Of Serious and Silly
FIRST, THE NOT SO FUNNY….
The last couple days have been sobering really. Yesterday we visited the Pathet Lao Caves out of Vieng Say, Laos. (Absence of guidebook means I’ll be slaughtering the spelling of everything with wild abandon today.) Unsurprisingly naive, I had no idea what or why they were there. I had never heard of the “Secret War” where the United States bombed Laos continually and voraciously over a 9 year period between 1964-1973. We toured the caves following our Lao guide who calmly and succinctly narrated: “And here is the emergency room for when the gas bombs were dropped…..and this is the ‘entertainment’ cave where public functions had to be held.” Tomorrow we visit the Plain of Jars. The jars themselves are related to archaeology, not military, but they happen to be located in a province that was among the most battered by the cluster bombs. Therefore, the tourist office has a bookshelf collection of bombshells and the town sports a Mines Advisory Group that is working to lower the continued risk of death and injury from unexploded shells. [Insert big heavy sigh.]
AND SOME HUMOR TO LIGHTEN THINGS UP….
New Ways We’ve Made the Laos Laugh:
–Kristin exploding a bag of peanuts on the back of the truck
–falling flat on my face while dashing into the woods at a pee stop
–trying out a fresh new Lao phrase–“Can I have the check?” in a restaurant. Confused when the lady immediately points outside until the Australian lady who’d taught me the phrase confesses, “Well, I guess that could also be translated as ‘I want to fly.'”
Among other terrible bored bus limericks:
Bouncing in the back of the bus,
People, bags, sacks, food, and us,
A smell makes my nose retreat,
Wait! It’s coming from MY seat,
Cleaner laundry would be a huge plus. : D
“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.” Henry Miller
Tags: Laos
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