This is the original version of what I wrote after visiting at COPE in Laos. It became the basis for my newspaper column of a week or so ago.
I spent part of this morning at a facility called COPE here in Vientiane, Laos. If you are of a certain age, you’ll remember Laos as the place Nixon told us Americans had no ground troops. He neglected to mention the daily bombings. Here in Laos, the war hasn’t really ended. There are over 100 million unexploded bombs still on the ground… bombs that children dig up for the money they
Before I leave Cambodia
I do feel obliged to admit that despite the fact that many in our little group of Aussies, Brits, Kiwis and Judy and I as the two lone Americans tried some of the street food of Cambodia, I drew the line at roasted roaches and tarantulas. Life is simply too short. I have no need whatsoever to know what they taste like.
More importantly, having visited the Killing Fields here and the prison in which adults and children were kept and tortured, I am once again amazed at the resilience of the human spirit. The man in this picture was
To all politicians… your emails are NOT private!
Many, many years ago, a dentist I had hired to start the North Slope Borough’s Dental Program came to my house to ask me to have a cup of coffee with his wife. He told me she was feeling very alone and down. It was her first winter in Barrow and the darkness was not helping to raise her spirits; so I invited her over for coffee and we’ve been best friends ever since.
If I hadn’t told you that story, no one would ever have known about it except for the three people involved. That’s because the story occurred
Swimming with the fish
It’s official. There is not enough water in this whole country to replace what I sweat out in a day. This picture was taken in the amount of time it takes me to sweat a gallon of water while outside of any air conditioned enclosure.
The day I smashed my iPad but it still worked!
Ok, in a remoter area with limited access. Dropped my iPad and shattered glass making it very interesting to write this. Spent part of last night killing some large moth in my sister’s room while she ran around with a towel over her head. Place we’re at has can of Raid instant bug kill in each room. Guess that’s part of the jungle experience. Beautiful setting, sleeping under mosquito netting and being very careful about walking across floor because of what also might be walking across floor. Woke up to birds and roosters and then thunder and lightning and rain
Don’t know what it was and don’t want to know
Went to Cambodian circus. Like the Cirque de Soleil but the male acrobats did not look like steroid freaks and the women looked like they actually ate every day. All was fine until the bug fell out of the ceiling and onto my head. It bounced off me and hit the two ladies sitting in the row below me. Luckily it was dark so I couldn’t actually see what it was thus saving me from running screaming out of the stands and causing a panic.
How to get to your boat
Ok,I may already have the illness I usually get AFTER I return from a trip, but I’m loving Cambodia anyway. What wonderful people. Went on a boat ride to a village built in a lake on stilts above the water. When we got to the boat area, our guide told us to get in the boat next to where we were standing because, he said, it was the easiest way to get to the boat we’d be traveling on. So we clambered into one of those shallow draft river boats with a roof to protect us from the sun and
A real home visit… maybe not
So it turns out I should have read the material for this trip a little closer. It seems the home stay in Cambodia is not a guest house. It’s literally someone’s home. Someone’s home in which all twelve of us plus the guide and driver sleep in one room on the floor with mosquito nets, no electricity and… well, need I go on. I played my little old lady with diabetes card and the very nice guide is booking me into a nearby hotel while apologizing for the possibility that it might cost as much as $45 more for the
The bombs we left behind
There was a time when America’s endless war was the Vietnam War. Like our current wars, this war was a quagmire of deception, obfuscation and tragedy. We achieved nothing, which is not surprising since our stated goal of stopping communism came smack up against people who were sick and tired of colonial powers using them as pawns.
When President Nixon was questioned about just how far our war in Vietnam went and whether it now included the neighboring state of Laos, he unequivocally denied the presence of any American troops on Lao soil. And for once he was telling the