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Published: March 3rd 2010
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Kerry had a very early Skype call booked for this morning so we organised our own breakfast and successfully made our way into town for our 10.00am massage appointments. We changed money into Kip and almost feel like instant millionaires!! The Kip is virtually worthless so for US$100 we received 874,500 Kip which makes for one very fat wallet!!
The price for two 1.5 hour aromatherapy massages was 390,000 Kip, but we received a 15% discount because we went for our massage in the morning! All up it cost us about US$20.00 each for our massages. Our receipt says that our discount was because we were charged their morning rate. However, Kerry wants it recorded here that the discount is only available this week in the lead up to International Women’s Day so Bernie actually received a ‘Ladies Day’ discount!!
After our massage we explored Vientiane a little bit before having a light lunch at JoMa Bakery Cafe. We then caught a tuk tuk out to the COPE Visitor Centre. What an insightful, but disturbing experience. There were never any American troops on the ground in Laos during the Vietnam War, because Laos was neutral. However, part of the
Ho Chi Minh trail was located in Laos near the Laos/Vietnam border so the Americans bombed it mercilessly for nine years to disrupt the Communist supply trail between North and South Vietnam.
And because they were telling the world that there were no American troops in Laos, they didn’t even abide by ‘rules of engagement’ that restrict bombing of religious and civilian targets - they just bombed the crap out of everything that moved. They didn’t just bomb it either, they dropped cluster bombs. These are a delightful piece of ordnance that consists of an outer casing that is supposed to be opened by a pressure release mechanism when they leave the plane so that they release their deadly contents of ‘bombies’ over a wide area. Some ‘bombies’ exploded immediately while others were rigged to act more like landmines that would be triggered by trip wires after the villagers started to come out from shelter when they thought the bombing run was over.
The huge problem that remains is that around 30% of the ordnance dropped on this country did not explode during the war years - it remains on/in the ground aver huge tracts of the country
just silently waiting to kill or maim the unsuspecting villagers, often children, who stumble across it. With scrap metal prices at an all time high as a result of China’s growing demand for resources there is also the issue of villagers actively searching for exploded fragments and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) because they can make a month’s income in just a few days with a rudimentary metal detector. It is estimated that it will take 100 years to clear Laos of the UXOs that were dropped during the nine years of the Vietnam War. What a terrible, terrible legacy for about three more generations of Laotians.
Our ‘tourist moment’ for today was the group of Japanese (?) tourists that came into the theatre while we were watching the video ‘Deadly Harvest’ about the mine clearing efforts that are taking place. They came in talking amongst themselves, said hello to us and settled into seats. They then proceeded to take photos (with flashes flashing) of each other sitting in the cinema before they all got up and trouped out again as they said good-bye to us??????? Bizarre!!
You can learn more about the work that COPE is doing here in
Laos at www.copelaos.org.
If you are visiting Vientiane, you can visit the COPE Visitor Centre seven days/week between 9.00am and 6.00pm. You can support their work by making a donation, buying merchandise from their shop and/or buying drinks and ice-cream from their cafe. Plus they have one of the nicest public toilets in Vientiane!!
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