On Language and Transliteration

Looking at this wall hanging should give you some idea of the issues involved. Across the top are the consonants with accompanying pictures of typical words that begin with the sound. The next two thirds is a complicated series of columns representing vowels and their length of pronunciation as well as tones and god knows what else. Now which do you think might be the most easy to understand.

Recently I got a message asking about the way I turn Lao, sorry I mean Laotian, into written English.
Most especially with the name that I spell as Tdooee, but could also be spelled Twee, Doee, Tui, and so forth, all of these examples are approximately right. I often mangle the language in other ways that I’m sure drive Lao speakers nuts. My apologies.
Spoken Lao, has no official way to put it into English. Complicating things, there are also sounds we don’t have in English, and also different phonetic alphabet to use.
I first ran into this problem when I started trying to speak Thai. I wanted to take the bus to get back to where I was living, and the woman selling tickets didn’t speak English. I lived in Lampang and so I said “I go Lampang”, she said “where?” I repeated myself and so on. Eventually I got out my guidebook, pointed, and she pronounced something close to Lambang. The B being close to the B in bong. Often this P/B sound is spelled with a ph. I think it’s called an aspirated P.
When I write words in my notebook to learn vocabulary often I just write the two consonants on top of each other. I also do this with T and D,
My wife has a buddy named Gow. Spelled with the same letter that begins the word for chicken, gai. My wife spells her friend’s nam Keo. Now the K and the G sounds in Lao are different and you would think they would be hard to confuse. I think the problem lies in our G being too soft, the Lao pronounce it harder or with more carry through.
Adding further complications your way to put Lao sounds into the Roman Alphabet might well depend on which school of learning Lao you come from. In Lao they have one way that mostly comes from the sounds as they are spelled in French, and the Thai that most people migrated from use a more English spelling. I began to learn Thai first but try to use Lao spelling because I think it’s more fashionable. Sometimes there is just a problem because the Lao who translate place names can’t speak English and they are just guessing, or they were guessing fifty years ago and now no one dares correct the misspelling because there are issues of face.
I will admit I love misspelling things and being able to get away with it. Without a spell check I’d be lost in the English speaking world.
Besides having tones there are also long and short vowel sounds. My studies have all been, ahem, “informal” so I’ve never learned tones, I just mimic the way Lao people speak and it mostly works. Informal in this case means once a month I might write something down.
Now it’s time for some true apologies. There are a small number of real Laotian Language Scholars out there. If you are reading, sorry. I promise to stop acting as if I know what I’m talking about. I probably fool most others, don’t you think? I’ll also try to stop using Lao words in English when there is a perfectly good English word to use. Except for the flavour enhancer Bang Nua. I do that to protect food Nazis from going completely around the bend. Maybe it’s time for a glossary.

Foe

Foe

Pronounced Fuhhh. Spelled in Vietnamese as pho, it’s pronounced the same. Whatever you call it, I call it liquid heaven.
When the French brought the Vietnamese to Laos to be their bureaucrats, the Vietnamese brought foe. I’m very appreciative as I like it best of all the things they brought, better than the fresh baguette, better than liver pate, better than the dark coffee in drinking glasses, better even than the pretty Vietnamese girls.
I’ve never been to Vietnam, so I can’t compare. Lao foe is above all fresh tasting, similar to the rest of the food. In Thailand they have a noodle soup called Quway Tyow. Quway Tuow is dead and heavy. Foe is alive.
The basis for foe is above all the good soup stock. When we butchered up an elk back home one of the best parts was that we now had a large supply of good quality bones. We can’t buy good bones in the super market where we live. Normally they are sold for dogs and are old, or with ribs and too meaty. Good bones make a very flavourful but light soup stock. Good foe needs to be transparent and shiny.

Tdooee Foe Jao Gow

This restaurant is called Tdooee Foe Jao Gow and it’s in Dalat Kuwa Din. Dalat Kuwa Din is the wet market next to the bus station in downtown Vientiane. To find this foe restaurant walk all the way to the back of the market to where there is car parking. Not behind the market next to the klong where there is also parking, but rather the car parking that is in the market. Along the south side of the parking lot are a row of dry goods stores, follow that row of stores east past the edge of the parking area and you are there. For reference the big road out by the front of the market is south, the bus station is west. You could print the photo here and take it with you.
We found (meaning my wife found it, I use we in the liberal sense) this market three years ago and it’s still there today, maybe it will be around for a while. The name would lead you to believe so. Tdooee is simply a name like Joe or Mike, foe is the soup, joa gow means the old one, or the old place.
I asked what was in the stock and the daughter of the owner said yes to beef bones, salt, and bang nua, but when I asked what else she just smiled. I tasted a tiny hint of cinnamon, maybe it was star anise, whatever it was it’s not there to be tasted, only in the background. They were light on both the salt and the bang nua. Probably they figured if someone wanted it they could add, it’s on the table, or maybe they figure the sauce is rich enough to stand on it’s own.
The greens on the side were the classic three, mint, basil, and fresh leaves of lettuce. As soon as I would eat some lettuce more would appear. There is another plate with hot peppers and slices of lime on it. I always squeeze in a couple slices of lime, just the kind of guy I am. I always skip all hot stuff in soups, My cilia don’t work and hot stuff goes down the wrong pipe. No cilia from doing hits on short hot pipes for too many years, burnt em.

Daughter of Tdooee

Besides the broth and greens this place does the noodles to a T. At home I always over cook them and they come out droopy. The other sin is to under cook them, and that’s worse. At this place they are cooked only, just barely enough. They have to remain perky even sitting in the hot foe water.
The meat is the least important part for me. Of course if they cut corners they would lose customers, so they do it right. They use good fresh beef, sliced paper thin and placed in the bowl just after the broth and noodles. The heat of the water is the only cooking it gets. When they throw in the meat balls and sausage the temp comes down cool enough so you can dish in right away.
The broth is hot, piping hot. I typically drink the water before eating the noodles. Serves two purposes, one it’s the part I like best, and two, when I eat the noodles they aren’t as wet, and don’t splash all over. The Loa call this draining the pond. The expression comes from the way they drain the water out of the rice field then catch all the fish left stranded. When the girls at the restaurant saw that I had drained the pond they brought me another bowl of just broth, I squeezed in a couple more limes and dug on in, almost couldn’t walk away.

Luang Namtha

Tatu and His Handlers

This is an extremely nice Spanish couple I met in Luang Namtha. I saw them at the restaurant next door to the internet place and when they left I rushed up the street to ask them for a photo. I thought them very photogenic. They also signified to me the coming of age of Luang Namtha, the town is now a destination in itself with quite a few guest houses and people coming to stay for a week or even more. The peace sign isn’t posed, I didn’t ask him to do that.
The little dogs name is Tatu. Tatu also comes from Spain. They brought him on the airplane without a problem. The only difficulties they encountered were at hotels in Thailand. Being somewhat tuned in to the culture here I can only imagine. Try to bring a dog in our house and my wife would hit the roof, wouldn’t even allow it in the soup pot.
I wrote down these people's names but lost my notebook. Like more than a couple young “hippies” I met on my travels they were very friendly and down to earth. I think people just stereotype too often. They never used “man” as slang once.
There are two things to note in the picture. Above them in the background is the sign at the entrance to Zuelas Guest House, and both of these young folks are wearing a Tong, as in the man purse I posted about. Cool.

Luang Namtha Airport 2/07


This other picture is of the airport. More than anything else the airport will open up Luang Namtha and it’s environs to the casual tourist. If people can fly, they will come. Only the most daring of tourists will take an hour or two bus ride, anyone will fly. As of today to get to Luang Namtha you can either take a 5 hour from Luang Prabang bus to Udomxai then bus to Luang Namtha. Fly to Udomxai then bus. Fly to Huay Xai over on the Thai border then a five hour minimum very dusty in dry season maybe a lot longer and muddy in wet season bus ride. Bus ride down from Boten on the China border. Or even more unlikely from Huay Xai fast boat Xiengkok, then Sawngthaews to Muang Sing and Luang Namtha. There is no easy way.
Today I estimate there are at least fifty tourists a day in Luang Namtha. A lot more than you see on the street. A lot of people don’t even stay on the street, but in some of the guest houses over towards the bus station. Three years ago Luang Namtha was more a place to stop on the way to Muang Sing, very few used it as a destination in itself. I met people in Luang Namtha for whom this was it, their most off the beaten track destination. I’d guess the tourist visits have doubled since three years ago.
The airport as well as the new banked hard surface road are going to be done someday. It seems as if that day will never come to look at things. Such big projects such teeny machines. They are working at them both. Work goes on seven days a week, and they are using a lot of heavy equipment. I saw the only bottom load dumps I‘ve seen in Laos on the road. When they are done watch out, Luang Namtha would be a different place with another hundred and fifty visits per day.

Ghapi

Ghapi, absolutely deadly shrimp paste

This is a brand called Ghapi Lime, from Thailand but the little part in the red dot is Lao writing, something about ingredients. Notice there is no English? Not much call from the export market. This is very strong fermented fish 95% shrimp, 5% salt
Often used in hot papaya salad and the like. I can tell the Ghapi is coming out when my wife’s girl friends come over and I start hearing the saht hitting the coke.
In this case it was served as a side with lunch. The hot peppers are used to dip. You get a little of the hot pepper with every bite. For reference the diameter of the can is a little smaller than a Skol can.
Don’t know why I used this picture. I don’t cook with it, yet. Insects, wild cats, organ meats, ok, but not yet ghapi.

Zuela

OK here we go, my first blatant plug of a business.

A few years ago while in Muang Sing I met a guy Vong who worked at the bank. His English was very good and it turned out I had rented a motorcycle from his business over in Luang Namtha.
That night he took me to a guest house opening party. The guest house was owned by a local oficial. While there, through him as a translator, someone asked my why bother coming to Muang Sing or even Laos it being such a rural out of the way place. I replied (speaking in my limited Lao) how the Lao food was so good, I waved my hand at the view we could all see out the front of the restaurant, the sun was setting over fields of rice all the way to the mountains, and said how beautiful the countryside was, and I mentioned the easy going manner of the Lao people. Actually the normal type of thing you say to anyone when they ask about their own country. The lao lao had already been flowing, and they loved my praise of Loas, hard to go wrong praising a country to it's inhabitants.

When I went back to Luang Namtha this year with photos of Vong and Sai’s young daughter he was standing in front of his brand new guest house. Good connections to be had at the bank? I stayed there that night and a few more nights when I went back up to Luang Namtha province.

Here are the details as of this writing.
All rooms are $6 except the two rooms available out by the kitchen that have a shared bath and are $2. All rooms have hot water but as of now no AC. They are large, clean, have a place to hang clothes, wooden furniture, a painting, ceiling fan etc, There is a lot of wood used in the construction. Most of the walls are brick painted with some kind of sealant to make them shiny and clean, similar to the outside of the guest house.
The restaurant has an extensive menu kind of in the style of large western orientated hotels in Vientiane. (What that means is that if you are expecting something to be like back home fugetaboutit. But it will be very palatable by western standards, look back at my post about Yam Moon Sen three posts ago. Made not very hot, and not too spicy just for you) If you are looking for regular Lao food order from that portion of the menu. Coffee comes in coffee mugs and the restaurant area is a quiet pleasant place to while away time reading or writing post cards.
The entire guest house itself is fairly quiet being set back off the street down as small short alley. The way to find it other than asking or looking for the small sign is to look for the tallest thing on “the street”. That’s the brand new four story tall guest house that was being built by their neighbours next door. Highest building I saw in Luang Namtha.
When I urged Sai, that’s Vong’s wife, to up the rates so to make them comparable to similar rooms in the area she replied that she was more interested in having a full house every night than making tons off one room. They do seem to fill often. Mostly word of mouth but also the mini bus drivers like to take the guided tourists there. The standards meet the requirements of the guided tours and they save ten or fifteen bucks. There is no pressure to eat in the restaurant, rent a motorcycle, change money, or use any of the other services they offer. They are happy that you stay with them.
The hotel is run by Sai, the motorcycle rental by her mom, bikes are serviced by Vong’s brothers, and there are many brothers and sisters working throughout.
The name Zuela comes from Vong and Sai’s little girl who is now of an age to pretend to have tea parties with her friends and is cute as a button.

My Man Purse

Murse: A purse made for males.

While waiting to catch a bus out of the Luang Namtha dirt parking lot cum bus station I saw a guy with a bag like this. He was dressed entirely in hill tribe clothes so I assumed he didn’t come from a town on the road. It seems as if men who come from close to the road don't wear traditional clothes. His were hand woven, black, slight bits of coloured embroidery, the whole nine yards, all in a very new and clean state.
What made him stand out for me was that even though Luang Namtha bus station is pretty much on the map with a direct to Vientiane and a lot of foreign tourists in town, this guy wasn’t acting like the shy guy from the countryside. He was pretty broad shouldered and had a lot of muscle. His wife was strong too. They were negotiating the rate for some cartons or bags to somewhere by the back of the Sawngthaews, and unconcerned with the people around them. Pretty self assured for country folk.
I noticed the tong the guy was carrying, it looked a lot like the one in this picture. A tong is that over the shoulder bag that a lot of people carry around in Laos. They have been adopted as a good carry on the bus and around town bag by a lot of westerners, particularly the fisherman pant, rasta, full moon party, crowd. When I walked in the woods with a Hmong local guide I noticed how easily he shifted it’s weight while ducking through the thick brush. I wanted one, I thought they looked totally cool.
I hadn’t really warmed to a style until I saw the one in Luang Namtha. I liked the way the woven pattern went closer together towards the top and then became strings using the same pieces of thread. Partway up the strap where mine has one piece of coloured thread the one I saw at the bus station had a couple of tassels and a small piece of silver.



When I got to Muang Long I asked Tdooee the director of tourism what hill tribe made this type of tong and where could I get one. He laughed and said Akha and that I could get one during my trek. I’ve seen a lot of Akha of late and I was surprised I hadn’t noticed the tong before.
The trek was a little fast for discussing and buying tongs but I kept my eyes open and sure enough I started to see them hung on walls and even carried by people. I didn’t see any that even remotely matched the workmanship I’d seen in Namtha.
I had severe reservations about trying to buy someone’s tong also. It didn’t feel right. Once in Muang Long market a few months ago I watched a mini van tourist, (that’s the kind that blows in with a tour guide and minivan) stop at the market, long lens the hill tribe women selling vegetables, then have the guide negotiate a price for a basket a young girl was selling her greens out of. The transaction was over in ten seconds and the girl was left to search for a plastic bag to carry her stuff off with. The whole scene left me wondering about the righteousness of buying handicrafts that someone was using as personal items, especially since I’d done something similar to a kid in a computer gaming store in China.
At the government crafts cooperative in Muang Long I did buy a tong that was Lanten. There weren’t any Akha ones. Back in Vientiane I dropped by the cooperative across the street from the morning market right next to the post office. Free parking he he.
Sure enough there were some pretty nice Akha tongs. I asked the Hmong lady that owned the stand what kind of people made the tong, she replied Lao people. True enough I guess. When I told her Akha she was happy enough to know and thanked me for telling her, she can use it as an informative selling tool. She had stuff from many peoples in the shop. Yao women’s shirts with the fuzzy collars, lots of Hmong stuff, all kinds of things.
There is a specialty industry in making Hmong style dress up cloths for particularly overseas Hmong from America.
I was concerned after I bought the tong that it had been made of fishing line. Tdooee told me sometimes they are. Makes sense, nice strong string, but I was hoping for something a little more green as in natural. Low and behold my wife informs me the string is made from the bark of a small tree. How she knows I don’t know.
The man purse label I read in a story by a guy who traveled into Sayabuli province. The name is great because it seems to poke fun at guys who carry them without being homophobic. Well I’m one now. I wore it to the market yesterday and liked it. I can see where everything is inside it. Of course so can everyone else but the strap is so short it hangs just below my armpit, and the weight of things hold it closed.
In the Lao alphabet they have certain words that remind people of the letter. Kind of like our “A is for Apple”. In this case it’s Taw-Tong for the T sound. Forever enshrined in Loa language.

Road Dangers

This is a bus Guard at the Kasi Lunch stop

Nothing like a picture of a folding AK strapped to someone’s back to grab the readers attention. Actually the most dangerous part of this bus journey was about to unfold fifty feet away. As I walked around the other side of the bus I saw the driver and door guy at the back table being fed shots by the restaurant proprietor who was hanging out drinking with his buddies. Shots of hard liqueur in Laos are looked upon as elsewhere as a measure of ones manhood. The driver in his mid thirties was being fed booze by the restaurant guy who was in his fifties.
I was taking a direct bus Vientiane to Luang Namtha. Scheduled for twenty three hours, they usually do it in twenty. The easy part of the driving was over, the next sixteen hours are twisty mountain roads on a good surface, a lot less bumps but the speeds are a lot faster, they don’t drive those busses like they love them, they put them through their paces. Before lunch the driver had been adjusting up the brake pads, I’d bet they go through a set every other trip.
The restaurant owner had no work to do, his wife ran the restaurant. The driver needed all his facilities intact. My sincere hope was that he was also doing amphetamines, otherwise I’d be scared of him falling asleep. Twenty hours of mountain roads is too much for anyone. At the end of the ride I asked him how he felt and he said great, looked wide awake to me.
Don’t think me a prude, I too have driven long drives in the mountains while drunk and on meth, just not lately and definitely not with 33 people on board. I counted just for fun.
I was on my second trip to Laos in 1996 when I first heard of a problem on the road. I’d been sitting in the same noodle restaurant in Vang Vien all morning with a Lao policeman, a girl who was then my then fiancé, and her mom. We saw a bus roll in from Luang Prabang, it had taken 26 hours thus far, (rainy season delays), sounded like fun and my suggestion to go there got an enthusiastic reaction. Except from the policeman. Don’t do it he said, bad people in Kasi, lots of problems. OK,, policeman advises against it, ok with me I thought. Maybe that long bus ride isn’t worth it.
My mom in law went back three weeks later anyway. It was the new cool place to have been for Vientiane Laotians. The cloth for the skirts is distinctive and it shows you’ve traveled. A resident Frenchman in a minivan fifteen minuets ahead of my Mae Thaou, and everyone in the van got shot to death. Oops.
Ever since then over the years there have been other “incidents” I lose track of when and the particulars. Truth be told I don’t pay that close attention. Seems like every couple or three years something happens. If there is a foreigner of necessity it’s known, if only Lao people it’s hushed up if possible.
I noticed the last time I came to Laos a presence of government police for the entire trip to Luang Prabang as well as lots of regular army guards who got on and off at random places along the most troublesome part of the road.
This winter I’ve traveled the road many times back and fourth to the north while going for little walk-abouts. There seemed to be a lot less of an army presence, I saw none on regular bus duty, and the federal police seemed to be making an effort to be inconspicuous, often wearing a coat over their gun and wrapping up the gun while eating. Often I don’t even spot a police man on the bus until maybe the end of the trip, or like here when he got off for lunch. I liked the way this guy was watching the back of the bus while we ate, no bombs.
I had assumed that the guards would be removed from the busses soon altogether. They scare tourists and cause tongues to wag. I’d say that they’ve done a pretty good job of pushing the whole story under the rug. Most tourists I’ve talked to are unaware that there is a low level counter government insurgency going on. Insurgency sounds too organized a word for scattered groups of Hmong including their women and children trying to hide and keep from getting shot.
Lately with the good coverage of cell phones and the ready availability of digital video cameras more news is starting to leak out of what’s called the Xaysambon Special Zone. Most famously there was a video taken of the raped and disembowelled bodies of young Hmong teens and the interviews with the survivors of a government attack. Gruesome stuff. Often there are desperate calls for help to relatives in America relayed to their small sympathetic press, the Huntington News, of being encircled and out of ammunition complete with starving children and so on, then nothing.
I guess the Lao government probably knows better if the guards on the busses are superfluous or not. Five days after I took the photo all heck broke loose with the regular dry season offensive somehow making it’s way into the daily rumour mill, and even worse onto the road north of Vang Vieng, but most importantly not the press.
The following is from the Travelfish website which must have very good sources indeed. I suspect an off the record report from someone at the US embassy. It seems too well informed and factual to be a guest house owner or tour operator. My only reservations are due to the use of the term bandit, usually used by the propaganda arm of the Lao government to classify the insurgents as common criminals. For the record armed robbery of foreigners is extremely rare in Laos, and robbery with firearms unheard of.

Link to Travelfish site

"Sources who were in Vang Vieng on the weekend of 10th / 11th Feb, reported they had seen very large numbers of Lao troops to the north of Vang Vieng. The most obvious area of activity on R13 North is understood to be around 15km north of Vang Vieng. It's not clear what precisely took place, but some locals believe it may be Lao Govt "attack" on people in nearby Hmong villages connected to the Hmong refugees in Nong Khai who are scheduled to be returned to Vientiane. February through April are known to be the months of highest bandit - Lao Govt conflicts.Vang Vieng Town itself is considered safe, but travellers should exercise caution on R13N, and for the time being - should probably avoid cycling and/or trekking too far north of Vang Vieng.The "troubles" do appear to have spread south of Vang Vieng as well, with arrests being made as far south as Phonhong (around 70km north of Vientiane) and skirmishes taking place south of Vang Vieng over the past few days. Partly as a result of this there remains a high profile troop presence throughout Vang Vieng District. The risk to tourists is still very low indeed. The bandits are not a competent, aggressive fighting unit looking to blow up bridges and kill tourists -- they are really just "on the run" and only fight back when they have to. Having said that, as a tourist, it is probably not the best time to be in Vang Vieng right now simply because there are restrictions on what you can do. Certainly doesn't sound like time to try the Happy Pizzas anyway!"

I was out trekking in the mountains in the north of the country which might as well be on a different planet. I got a text message from my wife when I re entered an area covered by cell phone. “They have a war going on in kahsii vangvien right now I want u to take arplan back” She had been getting calls from folks we know in the Lao army who know I often take the bus. Of course if you are in the army and people are getting killed you tend to look upon it as serious.
Searching for a good excuse to give my wife for taking the bus I asked a friend who might well be a party member. He reported that the situation was way overblown. Just a case of a few drunk soldiers shooting each other up. I think the misinformation came directly from the top, when repeated many times it’s a great way to dispel concerns over safety.
After reading a warning from the US embassy I took the bus, plane was full. It took me a whole extra day, oh well. I realize that the road carries some risk. So far the insurgency isn’t over and there is always the possibility. It’s trying to asses the likelihood of that possibility that becomes problematic.
When I used to climb we would asses risk all the time. If there is a one in one thousand chance of a piece ripping out of an anchor we consider it to be very poor odds, do something a hundred times and you’ve brought the likelihood down to one out of ten. Put in another piece of equal quality and the odds are back up to ten thousand to one, add another and you are up to ten million, back in the realm of acceptable odds.
If there are bus attacks on average once every three years with three hundred sixty five days in a year your chances of being on the road that day are one out of eleven hundred. Ride the bus six times in that time span and it’s one out of a hundred and eighty. Mind you we are talking about being on the road that day, not in the actual bus. As I remember they have attacked only passenger transport, not cargo or individual vehicles. Sixty busses and mini vans per day? Your odds just went up to around one out of eleven thousand. Significant enough to make me think about it.
I know and accept that amount of risk. It’s interesting to hear some deride it as being non existent or similar to the chance of getting hit by a meteor, or safer than walking city streets in America.
It’s also interesting how people perceive risk. If something appears scary the risk is assumed to be much higher. The chance of being in a plane or building attacked by Al Qaeda are infinitesimally small, in the millions, yet for years after the World Trade Centre in New York was attacked all people could think about was being the victim of a terrorist attack. I think it has a lot to do with those images of planes hitting buildings and buildings falling down.
Juxtapose those images with ones of forty hot tourists falling asleep on a long bus ride and you can see where the insouciance comes from.

In googling around to find background for this blog entry I also found this from an old Time Magazine story called “unlucky 13” after the route number. Great name.

“Around 8:30 a.m., the gunmen as many as 30, say witnesses jumped out from behind bushes along the road. Waving their guns, they stopped a crowded public bus, several cars, a tractor and the two Europeans who were heading north on a bike trip. Survivors claim the gunmen fired M-16s and grenades from rocket launchers, then stepped over fallen bodies and executed the wounded. The two Europeans, who have yet to be identified, tried desperately to flee on their mountain bikes. One was shot repeatedly in the back.”

Ouch, “repeatedly shot in the back” now there’s some guys without a sense of humour. Of course I doubt they were shooting M-16s, the rifle would have to be thirty years old. More likely the ubiquitous AK. Makes great reading though and I think puts a date on the last bus attack at 4 years ago.

Here’s the link Time magazine

Months ago I ran across the photos by a guy named Roger Arnold who managed to get into the Special Zone, link up with the insurgents, take photos, and publish them. For most of the world it was the first glimpse of something they had heard about but sounded too otherworldly to be true. Soldiers from a war that was over thirty years ago still fighting in the jungles of Laos.
Being a taker of snapshots I liked the photos. A very wide angle and lots of natural dark light from the forest. I can hear the dew dripping of the trees. When I looked carefully at the photos I noticed that very young guys carrying soviet style rifles seemed to be doing most of the running around with guns. The M-16s look to be saved but not in use.

Link Here for photos or read the Story Here.

Hard to imagine as I sit comfortably typing on my keyboard and as my wife and kids sleep peacefully upstairs that this is all going on less than a hundred miles from here. At this very moment people are quietly waking from a nights sleep, looking around, and wondering if the day will bring government soldiers. It is an overcast day. The beginning of the end of this long dry season? Let’s hope so.