Laos and Parts Unknown

As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small.
And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you. Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.
Anthony Bourdain

Like a lot of people, I imagine in this pandemic, I have taken solace in the words of Anthony Bourdain. I am slowly making my way through Parts Unknown on Netflix. And I mean, really taking my time. Sometimes I immediately go back to the start of an episode to re-watch it so that I can fully soak in all the goodness. His knowledge and ability to talk so eloquently about his experiences, the places he visits – I just want to go to each and every one of them. Maybe not eat all the things he does, I’m not sure how I feel about anything with brain or tongue in it.

I recently watched the Season 9 episode filmed Laos in 2017. I went to Laos in 2016 and the episode brought back so many memories of the food and the absolutely beautiful landscape but it also taught me so much that, I’m ashamed to say, completely washed over me while I was there.

I remember Laos as an adventure holiday. I arrived after being in Vietnam which had been unseasonably cold and wet, I didn’t have any warm weather things packed, and ended up with a fearsome cold. So the minute I stepped off the plane in Vientiane, the first thing to hit me was the humidity. I loved Vientiane – it was so bright, and steeped in colours of reds and golds.

I then went on to Vang Vieng with a group where we went tubing and caving and it was good fun! I remember jumping off cliffs into cold water and bobbing along in a big rubber ring. It felt like endless days of sunny adventures and fun, followed by evenings of card games over beers. We went hiking up hills to watch sunsets and try and find the sources of waterfalls. In Luang Prabang, we visited the Kuang Si falls, which are the most gorgeous shade of turquoise and blue, and saw the bears.

The thing I remember the most about Laos was sailing for two days on the Mekong River aboard a houseboat. We were constantly surrounded by the lushest vegetation on the river banks as our narrow boat pootled along down the river. I had also managed to pick up a paperback of an old John Grisham from one of the hotels (my first new book in a while) and I was so happy sat in the sun reading and watching the world go by.

Watching Parts Unknown, I learnt about Laos’ history. Looking at it on a map, Laos is a small country surrounded by China and Myanmar to the north, Cambodia in the south, Thailand to the west with the Mekong river, and Vietnam on the east. When the Cold War was raging, Laos was also in the midst of a civil war between the Pathet Lao communist group (who were largely dependent on Vietnamese aid), and the Royal Lao government.

The US supported the Royal Lao Government as part of their war against Communism and spent nine years bombing Laos in the ‘Secret War’ trying to disrupt communist supply routes – the Ho Chi Minh trail being key for the Vietcong and North Vietnamese ran along Laos’ eastern border. Eisenhower commented if Laos was lost to communism “the rest of Southeast Asia would follow.”

The Secret War resulted in Laos becoming the most heavily bombed country (per head of population) in the history of warfare. As Bourdain comments in the episode, more high explosives were dropped on Laos than on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. After ten years of bombing, the Pathet Lao came to power establishing the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR).

The Secret War left behind a devastating impact that is still affecting the country today. The cluster bombs, or bombies, that were used had an estimated 30% failure rate in perfect conditions. Around 78 million of the bombies dropped on Laos failed to explode and many are still in the ground today. As a result, Lao PDR has the highest rate of post-conflict cluster munitions casualties than anywhere else in the world. Children pick them up and play with them. A very moving moment in the episode shows UXO (unexploded ordnance) workers with metal detectors slowly moving through the fields trying to pick up the beeps that signal an unexploded bomb. At one point, the beeps go off and a woman slowly kneels down and begins to scrape away at the soil with a trowel. Bourdain and the crew then get the chance to safely detonate it.

I remember Laos being fun, friendly and vibrant. I remember it being beautiful, even their public restrooms have some of the most spectacular views in the world (the picture below was taken in one of the stalls).

Like in Parts Unknown, I got up before dawn to give alms to the Buddhist monks. This is where the monks walk through the street before the sun comes up with their alms bowls and receive food donations, such as sticky rice, as they walk. It is just a truly unforgettable and beautiful place, like no other.