officials in Laos, who had neither the resources nor the motivation to effectively control crime. When motorbikes were stolen in Vientiane, the police were often the last to know. Citizens knew that reporting crimes was almost always a waste of time—all that would come of it was an official report.

  We left the soldier alone at the site and got back on the road. Soon enough, the signposts announced that we were approaching the vicinity of Kasi, the sight of so many a fabled bandit attack. I instinctively slouched in my seat and prepared for the worst. I usually take official travel advisory warnings lightly; surely it’s more dangerous to drive on the Beltway in suburban Virginia than to travel most places in the world. But now, as Kasi neared, I wondered if I perhaps I’d been too cavalier; my encounter with Laos’ finest had hardly increased my faith in the security of the road. What if something did happen? Would anyone in Vientiane, let alone back home in America, ever even find out? Was my fate to be decided here, in this no-name roadside town in Northern Laos? By the time I calmed down again, Kasi was long gone. We soon reached Luang Prabang, and Route 13 came to an end.

  At the former royal capital, without so much as a break in this recently designated World Heritage Site, we turned on to a far smaller road that veered west and ended abruptly at the Mekong. Bridges had not yet reached this part of the world. On the eastern bank of the river we encountered a small ferry that would take us across. Though there were no cars in sight, the listless ferry operator insisted that we wait until the boat was completely full before making the one-minute journey to the other side.

  On the western bank, Khit informed me that we had arrived in Sainyabuli. Like any good student, I had done my reading, and knew that the province had a population of about 300,000 and lay between Thailand to the west and Vientiane and Luang Prabang to the east. It was Laos’ “rice basket,” producing indispensable crops like cotton, peanuts, and tamarind. Though it shared a border with six different Thai provinces, Sainyabuli was considered one of the most remote provinces in Laos.

  Remote, yes, but Sainyabuli had never been the most peaceful of provinces. The frontier with Thailand had been a perpetual trouble spot for the Lao government, and in 1987 a dispute over the location of the border exploded into a full-fledged military conflict between the two nations. The Lao pointed to a 1960 American map claiming that the border followed one part of the Nam Heuang River, an offshoot of the Mekong, while the Thais cited a 1908 French map identifying a different branch as the border. When Lao troops arrived in the disputed territory—an area of 77 square kilometers—the Thais responded with air strikes. More than 100 Thai and Lao soldiers died in the ensuing battle, which ended when a compromise border was fixed in 1988.

  Sainyabuli was also a base for an insurgency group named Chao Fa, or “Lords of the Sky.” The insurgents belonged to the Hmong minority, members of which had fought against the communists with the backing of the CIA during the Vietnam War. Twenty years later, some were still fighting. With anti-government groups roaming its hills and problems like illegal drugs and timber smuggling plaguing its borders, it’s no wonder the Lao government considered the province insecure. Foreigners weren’t exactly encouraged to visit Sainyabuli. That’s not to say that visitors were clamoring to get in; Sainyabuli didn’t have much to offer the average tourist. The ancient Khmer Empire had never reached the province, so no ruins were left behind. It was never a cultural or political center under the Lan Xang Kingdom. And the French seem to have forgotten that Sainyabuli even existed—no Route Coloniale led here. At the NTA, when I had been asked to write a brochure about Sainyabuli, I’d been at a loss. Turning to my colleagues for assistance, I was met with blank stares. “Sainyabuli. . . ? I’m sorry, Mr. Brett, I can’t help. I’ve never been.”

  But what Sainyabuli did have was some of the country’s most extraordinary natural beauty. A 100-square kilometer National Biodiversity Conversation Area sat at the western edge of the province. According to international environmental groups based in Vientiane, the area contained such rare animals as rhino, gibbon, and tigers. Of course, none of this unsullied nature was accessible to the average visitor, but it was nice to know it was there. As we made our way along the empty road leading into the provincial capital, I noticed a vast rocky limestone outcrop in the distance, the façade of which vaguely resembled a pair of walking elephants. This was Sainyabuli’s famous Pha Xang, or Elephant Cliffs. The province was said to be home to more elephants than any other in Laos. Did these two towering edifices count?

  The capital of Sainyabuli was a ghost of a town on the banks of small tributary of the Mekong. It was home to only one proper
restaurant, perhaps two guest-houses, a post office, and a nightclub. Only in Laos would a place like this be considered a provincial capital. The only other out-of-town visitors seemed to be a group of soldiers from the surrounding countryside, happy to be in the “city” for a break from their policing duties out in the sticks. There were no foreign tourists to be found.

  My colleagues and I stayed in Sainyabuli’s recently constructed government hotel, which was off-limits to the general public. The hotel was open only to the official delegations from Vientiane that occasionally drifted through and needed a place to stay. The white marble floors and shiny new plastic sofas in the lobby could not disguise the fact that this was merely a skeleton of a hostelry. If the place had regular employees, I never encountered any of them. Upon arrival we were left to fend for ourselves. There were no towels, no toilet paper, no electricity, and no running water. I shared a room with Khit, and as we unpacked, he proudly displayed his ubiquitous handgun. At least I’d be safe, I thought.

  ___

  At noon the next day, we drove a few kilometers outside of town to one of Sainyabuli’s genuine attractions, Tad Jaew Waterfall. The falls, about thirty meters high, sat at a bend in the Mekong that afforded one of the most spectacular views of the river in Laos. The spray from the cascading water provided some welcome relief on this hot day. After we had finished admiring the landscape, we sat down for a picnic lunch prepared by the staff of Sainyabuli provincial office. Soon enough, we were joined by none other than General Cheng. The peripatetic general had a habit of popping up at official functions around the country at the very last moment. As he never actually traveled with the NTA staff, it was often a mystery to me how he arrived. But, regardless of how remote the location, he never failed to show up. It was no wonder he never had time for our English lessons back in Vientiane. This time, I noticed his personal four-wheel drive parked off in the distance. His driver, Oudom, was busy washing off the dust and mud from the car with water from a nearby stream.