Men with thongs and gunsJan 3, 2004
|
|
| We noticed on the bus ride from Vientien to Van Vieng that I silent rather vicios looking individuial sat in the back corner of the bus with a loaded double barrelled semiautomatic rifle and stared fixedly out of the window. Naturally, we were a little disturbed. When again today on the trip to Phonosavan there was another such man we were sure it was because of the Hmong rebels who through US funding lead a campaign of terror against the local population by intermittently slaughtering entire bus loads of people in isolated spots high in the mountains. Apparently they had recently carried out just such an act in order to unstabilise the communist government, so the little thong wearing guard had once again on long distance buses become necessary. At one point a whole troop of thonged soldiers flip-flopped onto the bus and undertook an inspection of papers and passports, before sitting down on the bus and singing along to the Thai pop tunes which blair from the speakers of every vehicle. Bus travel is slow in Laos not merely because the roads are terrible but rather chiefly because the Annamite chain, which are the Himalayian foothills, runs through the country dividing the southern Bolevan plateau from the mountainous North. It is for this reason that the French did not lay any railway track during their rule. Herein also lies the cause for the comparative underdevelopment of Laos as a French colony: the extremely mountainous terrain meant that the land was in the main agriculturally unsuitable. It was maintained merely as a buffer between the chief French possession, Vietnam, and British Indo-China. Anyway this 300km bus trip was excrutiating slow. The bus lurched left and right, hugging the mountain side on trechorous curves. Stomaches turned and with each swing to either side streams of vomit swished and spalshed up and down the bus aisles in seemingly especially installed gunnels. I thought I was going to die- a martyr to Shane's desire to see a bunch of stones or jam jars or something. |
Advertisement 
|
