{"id":201135,"date":"2020-01-21T08:32:29","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T08:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201135"},"modified":"2020-01-25T06:41:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T06:41:45","slug":"no-wild-west-laos-is-always-just-around-the-bend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=201135","title":{"rendered":"No Wild West, Laos Is Always Just Around the Bend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh \u2013 The Unz Review Jan 20, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Savannakhet-2020<\/p><\/div>\n

The first white I met in Laos was a man of about 50. He was hunched over on a couch in the shabby lobby of a mini hotel, by the Savannakhet<\/span><\/a> bus station. Not a big tourist attraction, the city does have an elegant Catholic church and dinosaur bones in a museum. When I addressed the man in English, he replied, \u201cAh, my English, not so good!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cSo what do you speak?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cFrench, German, Spanish, Italian and a little bit of Portuguese.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhere are you from?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cLuxembourg!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>The second white I met<\/a> <\/span>was at the No Name Bar<\/span><\/a> in Vientiane. It is open onto the street, with half of its stools outside. The bartenders are young and pretty.<\/h5>\n
He came in with a youngish South Asian man and a middle-aged Lao woman. They were boisterous, alright.<\/h5>\n
The Lao\u2019s English comprehension was good enough to understand just about everything her companions said, apparently, but when she spoke, it was mostly interjections, punctuated by constant laughter, \u201cSometimes, I look him! Very stupid!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Or, \u201cYou drunk already?!\u201d I drunk!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Or, \u201cI drink! You drink! We happy! How many you drink?\u201d<\/h5>\n
If this woman doesn\u2019t stop speaking English soon, the world will run out of punctuation marks.<\/h5>\n
The white man\u2019s English was clearly not American, so I guessed, \u201cAre you Australian?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo, Norwegian!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut you speak English perfectly.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThank you.\u201d He smiled. \u201cIn school, I did better in English than Norwegian.\u201d<\/h5>\n
His name was Thom, and he had been in Laos for three months, he explained, and he would stay three more weeks.<\/h5>\n
That\u2019s a very long vacation, I thought. \u201cSo are you a rich guy?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo, no, I\u2019m not rich!\u201d Thom laughed.<\/h5>\n
\u201cSo how do you make money?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an online gamer. I have my PlayStation here.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cVery interesting.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cAnd I also get a pension.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cA pension?! You don\u2019t look old enough.\u201d Thom\u2019s a thin, pale man of about 5-10, with groggy eyes, a moustache, scraggly beard, mullet haircut and no wedding band. \u201cHow old are you?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThirty-four.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cHow do you get a pension at thirty four?!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Norway! But I was sick, really sick. I was pissing blood, shitting blood. I worked in transportation, but I couldn\u2019t work anymore, so I said to them, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just give me my pension?\u2019 So they did!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhen was this?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cA year ago. I get 14 million kips a month. That\u2019s, like, 1,600 dollars!\u201d<\/h5>\n
For doing nothing, that\u2019s not bad at all, though not so great if you\u2019re still in Norway, where a draft beer is $10, then you\u2019re expected to tip 15%. A plate of spaghetti at an ordinary restaurant will set you back $23.<\/h5>\n
In Laos, Thom can drink without limits, and have very fine meals for under $10, easy. A bowl of udon with crispy pork is just $1.70, and a good cheeseburger costs $5. He can get a savory crepe at an excellent French joint for just $6.50, not that he\u2019s that kind of a guy.<\/h5>\n
Not all is well, though, for Thom\u2019s trouble magnet, \u201cI have no impulse control. If you felt like breaking a window, you wouldn\u2019t do it, would you? But I would. That\u2019s why I have to take pills, but I can\u2019t get them in Laos. It is a problem.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Since you can get all kinds of illegal drugs here, for very cheap, I don\u2019t see why prescription ones should be a problem?<\/h5>\n
Thom, \u201cI\u2019ve been robbed, man, scammed. I\u2019ve been mugged. They wait outside the bar for you, then follow you. The other day, three of them tried to rob my motorbike, but I fought them all off!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not very smart. You didn\u2019t know how many of them there were. They could have killed you.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut I fought them all off, and I yelled to this tuk-tuk guy nearby.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cAnd he helped you?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cAnd he helped me chase them away!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou must know how to fight. Most guys don\u2019t.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t punch. I headbutt. That\u2019s how you get them.\u201d<\/h5>\n
I just laughed.<\/h5>\n
Thom, \u201cAbout ten days ago, I was just dancing and having a good time, but this farang guy thought I had looked at him funny, so he gave me shit.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhat nationality was he?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI think he was British. The bar owner is my friend. He said, \u2018Thom, it\u2019s not worth it,\u2019 so I just walked away.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s Lao.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYeah, he\u2019s Lao. So I walked away, but the British guy followed me outside the bar, and he just punched me!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cHe sucker punched you?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYeah, but I grabbed him by the head, and I headbutted him. I knocked him out!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cJust like that?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYeah, then I ran!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou know what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo, I don\u2019t. A few days ago, I fell down in the bathroom, and knocked myself the fuck out! I thought somebody had beaten up.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou must have been super drunk.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYeah, but there was water on the floor.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere often is.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThree guys carried me out. When I opened my eyes, I asked them, \u2018Did somebody beat me up?\u2019 It was pretty funny. I did hurt my fuckin\u2019 knee,\u201d and he rubbed his right knee. The memory made him shudder.<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to go to the hospital here, or to jail.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI almost did. I was with this farang guy when he ODed, and the cops took me in.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThey thought you had given him the drugs?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cYeah, but I had nothing to do with it.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cSo did he die?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cNo, he didn\u2019t. They took him to the hospital, then deported him.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhat nationality was he?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cI think British.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Because of his English proficiency, Thom\u2019s likely to hang out with English speakers, one must assume, so French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian guys, etc., may also be fighting and overdosing as much, just not in Thom\u2019s presence.<\/h5>\n
Thom\u2019s South Asian friend turned out to be a Nepalese-born resident of Dubai. An executive for a multi-national, he\u2019d been in Laos for 67 days, but not for work, just for fun.<\/h5>\n
\u201cOh man,\u201d Thom lamented, \u201cIn three months, I\u2019ve lost about 37,000,000 kips.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cMan, how do you lose that much? That\u2019s, like, more than four thousand bucks!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThey rob you, trick you, put shit in your drinks.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s so much money, man, but you\u2019re still here, and having a good time, so everything is cool. You should think of it as a tax. It\u2019s your tax for being here.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a pretty high tax!\u201d Thom laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s worse than Norway!\u201d<\/h5>\n
After this, I\u2019d see Thom around Baan Anou, and he always appeared happily drunk, except once. Just after 7AM, Thom was sweetly curled up<\/a> <\/span>at the corner of Setthathilath and Saigon. He had but one flipflop on, and behind his ass, on the street itself yet still upright, was an empty bottle of Beerlao. That very evening, Thom was out again, whooping it up with other youngish farangs.<\/h5>\n
In two days, Thom\u2019s flying back to Norway to check on his sick grandma, so don\u2019t tell me he\u2019s not responsible!<\/h5>\n
We talked over country songs of Thom\u2019s choosing. He loves Billy Carrington, \u201cGod is great, beer is good and people are crazy!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Toby Keith, \u201cWe got winners, we got losers \/ Chain smokers and boozers \/ An\u2019 we got yuppies, we got bikers \/ An\u2019 we got thirsty hitchhikers \/ And the girls next door dressed up like movie stars \/ Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, I love this bar!\u201d<\/h5>\n
And Thom loves everything by Alan Jackson, but especially, \u201cIt\u2019s alright to be a redneck \/ It\u2019s alright to drive around in a dirty ol\u2019 truck \/ Catch a bunch of fish and shoot a bunch of duck \/ It\u2019s alright to be a redneck \/ Chase around the girls on Friday night \/ You want to make \u2019em feel alright.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Many Europeans love American country music, in fact. There\u2019s a Vientiane bar, Tennessee<\/span><\/a>, that\u2019s owned by a Frenchman from Marseille. Stumbling in, I asked, \u201cHey, why do you call your bar Tennessee?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBecause I like country music and I like whiskey!\u201d<\/h5>\n
At the bar that sunny afternoon were two other Frenchmen, from Toulouse and Bordeaux.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>The walls were covered with goofy signs celebrating alcohol, America and very nice, knockout asses, mostly bent over. There are license plates with the Statue of Libert<\/span>y<\/a>, \u201cI LOVE LAS VEGAS\u201d and \u201cUSA \/ FBI<\/a> <\/span>\/ 007 \/ AMERICA.\u201d A message behind bar, \u201cWARNING<\/a><\/span> \/ DUE TO PRICE INCREASE ON AMMO \/ DO NOT EXPECT A WARNING SHOT.\u201d<\/h5>\n
The world over, America is equated with the freedom to drink, drive, screw and shoot with unprecedented abandon.<\/h5>\n
Young Lao man wore a black T-shirt showing a silver handgun, \u201cTHIS IS MY GLOCK<\/a><\/span> \/ THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT \/ THIS ONE IS MINE.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Another young Lao man<\/a> had a Beretta 92FS on his polo shirt, and Rambo is big here, at least among tuk-tuk drivers. A barechested Stallone with his rocket launcher keeps appearing on tuk-tuk mudflaps.<\/h5>\n
When I lived in Saigon from 1999 to 2001, there was just one Pizzeria in town, Annie\u2019s. Vientiane\u2019s first was Swedish Pizza<\/a><\/span> and Baking House<\/span><\/a>, which opened just a decade ago. Though it\u2019s now surpassed by Soul Kitchen, Pizza da Roby, Via Via, Pomodoro and Ai Capone, among others, Swedish Pizza still has its loyal customers, and I like to come here early in the morning, because it\u2019s a quiet place to drink a cappuccino and write. Not hip, it\u2019s popular among older Chinese guys, who treat it like a teahouse.<\/h5>\n
In a Vietnamese city, there several caf\u00e9s on every city block, sometimes two or three right next to each other, but in Vientiane, you can walk a mile without seeing one. One morning, I was on the streets just after 5, thinking I\u2019d find at least one caf\u00e9 somewhere that\u2019s open, but I ended up hiking nearly five miles, before ending up at Baan Ton Mali Cake Caf\u00e9 on Phonpapao Road, at around 9AM.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>Along the way, I inspected some interesting graves at Wat Phonhthanh Tai. A beautiful lady<\/span><\/a> with sharp, half-laughing eyes have bequeathed her ashes and a few bone fragments there. Regrettably, I couldn\u2019t read her name. Though we understand that losses and destructions have to routinely occur for fresh sprouts to shoot, it still kills us whenever we\u2019re not diverted.<\/h5>\n
Naming a Lao pizza joint \u201cSwedish\u201d couldn\u2019t have been a marketing ploy, since I\u2019m sure most Laos, to this day, don\u2019t associate Sweden with anything. Its offerings yield no clues, for besides Swedish meatballs, there\u2019s nothing else on its extremely cluttered menu<\/span><\/a> that\u2019s remotely Swedish.<\/h5>\n
There are Italian, Greek, German, Russian, Mexican and even Chinese dishes, and America is well represented by the \u201cHOT DONGS<\/span><\/a>.\u201d As for pizzas, there are roughly a hundred varieties.<\/h5>\n
Now, I understand. A Swedish pizza means anything goes, so that the Poseidon, for example, contains seashells and crab claws. The Afrikano has banana, curry, raisins and pineapple. The Domino is flecked with cashew nuts. The Achilles\u2019 boasts the philosophical sounding \u201cbread crunch.\u201d The Columbus also features seashells, which are obviously super popular. Maybe it has something to do with Laos being a landlocked country? Having never seen breaking waves, groovy surfers, bikini babes, melancholic lighthouses, oil tankers or half naked mermaids, Laos compensate by breaking their teeth with seashell pizzas.<\/h5>\n
\u201cOh, just shut up, Kale, and eat it all! Spit out the blood and swallow the seashells. This is how they do it in Sweden. This Western meal is costing our family a fortune! After this, we\u2019ll have to make do with duck chin for a week, if not a month or a year, just to make up the damn difference! But it\u2019s definitely worth it. During this multicultural era, even us Laos must know what the Swedes are up to, just in case they start swarming over here, as refugees, and we must be nice to them. To accommodate their slow learning, borderline retarded kids, we\u2019ll have to cut out all of our hellish, tongue searing and esophagus puncturing seasonings and serve up, for each school lunch, the blandest meatballs or seashell pizzas. This thought is so depressing, we may just have to emigrate to Sweden, perhaps tomorrow? And stop crying, Lokelani! People are staring at us. Let me educate our idiotic children!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Actually, Swedish Pizza is not that expensive. With its utilitarian furniture and no decors to speak of, it resembles a downscale cafeteria, something you\u2019d find at a community college that\u2019s about to be shut down. Spacing out there one morning, however, I met a most interesting farang, a 46-year-old Swiss.<\/h5>\n
With a boyish face and in great shape, Hans, not his real name, looked like he was no older than 30. For three years, Hans was Laos\u2019 only German teacher, and he got paid all right, $3,000 a month in 2011, plus free housing, health insurance and a free flight home each summer. The German Ambassador once said to Hans at a party, \u201cYou\u2019re the second most important German in Laos!\u201d<\/h5>\n
At Hans\u2019 institution, there was an Icelandic IT whiz who got paid even more, $6,000 a month.<\/h5>\n
With so much cash in a poor country, these youngish white guys should have attracted plenty of women, but it was illegal for a farang to have sex with a Lao if they\u2019re not married. This problem was solved, though, because Hans knew the son of Vientiane\u2019s police chief. The rich kid just told Hans and the Icelander, \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it. You guys just do what you want.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Hans used his money to travel, his grand passion, and he has been to 102 countries, \u201cAnd not just passing through, you know. If I just spend a day or two, it doesn\u2019t count.\u201d<\/h5>\n
A favorite is the Philippines. Hans fell in love with a Filipina, but he couldn\u2019t be there all the time, \u201cBut we were serious. I sent her $500 a month for two years.\u201d He smiled awkwardly. \u201cBut guess what?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cShe was already married! A friend emailed me to say that she had a husband, and they were buying a house together, with my money.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cWow!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere are stories like that. Here too. Many of these girls just see you as an ATM,\u201d and Hans used his index fingers to draw a line across his forehead.<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut there are also well-matched couples, with happy marriages.\u201d<\/h5>\n
At Wat Chan, for example, there\u2019s a grave with the ashes and bones of Luis Merand and his Lao wife, Leuane. Only three years younger, she also died 16 years before he did, so judging from their grave maker alone, Luis tended to Leuane until the end.<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s true, there are good marriages, but I know this one farang in Vientiane. He was married to a Lao. They had a house, then he got sick, dengue fever, so he had to stay in the hospital for four weeks. When he got out, his house had been sold, and his wife was gone!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s incredible!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s another guy, a Japanese. He fell in love with a Lao, and they got engaged, so he bought her a motorbike, then two cars, then a house, but on the day of the wedding, the very day of the wedding!\u201d Hans laughed. \u201cShe said, \u2018Goodbye!\u2019 He said, \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 She said, \u201cI\u2019m getting married today, but not to you, so thanks for everything, but goodbye!\u2019 That day, she married a Lao! Everything was already set up. The ceremony, the restaurant, the guests came, but the Japanese was gone!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere must be so many of these stories.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere are, but I know what I\u2019m getting into. Wherever I go in Asia, I always have a woman. After Vientiane, I\u2019ll be in Khao Lak, Thailand, with a Filipina, then I\u2019ll go to Taipei, with another Filipina.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cHow does that work, exactly?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIn Taipei, I\u2019ll be with this woman for a month, so I\u2019ll pay her $800, plus I\u2019m flying her over from the Philippines, and I\u2019ll take her shopping.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cDoes she buy a lot? How much will she buy?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cEnough, but she has to be careful. If she buys too much, she may not get another vacation with me. It\u2019s nice for these women, you know. They get to travel, stay in a nice hotel, eat well and make some money. A lot of them do this.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cEach woman must have so many guys, no?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s funny, but they always say two! If they say you\u2019re the only one, you won\u2019t believe them, but if they say too many, it\u2019s a big turnoff, so they always say they have two other boyfriends!\u201d<\/h5>\n
Hans is back in Switzerland, where he teaches high school German and geography, \u201cI think I got my taste for traveling from my parents. They took us to a lot of places when we were young. But my sister, she has five kids and doesn\u2019t travel.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIt is so much easier to travel as a Swiss. You\u2019re a small country surrounded by everything!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut actually, some Swiss don\u2019t travel! I know three people. I know a woman who told me that if she\u2019s in a hotel room, the first thing she does is to clean everything, especially the bathroom. She can\u2019t get on a plane, you know, because how can you clean an airplane bathroom? Another man told me he would never sit on a toilet that\u2019s not his, so he also can\u2019t travel.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cJust sit on it, man!\u201d If you\u2019re too fussy about dirt, you\u2019re not going to see much of the world, or even your own country or city. Don\u2019t let shit ground you.<\/h5>\n
\u201cI agree. Tonight, I\u2019m staying in a hostel, so it\u2019s a shared bathroom, but I was just at a five-star hotel in Sihanoukville. I got a great deal. It had a pool, and I love to swim!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cHow is Sihanoukville? I hear it\u2019s all Chinese now.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 98% Chinese! That\u2019s all you see!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cOh, come on! It can\u2019t be that high!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cBut it is! They are building all these tall buildings, all these hotels, so there\u2019s so much trash, everywhere. It\u2019s disgusting.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Hans showed me on his phone a road strewn with trash bags, large and small, plus all sorts of other garbage. Cambodia is just horrible at waste management, so this surge of Chinese construction and tourism in Sihanoukville is making the mess even worse.<\/h5>\n
Hans, \u201cSihanoukville was a paradise ten years ago.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s that bad, then why do people still go there?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cMany people just stay in their hotel.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t make sense. I mean, you travel to walk around.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThere are only five good restaurants, maybe. There\u2019s nothing to do. There\u2019s this one dirt road with shacks on both sides. It was very depressing. There were all these prostitutes, you know, but I\u2019m not sure if they were too young. The Chinese would go there, or they\u2019d show up at the bars between 2 and 4AM, to pick up prostitutes.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t drink socially. They just come to pick up prostitutes!\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Chinese businessmen build partnerships through bouts of eating, drinking and karaoke singing in flashy venues that employ pretty hostesses or prostitutes. Plus, the male\/female ratio in China is messed up, thanks to the traditional preference for baby boys, which was made even worse by the now abolished one-child policy. Since millions of female fetuses were aborted, millions of Chinese men must now pay to get laid, in or out of China. With more cash to spend, Chinese sex tourists will become more ubiquitous.<\/h5>\n
Since the defeated and diffident must prey on the most vulnerable, they often target children. Seasoned whores terrify losers. Though pedophilia is certainly a sickness, it\u2019s perfectly logical when it comes to these aging Chinese bachelors.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>Walking around Vientiane, I\u2019d see these stickers on utility poles, with each showing a doll-like prostitute<\/span><\/a>. Though they\u2019re in Chinese, what they\u2019re selling was obvious. One girl was bottomless, for example, though standing sideway. Maybe I\u2019m wrong. Maybe they\u2019re just aggressively pitching, Nolan Ryan like, an ointment for anal fissures. Rub this on your bunghole or I\u2019ll throw at your damn head!<\/h5>\n
I\u2019d seen these doe-eyed, I-pay-attention-to-nothing-but-schoolwork looks before, most recently in Macao, though the whores there advertised themselves with colorful tart cards<\/a><\/span>. (In London, there are similar cards<\/span><\/a>, but with white girls.) Though the law against panickingly repetitive slamming between unwedded foreigners and Laos is still extant, it\u2019s clearly not seriously enforced.<\/h5>\n
There are enough whores here, with many coming from China and Vietnam, while thousands of Lao women have been trafficked to Thailand.<\/h5>\n
Sounds grim, but here in Vientiane, the craziness is limited to a tiny, if most conspicuous, part of town. With its end of the road aura, Laos does attract nutcases<\/span><\/a> who show up and think they can do anything. Complete with swinging saloon doors and a false front, there\u2019s a bar called Wind West<\/a><\/span>, and there was even a Cowboy Park<\/span><\/a>, but that has been shut down. In the end, Lao has remained Lao, for the Laos, and not a Wild West for farangs, Chinese, Vietnamese or whomever. Let\u2019s hope there\u2019s no irreversible disfigurement on her horizon.<\/h5>\n
Tomorrow, I\u2019ll take an 11-hour bus ride to Phonsavang, in the heart of the much-bombed Plain of Jars. It\u2019s miraculous that so many of these two-thousand-year-old beauties have survived, but that\u2019s the Lao allegory. Bombarded with everything down the centuries, she\u2019s managed to retain her distinctive elegance, serenity and dignity.<\/h5>\n
Geography is always a factor. Laos is upriver, beyond the mountains and, even with much recent reckless logging, still covered with jungles mostly. Even in the brightest sunshine, she\u2019s always just around the bend.<\/h5>\n
Linh Dinh\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> latest book is Postcards from the End of America<\/a><\/span>. He maintains a regularly updated photo blog<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n
DONATE<\/strong><\/span><\/a> t<\/span><\/span>o<\/span> Linh Dinh.<\/h5>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linh Dinh continues his journey through Laos, meeting various wandering expatriates along the way <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201135"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201144,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201135\/revisions\/201144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}