UXO

A gentle start, the Aeropress working overtime, a boiler rather than a flask here, a better temperature andthe coffee I bought in Oudomxay brewing a wonderful cup - www.saffroncoffee.com - for details of the coffee and the stories and ethos behind it.


Morning unfolding slowly, a wander to a local wat, food in a nearby place, a return to the room. A rest day after a month of activity and movement. It is a stunning place, Luang Praban, and beyond the central streets not as busy as I'd thought on arrival. Lost again, out with the app...


On the map three letters, uxo, the call to a pilgrimage, the recollection of Phonsavan, the plain of jars, where my ignorance was replaced by the horror and sorrows of a secret war which dispersed with rules of engagement and left, as its ongoing legacy, a harvest of unexploded munitions which still, forty years after the bombing stopped, claims the lives and limbs of the innocent and unwary. I pay my respects, make a small donation, find my original reaction has only darkened over time. The shame and sorrow that this land of such beauty and kindness still suffers, these landscapes and farmlands, burned out temples, desecrated by the military power of a distant empire and, even now, caught in the shadow of the Vietnam war, its trauma less known, less spoken.  There's an angry rant from November 2014 in my blips... 


Otherwise today becomes a day of eating  doughnuts by a stall on a dusty street corner, small walks and rests, smiles and a weary contentment, time to think, attempt to plot a course. Failing at all points which involve thought or activity, eventually, sitting by the river as darkness falls, the sun swallowed once again by the murk. But the wind's changed, no longer from the north; hills have reappeared from memory, circling the town, higher than I remember, maybe tomorrow a sunset. But for now I eat a plate of laab, watch the lights of boats reflect upon the darkened surface of the Mekon and shuffle reasons to postpone departure...