by Jon Swain
Today, Bizot lives with his beautiful new family in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. He lives his own life in a magnificent teak house on stilts, which he built as the Southeast Asia headquarters of the École Française d’Extrème Orient, and works on his Buddhist texts and manuscripts with as much diligence as ever.
We were sitting on his wide verandah overlooking the Ping river; his two boxer dogs sprawled at our feet. In the next door room two old Khmer monks were bent over their palm-leaf scrolls. They looked as old as the scrolls they were translating. The late afternoon hush was broken only by low chanting and the chatter of insects. It might well have been a temple compound in the now lost world of Phnom Penh. As night descended like a curtain on the house, we agreed that, wherever life sent us, the lands of the Mekong would be our spiritual home; the place by which we measured our happiness. And in a changing world, it is the Mekong, the main artery and lifeline of this corner of Southeast Asia, that provides the continuity with our past.
Some rivers are so still, so complacent, so dead that they leave one’s heart indifferent. The Mekong is not one of them. To see it in full spate as it thunders over the Koh Khong falls in a welter of foam in the rainy season, is to know its awesome power; I have never been able to stand on its tall banks and look down at its great sweep of moving water without the urge to go round the next bend to explore the wonders that may be in store.
During the war, such exploration was obviously not feasible; nowadays, it can still be hazardous in the extreme. The war is over, and yet it is not really over. Cambodia is still dangerously unsettled. There is little sign of a resurrection and it may never be able to wash out the blood from its history. Laos has finally emerged from its years of communist Pathet Lao-induced coma, but mourns its royal family, dead in a re-education camp. There is banditry in the wilder jungles of the country. In Vietnam there is still a schism between the people of the old communist north and the defeated south.
I have travelled hundreds of miles on the Mekong, from the clutter of Phnom Penh to where it crosses the border into Laos. Further north, I have travelled almost the entire length of the majestic stretch flowing from the Chinese border. For miles, the Mekong cuts through steep-sided hills before arriving at the dreamy, unspoilt former royal capital, Luang Prabang. I have journeyed too, on its lower reaches where it flows steadily through Vietnam towards the South China Sea. Here and there, I thought I caught a glimpse of what those early French explorers might have seen one hundred years ago, as they battled their way upriver with extraordinary energy and courage in search of a new river road to southern China.
The Mekong can never again be the savage river it was in the epoch of those tough explorers. Materialism and mass tourism have intruded with their fateful touch; one has to go a long way now to hear parakeets calling to the moon or a panther crying to its mate in the jungle, as Henri Mouhot describes in his diaries. Mouhot wrote: ‘If I must die here, where so many other wanderers have left their bones, I shall be ready when my hour comes.’
On 15 October 1861, he set off for Luang Prabang on the banks of the Mekong. A diary entry four days later reads, ‘Attacked by fever.’ His final entry was written on 29 October. ‘Have pity on me, oh my God . . .’ it says. Mouhot was buried where he died on the banks of the Nan river, a tributary of the Mekong, a few miles from Luang Prabang. His faithful dog Tin-Tine was later found howling over his grave.
I remember one river journey in Cambodia. The evening shadows were falling and the orange light of the setting sun was turning grey. Soon there would be nothing; sky and river would be blotted out. But in that light the Mekong was everything a tropical river should be. On its banks, at intervals, were traces of village life. Fishing is the breath of life to Indo-China, and fishermen were pulling in their nets as they have done for centuries, at the end of the day’s catch. Their boats, hollowed tree-trunks of canoes, rocked up and down in the waves. Kingfishers darted over the swollen waters.
Nature spoke with nightfall. From a thousand arbours in the forest came the hum of insects. Then darkness dropped. The silence became complete. The moon rose and crept through the clouds, its shifting light forming obscure patterns on the waters. I felt the river carrying my body on a current of happiness. A host of memories passed before my eyes: strolls by moonlight through the temples of Angkor; the warmth and smile of a child’s face. Aspects of Cambodia which are true and good. I always hope that the perfect combination of time, place and love that made Indo-China unique, a Paradise for me, will come together again. I am ever hopeful, but how difficult it is to believe that it ever can.
Acknowledgements
River of Time would have been harder to achieve without the help of many people. I am indebted to François Bizot and his enchanting family. Bizot, who has kept faithful to the best French ideals in Indo-China, lent me his beautiful house on the Ping river in Chiang Mai to write. My thanks go, too, to Xandra Hardie, my agent, and Tom Weldon, my editor at Heinemann, for their encouragement and perseverance. Acknowledgement is due to the Sunday Times in which some passages first appeared. I particularly appreciate the help and support of Josceline Dimbleby, who kept the book on course. I am grateful to numerous journalist colleagues and friends but must mention Donald A. Davis, William Shawcross, Lucretia Stewart, Tiziano and Angela Terzani in Bangkok and Nici Dahrendorf, who encouraged me to get this book started. My greatest debt is to Claudia, my wife, and Pia, my daughter, for their love, tolerance and understanding.
I would like to say here a special word about Michael Davis O’Donnell. There were days when covering the war in Vietnam was brightened by one individual. Captain O’Donnell, a helicopter pilot assigned to the First Aviation Brigade based at Dak To and Pleiku in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, was one such man. He is dead now. His helicopter was shot down on 24 March 1970, attempting to rescue eight American soldiers. He was an amateur poet who left behind a legacy of poetry which his friends at Camp Holloway were sensitive enough to save and give me.
Reading the slim booklet of his poems Letters from Pleiku for the first time on a chill morning as I waited for a chopper ride turned my day around. I have kept it with me ever since to remind myself of the simple truths that one American fighting man said about the Vietnam war. Because his poems meant so much to me and to others in Vietnam at that time I have included some of them in this book.
Finally, I would like to conclude with a personal note. I owe a great debt to several journalists who made, in my view, the time in Cambodia and Vietnam the silver-age of war reporting. I would like to single out particularly Donald Wise, Gavin Young, Don McCullin and the late Neil Davis, film cameraman, killed in a tinpot coup in Bangkok on 9 September 1985.
There are no simple truths about war reporting. But in his apartment during the Vietnam war Neil hung a plaque. ‘When you walk with me do not walk behind me for I may not always lead, do not walk in front of me for I may not always follow, walk beside me and be my friend.’ For me, it says it all.
APV,
London,
June 1995
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Copyright © 1995 by Jon Swain
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First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
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