Turkey: To the East, 1976

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Kit Herring

I drove across Turkey in 1976 in a Ford Econoline van with two friends and a few new acquaintances, from Athens to Kabul.  Some of this trip’s events have been related elsewhere, but events in Eastern Turkey also stand out after all these years.

The western portion of the country is a marvelous place, full of ancient ruins from a variety of civilizations that still bask in Mediterranean warmth.  And by and large the population is friendly and hospitable.

1) The tourist’s image of Turkey: a land of ruins, sea, and sun – Photo by KG Herring

We didn’t linger in Anatolia very long.  Frankly, everyone in the van was paranoid.  The movie Midnight Express had yet to be released, but we knew the details of its reality by heart.  Turkey was famous a country where travelers did not want to be stopped by the cops while in possession of drugs.  No.  Turkish jails were rumored to be black hellholes worthy of the Oliver Stone screenplay that eventually described them so well.

So we made our way east and north as fast as possible, keeping away from the tourist routes.  In retrospect this was a shame; we missed many glorious sights.  My parents, who in these matters were usually smarter than me, traveled extensively in Anatolia and its surroundings, even buying in Izmir a beautiful carpet that now graces the living room of my house.  The rug is a Hereke, named after the group of villages that have traditionally produced large carpets for mosques and royal retreats.

2) The Hereke carpet in our current Seattle home

But carpets are not the focus of this story.  After spending a few days in Istanbul, a city we considered huge, unwieldy, and extremely polluted, with overhead street wiring hazardous enough to electrocute half of its population in a heavy rain, we departed for more distant lands.

On one memorable occasion we arrived in a small village, whose name I have long forgotten, quite late in the evening.  We were tired, hungry, and the village had gone to bed for the night.  We did find an open store and stopped to ask about accommodations.  Word of our arrival spread like a fire in New South Wales.  Soon the entire population of the town woke and gathered.  A restaurant was opened for our enjoyment, the local police showed up to join in the festivities, and soon an epic arak-drinking contest began.  Everyone concerned felt it a matter of honor and duty to swallow as many shots as humanly possible.  I used to have a photo of my friend Renée, drunk and hugging an equally inebriated police officer, she sporting his uniform hat on her head, he grinning like he’d just married the finest white woman in all of Asia Minor.  The hospitality of these people was truly astonishing, one of the finest examples of a true welcome I have ever witnessed.

At last, well after midnight, the party ended.  Rooms were provided for us above the restaurant and the village retired, soused and sleepy.  We slept like tranquilized babies and woke fresh in the morning to continue our journey, pushing ever eastward.

The going got more sketchy as we made our way into the arid mountains of Eastern Turkey, after a brief overnight stop in Ankara to visit Ataturk’s tomb, a rigid monument to grandiosity and the cult of personality.  The road passed through increasingly dry terrain, and after a couple of days we found ourselves in a rugged, desolate landscape, devoid of greenery or people.  We had heard that this stretch of Turkey was dangerous to travelers.  Bandits regularly descended from the hills at night to waylay big-rig trucks, hippie vehicles, and any other traffic they could find.  Often drivers vanished without a trace, and nobody thought alien abductions were the cause of the disappearances.

3) The road east: Photo by KG Herring

So we made a decision to turn north and head to Trabzon on the Black Sea.  I liked the idea.  Located near the edge of Turkey, not far from the border of Iran and Russia, I imagined  that we might glimpse views of the Caucasus Mountains from the shoreline, and be embraced at an ancient crossroads of humanity, where great armies had passed over the centuries, warring with one another as Europeans clashed repeatedly with the cultures of Asia.  Besides, I had never seen the Black Sea, and of course wondered if the body of water would indeed look, well, black.

We arrived in Trabzon in the late afternoon.  Our first night there, we headed east of the town and camped on the beach, a most unsatisfactory arrangement.  The weather was cold and damp, and the beach sand had the consistency of a dirty landfill.  Furthermore, the Black Sea looked gray and the water was cold.  Of the legendary Caucasus Mountains, little could be seen except some high peaks that drifted in and out of a dank fog.  Perhaps they were in Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union, or they could have been in Turkish territory.

The second night we elected to find a hotel in town, somewhere to warm up, take a hot shower, and sleep in a warm bed.  On one of Trabzon’s main streets we found an inexpensive place to stay.  But for reasons no longer recalled, I didn’t like the feel of the place, so I decided to sleep in the van for the night.  The others haggled with the owner about the price of the rooms and came to an agreement.  The cost of a habitation was on the expensive side, considering the quality of the establishment.  It seemed like the kind of place where bedbugs and cockroaches might rule the late hours.  The van, with its basic interior of bench seats, at least would provide a relatively clean space to stretch in my sleeping bag.

The following morning I woke early.  None of my friends had yet appeared from the hotel, which was across the street from the van.  I hadn’t yet seen Trabzon’s harbor, so I took a walk to the water’s edge to move my legs and shake the sleep from my bones.  The port proved to be a disappointment, with only a few shabby fishing boats moored at the docks and dirty water lapping at a rocky patch of beach.   At least here the Black Sea was black, probably more from pollution than from a poetic visual perspective.

Returning to the van, I noticed that a group of men had gathered around it.  Not thinking clearly and still groggy from lack of sleep and coffee, I thought little of the peculiar scene and continued slowly toward the vehicle.  Suddenly one of my friends opened the rear sliding door and shouted, “Jump in, quick!  We have to get out of here!”  I reacted with startling speed and raced to the van, throwing  myself through the door.  Something was seriously amiss, that much was clear.

No sooner had I climbed inside than my friend slammed the door shut.  The group of men around the van, I quickly discovered, had not gathered to pay us their morning respects.  They were screaming at the driver, who yelled back in return.  Suddenly a Turk opened the driver’s side door and dove inside, knife in hand.   The driver wound up and punched him in the face, hard enough to send the the man flying back out of the van.  Then the other traveler in front reached into the glove compartment and grabbed the 12 gauge starter pistol we carried.  The men outside began to rock the Ford, trying to turn it on its side.  Our redoubtable navigator leaned over our driver, opened the window with amazing speed and fired point-blank into the crowd.  “Floor it!” he screamed, and the van took off like a vehicle  in a Steven King novel, possessed with demons.  The crowd ran close at our heels.

Dazed and baffled, I demanded, “What happened?  Why are these men so angry?”  The van continued to accelerate and was now doing close to 100 kilometers per hour on the busy street.

“We got into an argument about the price of staying in the hotel.  The owner wanted to double the rate he agreed to last night.  We said no, so he ran outside and called to his friends to come help him make us pay.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“We refused and they became even angrier.  They were going to kill us!”

“Holy shit!”  I added, now bewildered.  My aimless walk to the harbor might have been the last walk I ever embarked on, had I not returned to the van in time.

“We wondered where you were.  What the fuck were you doing?”

“Um, just taking a morning stroll to the water.”

“You could have got us fucking wasted.”

“Sorry, how was I to know?”

Meanwhile we had now escaped downtown Trabzon.  We fired a few more rounds for effect from the starter pistol, our collective adrenaline pumping like acetone in a coke factory.

And so that was that.  We had been attacked but managed to escape.  Had the Ford stalled before we left the city, we would have been thrown in jail or worse.  Surely the blast from the starter pistol, shot into the throng of men from only a meter away, had caused serious bodily injury.

But we carried on and soon forgot about our brush with disaster.  Such was the way of travel in those years.  A few days later we stopped in Erzurum where we were treated to some of the finest Turkish food to be had in the country, and we delighted in the sight of the famous Cifte Minareli Medrase, one of Turkey’s architectural gems.  The people of Erzurum proved kind and helpful..

But we experienced a final negative encounter at the border between Turkey and Iran.  Before arriving there we had wonderful views of Mt. Ararat, its volcanic cone soaring into the heavens, and I thought of Noah or Gilgamesh or the Native American boat survivors who had washed up near the summit (depending on which version of the world-wide legend a person chose to believe)  so long ago during one of Earth’s great cataclysms.

4) Mt. Ararat from Yerevan, Armenia: Photo by KG Herring

At the frontier we halted behind a long line of commercial trucks that plied the route between Europe and Asia.  Slowly the line advanced, and soon we saw a Customs and Immigration shack on the side of the road.  We wondered if we would be able to check out of Turkey before nightfall, when the border probably closed until the following morning.

A Turkish border guard opened the door of the mud-brick hovel and lurched in our direction.  Dressed in a slovenly uniform, with half its buttons missing and the fly unzipped, he staggered to the van.  He had his hand on his sidearm, a large and nasty handgun.  Leaning into the open window on the right side of the van, arak fumes emanated from his breath into the interior as if he was exhaling gasoline.  “You!” he barked.  “I want woman!”

“Excuse me,” the English driver said.  “What may we do for you?”

“Woman!” he repeated, waving his free arm through the window in the direction of the three women travelers.  “I want!”

This was bad news.   He had absolute power in this lonely outpost.  The truck drivers would do nothing to interfere with his authority.  “Well,” our driver said, “we can offer you a nice carton of cigarettes.”  He pulled a long box of Rothmans from under his seat, kept there for such emergencies.

“No.  You give me woman. I take.  Bring back later.”

I had an idea.  We also carried with us several bottles of Johnny Walker whiskey to use as informal bribes should an unpleasant situation demand a “gift.”  “Listen,” I said, holding up a bottle.  “Let’s go back to your office and talk.  We can have a drink and discuss matters of mutual interest.”

My friend Steve now said, “Yes, sir.  Wouldn’t you like a taste of good American whiskey?”

The border guard assumed a befuddled expression.  He’d planned to have his way with one of our female passengers, but on the other hand, American whiskey was a tempting offer.   Before he could answer, Steve and I exited the van, bottle prominently displayed.  I took the bold step of putting my arm around the official and gently led him away from the Ford to the Customs House.  “It’s a cold day,” I said.  “A drink will do us all good.”  I didn’t dare look back at my other companions.

So we entered the man’s office and sat down.  He had a metal barrel he used as a stove and heater.  Taking a jug of alcohol or maybe straight petrol, he poured it into a metal hole on top.  The fire roared and I still wonder why the thing didn’t explode into a fireball.

And so we sat and chatted, perhaps for two hours.  He turned out to be a simple fellow, if not exactly likeable.  But we sympathized with his plight, stuck here in the middle of nowhere with the great mountain of Ararat as a forbidding backdrop to his station.  He told us of his family, far away in another district, and how he seldom saw them. He told us how little he was paid, and how the truck drivers treated him with disdain, while his superiors demanded ever longer work hours with diminishing pay.

Finally Steve and I became nearly as intoxicated as our host.  We rose to our feet and engaged in a group hug with the Turk.  Tears streamed down his cheeks as he bid us farewell and safe journey.  The two of us returned to the van, weaving and slurring, beaming with the conclusion of what might have turned into an ugly scene.  Very ugly.

And so our Ford Econoline departed Turkey.  We jumped the queue and drove to the Iranian checkpoint.  Steve and I positioned ourselves in the rear seat and prayed that the booze on our breath wouldn’t be noticed by less alcohol-tolerant Iranians.  Turkey fell behind us, a land of startling contrasts and fascinating people.  The question of right and wrong as related to our actions there, both in the legal and moral sense, is one for which we have no answer.




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Yemeni Women and What They Deserve

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Kit Herring

Today while looking at the stats for my blog, I noticed that an anonymous person had typed the phrase “Yemeni women don’t deserve to live” into the WordPress search function.

I have to wonder about this individual’s motivation.  Was the guy a liberal (I assume a man performed this search, although I could be mistaken) looking for information on the sexism so prevalent in the Muslim world, or was he a bigot, hoping to find justification for a twisted belief that some females ought to be murdered, based on their ethnicity or social class or whatever foolish criteria might be implied in the search terms.

So I stare at the computer screen, still at a loss to explain these words’ meaning.  Except that  to type them into a computer at all speaks eloquently, albeit poorly, of our modern civilization.

Yemeni woman from the Tihama: My feeling is that she deserves to live – Photo by Peg Herring

Of course, I could be entirely wrong about the rationale for the search terms, and there may be an innocent explanation.  I would like very much to hear it.

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Morocco: Pickpocketed in Casablanca, 1972

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Kit Herring

I first visited Morocco when I was 17 years old, by myself.  I had cajoled my parents into providing me with a ticket to Europe and a Eurail pass, along with sufficient funds to last a couple of months backpacking around the normal destinations of Western Europe.

I landed in Lisbon from Montreal, and true to character, after spending a month in the cold nations of Scandinavia and the Low countries, I made a beeline for Madrid and then Algeciras.  From there I knew that passage on the ferry to Tangiers was a simple matter.

When I arrived in Tangiers the Customs and Immigration officials were friendly enough, but they asked me where my parents were.  I smiled and said, “Well, they’re back in Canada.  I thought I would take this opportunity to visit  your country on my own.”  My interrogators were baffled, but really didn’t care much, so they stamped me into the country and bade me good luck.

Walking from the ferry dock into town was like entering an alien land.  Hawkers and hustlers accosted me, wanting to sell all manner of goods, both legal and illicit.  But I declined, made my way to the Casbah, and found an inexpensive hotel.  Life in Morocco is largely lived on the streets and I was continually captivated by the outlandish behavior and strange ways of the city-dwellers in the back alleys and warrens of Tangiers.

But that city is not a good place for a young teenager to drift aimlessly, so I quickly adapted to the Moroccan style of traveling.  After exploring the locality for a few days and fending off the street hustlers, while spending many hours just watching the multi-ethnic mix of world citizens  who made the old city a home base, I decided to travel by train to Casablanca, a name that brought back visions of the Bogart movie with the same name, as well as mental images of the World War II intrigues that had enlivened the place less than 30 years before.

On the train, a modern conveyance that proved a comfortable ride, I met a couple of American backpackers.  We joined forces; they were older than me, but I spoke French and could navigate my way through the complexities of Moroccan travel better than they.  A perfect combination, the three of us agreed.

We arrived in Casablanca at night and found a hotel with some difficulty. The city was dark and quiet, with few indications of where to find lodging.  But eventually we stumbled upon a hotel.  The neighborhood seemed safe and I bargained the price of the room to a good rate.  All went well.

The next day we utilized public bus transport to get around the city.  The bus fares were cheap and the system reliable.  Before the day was finished, however, disaster struck.  I carried only a shoulder bag with a few meager possessions:  a sleeping bag, tee-shirts and a few pairs of shorts.  But for reasons I still don’t understand, I put all my money in a small wallet and secreted it inside the shoulder bag.  My passport and ticket back to Canada stayed in a money belt under my clothing and tied around my waist .

Casablanca is a huge modern city with little charm other than in its name.  We saw project-like concrete apartment complexes that dominated much of the urban area, and the beach turned out to be dirty and wind-swept.  But none of this mattered.  We were in Morocco, an exotic country in an exotic continent.

The last bus we boarded was crowded beyond its maximum capacity and we stood in the isle, crammed together with a jumble of passengers, constantly jostled as the vehicle passed over potholes and made sharp jerky turns.  Long story short, when we disembarked, I reached inside my bag for my wallet and it was gone.  All my cash had vanished, both local currency and my stash of American dollars.  I was broke, destitute, without even a few dirhams to buy a pack of cigarettes or a cheap meal.

Panic set in. I was far from Europe with no way of returning.  I still had my ID, and an open plane ticket from Amsterdam to Montreal, but these constituted the extent of my assets.  Since my parents didn’t even know I had ventured into North Africa, I could hardly call them and tell my bad-luck tale.

My new American friends came to my rescue without a moment’s hesitation.  In return for showing them around Casablanca for a few more days they kindly agreed to pay my hotel and food, and then my ticket back to Tangiers and from there the ferry to Spain.  I was saved!

But they also indicated they would not travel further than Algeciras with me, and from there I would be on my own to return to Amsterdam.  As I still had my Eurail pass, getting to Holland would not be an issue.  But what was I going to do for food and shelter?  Regarding the latter, I could simply ride trains all the way north.  But to eat, well, I would have to take reality as it was thrust upon me.

So I returned to Spain with the Americans and we parted company.  The train journey to Amsterdam in those days was a slow one.  I passed the first four-day period without any food, drinking nasty water from the rail car taps, which were clearly marked in various languages, first in Spanish as no potable, then in French as pas potable, and then in Germanic script which I couldn’t decipher.

The first two days passed quickly enough but soon hunger took hold.  At one point a Spaniard or a Frenchman, I can’t remember which, saw me drooling while he drank a beer, so he bought one for me.  The sensation of light-headedness I felt was exquisite as I guzzled the precious liquid.  Beautiful, cool, refreshing sustenance passed through my throat into my gullet and a warm feeling spread over my body like a comforting blanket.

But that pleasure was fleeting and my situation grew worse.  A day later another passenger donated a chocolate bar, and eating the thing was one of my all-time culinary highlights.  I have never since tasted anything so powerful and the sugar passed into my bloodstream like an intravenously injected drug.

Finally I arrived in Amsterdam at the central train station.  The only remaining task was to panhandle bus fare to the airport and hope to catch a quick flight back to Canada.  I stood at the station’s grand entry, asking other backpackers for help, explaining my rather suspicious story about getting ripped off in Morocco and wanting only to head back home, and how the 30 cent fare to the airport was beyond my means.  I was ignored, insulted, and generally blown off by everyone I asked.

Daylight waned and I grew more desperate.  What to do?  To hell with it, why not ask the Dutch commuters who now thronged the station for the fare to the airport.  The very first man I accosted, a middle-aged business type, looked thoughtful as he listened, and without comment produced the guilder or two that would cover the bus ride.  I was saved again!

At the terminal I went straight to the counter of Air Canada and asked if they had any seats on the evening flight.  The agents told me coldly all flights were booked for at least two weeks.    I retreated to a corner opposite the airline desk and sat on the floor, defeated. God!  I couldn’t stay broke and homeless in an airport for two weeks.

I don’t remember how much time passed.  But eventually an agent walked from behind the counter and spoke.  “You know,” she said, “you can try to fly stand-by.  Perhaps you will be able to get on the next flight.”  I hadn’t thought about that option; my thought process was nearly incoherent from hunger.

So I procured a ticket and marched to the gate.  Surprise, the plane was half-empty!  Now why would the ticket agents have told me when I arrived at the airport that all the flights were full?  Maybe my slovenly, starved appearance kicked in some anti-hippie bias.

I was able to use a nearby pay phone to call my folks in Canada and explain to them, leaving out most of the exact details, why I would be returning home that very night.  They were thrilled; I’d been traveling abroad for a month and a half, no small feat for seventeen year old kid.  But the experience was a great introduction to life on the road, and led me to a passion for travel that has yet to diminish.

And so I arrived the next morning in Montreal, poor but clean.

POSTSCRIPT: The following semester at university I signed up for a class in African History.  During the first day’s session the professor, a pretentious fool who knew very little about the ways of the developing world, asked for a show of hands from students who had actually been to Africa.  In a room full of African-Americans, I was the only person to raise a hand.  The professor asked where in Africa I had visited, and I replied, “Morocco.”  “That doesn’t count,” he said brusquely.  The other students glowered at me.  How could a white boy have visited the great continent while none of them had?

I dropped out of that class with alacrity.  Morocco forms an integral part of Africa, wields great influence around the northern portion of the continent, and is far more welcoming than the ivy-ringed halls of American academia.  You can even travel through the country completely broke, a project I would not care to pursue in the United States.

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Lebanon: A Brief Trip During the Civil War, 1977

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Kit Herring

Two years after visiting Morocco, I entered Lebanon from Syria.  I had persuaded a taxi driver in Damascus, with the help of hard American currency, to drive a small party of hardy but gullible travelers across the border to Beirut.  It was in the late 70s, and the Lebanese Civil War raged.  My curiosity was piqued by an American Jew from Philadelphia whom I had met in Jordan a few weeks previously.  He regaled me with hilarious snippets from his own journey to Lebanon.  Apparently he had gone to Beirut and stayed during the thick of the fighting with an active participant in the mayhem.  His host had climbed to his apartment building’s roof with my friend to show off his prized toy, a mortar tube.  The Lebanese host fired off a round for the benefit of his guest, who politely inquired, “What are you shooting at?”  “I don’t know; it doesn’t matter,” came the reply.  So.  Like a kid with a firecracker, this Beiruti was mostly interested in the volume of noise he could make, not in the damage he might do.

The American, whose name I forget, then told me about going to Ba’albek, the great sacred city of antiquity that had become a focus of cannabis production and terrorist training, two pursuits I would have thought as mutually exclusive.  There, he had bought a great sack of pollen, the raw ingredient for one common variety of Lebanese hash.  He had carefully sewn most of it into his down sleeping bag for safekeeping, not wishing to attract the unwanted curiosity of border officials or police.  A fine idea, was it not?  The scheme sounded well-conceived to me.  Until he told me the sleeping bag was stolen at a Jordanese youth hostel a week after his return from Syria and Lebanon.

Intrigued by the Philadelphian’s adventures, I decided it would be a lark to visit Lebanon.  Perhaps the biggest attraction was Ba’albek. Here, unknown to most of the world, rested the biggest single stone monolith ever worked by human hands. Called the Hajar el Goubel, the rock was a massive thing, some seventy feet long. It had been cut and squared, and now lay discarded in a field, a few kilometers away from the Temple of Jupiter, where three of its only slightly smaller companions formed part of the foundations of the famous Roman temple.

No modern crane existed could lift these stones.  We may never comprehend how the ancients manipulated and raised them.

None of these forays into dope-running and archeology meant much to me upon my first glimpse of war-torn Lebanon.  At the border, we found the Lebanese police post closed and shuttered.  Travelers were free to enter the country without official scrutiny.  However, a long line of refugees, more than a mile’s worth, pressed against the customs station on the Syrian side.  They clamored to escape a country that was descending into the low reaches of hell.  We entered the war zone and saw stunning views of the Beka’a Valley, but we were able to proceed only a few miles before artillery fire forced our dauntless taxi driver to hightail it back to Damascus.  Those of us in the back of the cab breathed nervous sighs of relief as the cab jumped the queue in front of the hapless war refugees and slipped back into Syria.  In a short hour or so we were safely ensconced again in the Damascus Youth Hostel, drinking black coffee and congratulating ourselves about our escape from live combat.

NOTE: Extracted from the manuscript of Descending the Cairo Side

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Laos: The Mekong River, Luang Prabang, and the Plain of Jars

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Kit Herring

We couldn’t decide if American policy during the Vietnam War had succeeded or failed.  According to a variety of sources, Laos boasts the distinction of being the heaviest bombed country in human history.  A devastated land after the 1970s, when USA bombers turned the areas along the Vietnamese border into a giant practice field of destruction, the Lao people have made an astonishing comeback from the wanton Armageddon visited upon them by the arbiters of democracy and freedom, namely the American military establishment.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  In 2007, my wife Diana and I took a boat down the Mekong River, after crossing the border to Houeisay from Thailand.  This is an interesting backwater.  We saw one backpacker get arrested upon entry into Laos, for reasons unknown but possibly related to his lack of funds and obvious intoxication.  He was summarily returned to Thailand, where I am sure he was made welcome.  Very sure.

Photos by Kit and Diana Herring

1) The river crossing, as seen from the Lao side.  The vessel in the foreground serves as a petrol station

The boat we boarded took two days, stopping overnight at a lodge in Pakbeng.  Since the Mekong has been a transportation highway in Southeast Asia for untold millennia, the region is not the place to look for wilderness and untrammeled rain forest, but along the river banks are many interesting sites, from small farms to teak plantations.

2) River life

The river is also famous in the Thai-Lao border region for giant catfish.  Specimens have been caught that exceed 3 meters (10 feet) in length.  Alas, none of the underwater critters put in an appearance for our sake.   But in the small hotel we spent the night in on the Thai side before crossing the border, a picture hung on the wall depicting Vietnam- era American soldiers holding one of the fish they had caught.  The thing was truly huge.

As the boat journeyed downriver, with the pilot and his assistant carefully watching the current for underwater  obstructions – the river was low and ours was the first trip of the season – we noticed that as we left Thailand behind the river became less populated.  Clearly the Mekong had once supported many more inhabitants, but Laos was depopulated in the wake of the American war.  The government is still Communist, at least officially, but Southeast Asia is now safe for the despotic version of democracy the States spent so much time and blood fostering.  We should be grateful for small (and large) favors, I suppose.

The lodge at Pakbeng where we stopped the first night was an attempt by the tour company to join the ranks of eco-tourism operations, and it was a nice place, with shingled bungalows and a hewn-wood common dining area.

4) The Pakbeng lodge

Only problem was, the place was at least a kilometer from the town, so we had no contact with the locals.  I tried walking the dirt road into Pakbeng proper, but didn’t have the time to get far.  So we contented ourselves watching the river roll by from our private bungalow.  A lodge that inhibits contact with locals does not do much to encourage multi-national relationships, but perhaps the owners had overlooked that aspect of enlightened tourism.

5) Our riverside view

We set off early the next day toward Luang Prabang, stopping at a few villages where locals brought out gaudy modern weavings to sell to the tourists.  I didn’t object to their attempts to make a few dollars and better that they produced new fabrics of inferior quality than to sell their heirlooms, but I imagine the antique tapestries had already been traded to earlier travelers for a song, the patrimony of the country disappearing into the collections of Western tourists long since, much as has happened around the world.  In one town, a weaver obliged Diana for a photo.  Like women everywhere she wanted to look good for the picture and so removed her glasses before the portrait session.

6) Village weaver

The villages were poor in the extreme and belied the poverty that is so prevalent in Laos.  Quaint to the eyes of Western tourists, the locals were probably desperate to escape to the larger towns in search of jobs and the money that would enable a more modern lifestyle.

7) Lao village – at least the thatch occasionally gives way to stronger tin roofs

Every village had a Buddhist temple.  On the doorways we saw many examples of exquisite folk art.  So one old tradition had yet to be extinguished.

8) Temple artwork

The area used to be a major opium-producing region.  This trade has been mostly stamped out, but likely opium is still grown, away from the prying eyes of government officials and Western drug enforcement agencies.  While walking around one village, a local kid showed me a broken tool that was used to slit the opium poppies and extract the sap.  I asked, through our interpreter, if a better example of the tool might be available for sale.  Immediately the kids who were listening ran off, and soon returned with two or three more of the devices.  The initial asking price for a good one was $30 US, an astonishing price considering that the amount probably represented a farmer’s monthly salary.  I am not one to try to chisel my way into picking up valuable antiques for a song; of course tourists such as myself possess wealth in nearly incomprehensible terms compared to the rural Lao.  But I finally settled on a price of $5 for an exquisite opium pod-slitting tool.  It was made from hand-forged bronze, I believe.  I figured if Customs found the thing and gave me a hard time when I returned to the USA – drug paraphernalia and all that – I’d call it a crochet needle.  But the officials at the Los Angeles airport never searched my luggage, so I arrived safe and sound with my souvenir at the end of the trip.

9) Opium pod-slitter: notice signs of wear and cool yellow string used to bind the three parts together, so the instrument would make three slices at a time

Interestingly, when I showed our group my purchase, most of them were quite pleased at my find, but a couple from Scandinavia became quite angry.  I believe the man of the couple was a cop of some sort, and therefore did not approve of any trade in drug-related goods.  No sense of humor, I guess.  Perhaps he was on the payroll of Interpol, or even the DEA.

Our boat also stopped in a village that is famous for its “whiskey” production.  As a teetotaler, I declined the offered beverage, but judging from the primitive distillation apparatus, the drink resembled the aguardiente stills one finds around Latin America.

10)Village famous for its moonshine: the rest of the tourists seemed to enjoy the tasting session

Our final waypoint was the famous Pak Ou Buddha Cave about 20 kilometers upstream from Luang Prabang. This is a well-known and must-see stop for all tourists traveling in the area.  Over the centuries the locals have placed literally hundreds of Buddhas of varying provenance in this riverside cave.  The place is not quite a tourist trap, but one encounters there voyagers from all over the world.  One method the locals use for making money is to sell small caged birds for the tourists to release in the hopes of providing good luck for themselves.  The practice is an abhorrent one, as the birds are abused and maltreated as they wait in their tiny prisons for release.  We saw a backpacker who had bought one and let it out of the cage, only to have the creature die right there on the spot.  She was understandably tearful and we hoped this did not bode ill for her future kharma.  Nonetheless, the business of torturing birds for the amusement of paying travelers ought to be stopped.

11) Buddha statues at the cave entrance

Above the main cave is a larger grotto with some interesting carvings made from the living rock inside.  Quite a treat.

12) Me beside a carved happy face in the upper chamber

An across from the caves, at the confluence of a tributary and the Mekong is an impressive cliff face, which I understand is popular with the rock-climbing set.

13) Cliffs near the caves

And so, at the end of the second day, we arrived in the former royal capital of Laos, Luang Prabang.  Now a World Heritage site, the city has been compared favorably with Cusco and Kathmandu, a tropical version of an ancient, laid-back city of ancient origin and great beauty.

But like its sister cities in South America and Asia, it is fast becoming a victim of its own charm, and deluges of tourists are rapidly changing its character.  Already rents are becoming too high for local residents to live in the old quarter, and its quaint palm-fringed streets have transmogrified into a collection of backpacker restaurants, tour agencies, and internet cafes.

14) The old city from above: temples and coconut palms, a delightful combo

We first stayed in a small hotel overlooking the Mekong River, but the street was noisy and the place lacked the proper ambience .  A television blared in the lobby – shades of South America – and the structure was a modern affair of personality-deprived concrete.  But the riverside was pleasant nonetheless; a number of tourist restaurants promised relaxed dining.

15) Riverside restaurant

Of the great many temples and monasteries of Luang Prabang, words fail to describe their beauty and grace.

16) Just one of Luang Prabang’s amazing temples


17) Another view from above

Home to hundreds if not thousands of monks, common Lao who as young men typically spend a period of their lives as devotees in the shrines, the city is unparalleled.  Every morning processions of monks walk through the streets in a ritual ceremony of alms-collecting.  The tourists, naturally, appear in droves to take photos of the event, often intruding themselves into the solemnity of the occasion.  Such is the lot of these Buddhists; Westerners again thrust their selfish desires ahead of spirituality.

18) Alms-collecting as seen from our hotel room balcony – a non-obtrusive way to observe the ceremony

19) A local man giving alms

We finally decided to change hotels and found a reasonable place across from one of the city’s major temples.  This decision proved to be an auspicious one.  We had a bird’s-eye view of the morning alms ceremonies and also of the daily routine of the temple.

While we were there, the head monk of the temple suffered a fatal heart attack. Dignitaries from all over the country arrived to pay their respects.  In a creative mix of old ritual and newer technology, the monks set up a memorial to the great man that included a life-size duratrans image.

20) Memorial to the late holy man, head monk of the temple

22) The memorial at night

The owner of the hotel, himself a devout Buddhist, told us that the monk’s body was placed inside the temple so that his followers might see him for a last time, resting “in State.”  To our surprise he said that we would be welcome to enter the temple and view him, so long as we dressed respectfully and followed proper protocol.   So Diana and I dressed in our finest clothes – her with a shawl covering her shoulders and me in long pants and a button-down shirt.  Shyly we entered the temple and sat for a time by the body, meditating on the fleeting span of mortal life.  It was an experience I will not soon forget.

But we had one more destination in mind to visit in Laos.  I had heard of the Plain of Jars since the time of the American War in Vietnam.  The eastern part of the country where the great archeological site is located was purported to be the most heavily bombed area of the entire planet.   More ordnance was dropped there in the 1960s and 1970s that the Allied threw on the Germans during World War II.  I had even read that bombers, returning from their usual missions, would release their excess bombs at random before returning to their home bases.  Truly mind-boggling and thoughtless mayhem, paid for courtesy of American tax dollars thanks to our barbarian military leaders.

The Plain of Jars is so named because of the huge stone “jars” that dot the landscape of this high plateau of eastern Laos.  No one knows who created these stone monuments, since rock cannot be dated.   Human remains dating over a thousand years ago have been found in some of them, but scientists cannot say for certain that these were placed there by the builders or by a later populace.

The US State Department still placed warnings on their travel web site, proclaiming the region off-limits due to a few bandit attacks that had occurred some years previously, where disgruntled Hmong tribespeople had bushwhacked some tourist vans and killed the occupants.  One can’t really blame the perpetrators.  The hill people are looked down on by lowland residents all over Southeast Asia, and in a particularly heartless move, the Lao government had engaged in a scheme of relocation of these harmless folk, uprooting them from their remote mountain homes and resettling them along the roads, the better to control their movements and desire to live freely, unmolested by the central government, which was (and is) much more interested in dictating rules to the mountain people than leaving them alone.

But people in Luang Prabang assured us that the road was now safe.  We arranged with a local travel agency to hire a van for the trip. The kind owner tried to find some other passengers to split the fare with us, but the Plain of Jars is not on most tourists’ itineraries, due to its remoteness and dicey reputation not only as a dangerous journey, but also because of the huge amount of unexploded bombs and booby traps that lie about the countryside like so many death-inducing party favors.  One imagines that Afghanistan and Iraq will have similar issues for decades to come.

So Diana and I had this great, new luxury van to ourselves.  The cost, which I bargained with the agency owner, was not that pricey, and he explained to me that a significant portion of the expense was because of the kickbacks he was obliged to pay to government officials, which goes to show that “communism” is no less subject to corruption and graft than capitalism.   Nice to know that differing systems of government share the same pitfalls of human nature.

The highway, French-built and remarkably sound, passed through beautiful mountain scenery and villages that clung to ravines and hilltops.

23) Riverside village en route to the Plain of Jars

24) Balsa rafts in the river; similar craft to those of the South American Amazon

25) Hill town

We climbed into the mountains and were treated to spectacular landscapes of the rugged terrain that makes up central Laos.  At the end of the day we arrived in Phonsavan, a new and nondescript town that serves as the local center of government.  But the Plain of Jars was close, and we wasted no time visiting several of the sites that have been cleared of bombs and other wartime hazards.  Markers clearly warned visitors to stay on the paths.

26) Warning signs at one of the sites

The Plain of Jars ranks as one of the world’s great mysteries.  Words cannot do justice to the strangeness of these ancient artifacts.  We stopped at three sites, and even got to slog through some rice paddies en route to the jars, all the while noting the ubiquitous bomb craters that pockmarked the land.

27) Bomb crater now used as fish pond

28) Walking through a rice paddy, watching for incoming from the treeline

Apparently the American pilots used the archeological sites as targets during the war.  Kind of reminds me of the Taliban in Bamiyan.  Here is one site that was bombed, and the smashed jars were everywhere.

29), 30) The jars

But plenty of them are still intact, some of which weigh many tons.  The quarries are many kilometers from where they were placed; moving them would have been a chore.

31) The biggest one of all

32) The limestone formation in the background contains a cave. During the war Lao civilians took refuge here during a bombing raid; a rocket was fired directly into this cave and dozens were killed

33) A jar interior

34) This collection escaped relatively unscathed

We ended our trip to the Plain of Jars in a town that was carpet-bombed by the Americans.  Only this Buddha survived as the temple around it was leveled.  The statue is now considered something of a miraculous object.

35) After the bombs: the surviving Buddha

A fitting end to a trip that left us with a lot to think about, both in terms of antiquity’s wonders and the horrors of the recent past.  I felt embarrassed to be a North American during our visit and was continually astounded by the grace and hospitality of the Lao people who have suffered so much at the hands of the “democratic and free” World.



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