HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (4)

 

                                    HITCH-HIKING IN LAOS (4)

It was a jolly ride, sitting atop the load of rice bags as we passed primitive frontier outposts where a soldier and his family, living in a pole shack at the end of a bridge, would be its only security. Several of the bridges were recently blown, and we'd have to leave the road and drive through the woods until we came to a ford. It was all the same to the driver; he'd bounce along through the trees until he got back on the main road, then drive like hell for the next crossing.

     The mood of the countryside began to change. There were more outposts, with more barbed wire and revetments, and more soldiers with weapons more in evidence.

     Toward evening one of the truck's tires blew out, and we all piled out while I helped the driver change tires. The driver and the other two Laotians in the cab reminded me of the truckers I'd worked with in Colorado Springs the summer before, the way they sweated and cursed and laughed as we were changing the tire.

     Soon after that we stopped for a meal in a roadside village. The open-front, weathered board building where we ate must have been the rural Laotian equivalent of a truck stop. The women who worked there seemed to be three generations of the same family. They looked at Manyon and me with some curiosity, but when we smiled and said "merci" and made the traditional gesture of hands together under the chin, bowing slightly, they became open and very friendly. We had some strips of boiled meat – maybe pork - and some ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..        [NOTE IN 2014: Re-reading this passage about relating to rural Laotians in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war going on right next door (and, really, all around us: branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail crossed our path more than once.), I am struck more strongly now than I was while I was there in Laos. As I wrote this chapter, we were on our way to a place where we’d have a closer look at NVA-occupied territory. At the time, I was preoccupied with walking under, and through, a triple canopy jungle at night in the rain./Another thing strikes me powerfully now, that maybe only occurred as a faint glimmer then: the people we spent those days with – the truckers, and the family who ran the truck stop – had to have known what the other Americans were doing in their country. They lived with it every day, in the form of bombardments, covert and not-so-covert troop movements, Air America gunships strafing NVA positions and troop columns in their neighborhoods… of course they knew. But once we treated them with courtesy and respect –- not to mention helping with the work of changing the truck tire -– they were no longer enemies. In fact, they were friends. The proprietress told her teen-aged daughter to sit beside me and talk, with the few words of English at her disposal, and offer me a glass of tea. Many US veterans of that war, especially those most involved in close combat, never had the chance to see the “other side” of the people among whom we lived and moved. Or didn’t know where, or how, to look. PLEASE SEE WAYNE KARLIN’S EXCELLENT BOOK, “WANDERING SOULS.”   )……………………………………………………………..] ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

(CONTINUED FROM ABOVE) foul-smelling soup with animal parts floating in it, and the glutinous rice they always had that you grabbed a handful of and rolled into a sticky ball and ate like a candy bar. In fact, you ate everything with your hands except the soup.      

     Julian Manyon would have none of it. He was quite sure that his digestive system couldn't handle such strange food. In fact, there were many times during the trip when I had to laugh at how utterly out of place he was in a primitive situation. There were even a couple of times - like when we were with the army outside THAKKEK  - when I would roundly curse him for it.     

     I offered, not too insistently, to help pay for the meal, but the driver wouldn't accept. I think he'd been pleased by my helping with the tire change, and then when we'd finished and were all thirsty, I'd broken out two canteens of water and passed them around. Also, he could see that we weren't rich tourists, and he didn't feel compelled to make a profit from hauling us. In fact, this was something we were to notice several times - the business of paying what you could afford.

     On the little bus that had brought us into PAKSE  from the south, there was a wrinkled old man who had walked out of the jungle and stood at the edge of the road to wait for the bus, and when the boy who was collecting fares came in front of him, the old man pulled from his pocket a 100 kip note that was even more wrinkled than his face, and the boy refused it. The old man made the appropriate gesture to save his dignity, then finally the boy took the bill from his hand and shoved it emphatically back into the old man's shirt pocket. We got the feeling that this scene was re-enacted every time the old man got on the bus, with the same 100 kip note. (I also got a break on the fare that time. It was obvious to the Laotians who lived in areas we passed through, that I had very little money, and was used to working my way as I traveled.) And weeks later in Cambodia, as I was taking the river boat back downstream to PHNOM PENH one of the passengers bought me a meal of fried rice from the little kitchen on the boat's fantail. Without it, I'd not have eaten.

     The tire change had taken more than an hour, and as we got on the road again, the sun was going down. With the coming of darkness, the mood of the Laotians changed. They no longer laughed or talked or pointed off to the sides of the road; they just sat there, and the driver pushed the truck as fast as it would go. There would be some conversation now between the driver and the guards at each checkpoint, and when we started up again he'd get the truck back up to top speed right away. Apparently it wasn't a good idea to be on the road at night in that part of the country. Manyon and I joked nervously about the possibility of his convincing the Pathet Lao that we were Frenchmen.

     But points of light began to wink more often from the side of the road, and the truck slowed as the driver and his friends relaxed and began to talk again. We were pulling into the outskirts of SAVANNAKHET.

     There was a military barricade at the town limits, a curfew after which no autos were permitted to enter town, and we were late. Manyon and I got down from the truck and went over to a roadside cafe where one of the truckers was still standing around. As we approached he was saying something about us to the mother of the family who ran the cafe, and it must have been favorable, because the driver hadn't asked us for any money. It was customary for truckers to earn extra money hauling passengers because there were so few buses.

     The eldest son of the family came up and said in English that he had a motorcycle, which was allowed past the barricades, and that he would be glad to take Manyon and me, one at a time, into town. He said that it was 4 or 5 kilometers, and that he knew where the hotel was. We thanked him and decided that Manyon should go first. As they started off I walked over to one of the little metal-topped tables and sat down. The mother and her teenage daughter and younger son all sat down around me, and they were very friendly. At first I was suspicious; I had been conditioned to be that way in Vietnam, where Americans got used to overtures being made with monetary return, or something more sinister, in mind.

     But these Laotians were genuinely warm people, and soon began to disarm me. The boy, who was about ten years old, had had some English in school, and we tried for a while to carry on a conversation. I asked him how many Americans there were in the area, and he said that there were quite a few, more than at PAKSE. After a while he asked if I would like anything to drink, and I said no. The mother spoke to her daughter, who got up and brought me a glass of tea anyway. I reached for some money, but they wouldn't accept it, even though the place was a restaurant. Then the mother motioned for the girl to come and sit closer to me. I finally forced myself to relax and admit that they didn't want anything. It was one of the most subtly painful experiences I was to have all summer, for it became a tactic of survival for an American in Southeast Asia to distrust, as a potential enemy or opportunist, anyone he didn't know. The strength of the habit became cruelly apparent when I found myself acting coldly towards people who truly wanted to befriend me.      

     The older son returned, and I thanked his family and got on the motorcycle behind him. He took me to the hotel in town where Manyon was waiting. There was a strong odor of marijuana smoke as I entered the lobby; the stuff was legal in Laos.

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