Category: The Bear and the Bees

Last week I found myself back in Laos. It’s currently my most favourite country in Asia and although Vientiane, the ‘new’ capital is lovely, I keep getting drawn back to the mountains.

As mentioned in a previous post, I was up in the highlands working on a renewable energy project, where the biggest threat to life and limb is all of the unexploded ordinance left over from the Vietnam war. This trip was a fact finding mission for all of the main contractors who will work on the project so that they could see the ground reality and experience the tracks that pass for roads in the dry and resemble rivers in the wet season.

There were going to be around 40 contractors involved in the trip, plus half a dozen from the unexploded ordinance company we were using plus various strap hangers, so I knew that I was going to need some help keeping the various people together and literally on track. I asked an old friend, someone who I literally grew up with to come out and herd the cats with me. The right thing to do at this point would be to change his name “to protect the innocent” so to speak, so I am just going to call him Eric.

We set out from the southern town of Pakse with a couple of hired 4wd vehicles, complete with drivers and after a heated exchange and forced tyre change (for some that actually had tread on them) headed into the mountains. It wasn’t long before our driver, Mr. Som began to irritate Eric with his inability to change gear or conduct a hill start – both valuable skills as an off road driver, of course. Mr. Som also had the habit of stopping in the middle of a creek crossing, then change down to low ratio and try to climb out of the creek bed using way too few revs. He would invariably stall in a huge cloud of steam and sloshing of water and then select the correct gear (more or less) and grind his way out of the water. By this stage, I realised that some of the steam was actually coming out of Eric’s ears; his eyes were rolling and he was twitching and muttering like he was being tasered.  Hanging from the drivers mirror was a collection of amulets, religious charms, spare glasses, framed prayers and several strange objects shaped like bicycle clips. At the first hint of a bump in the road, the pendulous grouping began to swing. By the time we reached the worst stretch of the road, the objects had taken on a momentum all of their own; they moved like the rotor blades of a stricken helicopter, narrowly missing Alan, the UXO expert each time a hole in the road caused him to lurch forward.

Eric’s growls of anger prompted Mr. Som to grab at the now cyclonic collection right at the critical juncture of cresting a large hill and dodging a rock that had appeared in the middle of the track. Eric’s cry of outrage, Alan’s muttered prayers and my small girlish squeal caused Mr. Som to slam on the brakes, stall (of course) and skid to a halt on a sea of mud facing directly into several buffalo coming the opposite way.  I omitted to mention that Mr. Som did not speak English and thus far, we had relayed all instructions by cellphone through Alan’s office manager in Vientiane. The salty stream of curses that came out of Eric, a former marine and naval officer, needed no translation however. Mr. Som quietly smoked a cigarette, standing in the warm morning sun with his eyes tightly shut and tried to ignore the spittle laden invective. Alan and I gathered ourselves and had a chuckle at Eric’s rantings about incompetence, attempted murder, being reborn as a buffalo and we marvelled at the way his red shaven head seemed to deepen in hue as he worked himself into a frenzy. We took bets on how long it would be until a large vein in his neck burst but fortunately for all, Mr. Som made a low bow and strategically walked backwards until he reached the car and climbed back in.

I was explaining the ubiquitous nature of unexploded ordinance to the visiting contractors when one of the UXO pathfinders pointed out an 82mm mortar round, quietly sitting by the roadside. I expect that it has been disturbed when the road was made and left there as being ‘too difficult” to dispose of.  It had lost its tail fins and nosecone but was still ‘live’ and full of high explosive. Without the nosecone it wasn’t going too detonate and in fact, was pretty safe to handle, but the visitors didn’t know that and it made for a sobering discussion point.

In the next village we passed through, three people had died in the preceding years because of UXO’s. They were plowing fields and digging latrines at the time and had accidentally detonated some of the very large bombs that had been lying in the soil over the years since the war.

One of Alan’s teams was working on an NGO’s clearance project and we drove out to see them. The location was around half an hour from our destination and was very well set out to international standards with signs designating test pits, fragmentation pits and the first aid point. The idea was that the team would clear a waterlogged gully so that it could be dug out and turned into fish ponds. In order to clear the gully properly, they needed to lay out 1 metre wide rope lanes and place small planks on the surface so that the operators didn’t sink into the mud as they carefully swept the ground.

It was labour intensive and very hot, but after the job was finished, the local community would be better able to feed itself. The team medic was actually an Army surgeon, who had plenty of experience with the trauma caused by UXO’s and he took pleasure in showing us his aid kit. I suspect that he secretly hoped for a casualty, just to keep his hand in, so we trod extremely carefully on the way back up the very steep hill.  The team later found an SUU-14/A ‘dispenser’ that during the war would have been attached to the underwing of a US  A1-E Skyraider that had not fully discharged.  They found one of the tubes still full of live cluster munitions.

On the way back in the car, despite Eric’s oft voiced desire to leave Mr. Som in a shallow grave beside the Ho Chi Minh trail, we reached the small town of Dak Chung without further incident. Dak Chung sits beside a very picturesque lake on a plateau in the middle of the mountains and it is a trading centre for the local people.

And yes, that is the outhouse in the bottom corner of the picture.  Aside from a myriad of small wooden shops selling rice, tinned goods and petrol it has a small hospital, a muddy main street and a couple of guesthouses. Luckily, the one I stayed in last time and fed myself to the bedbugs was full and we stayed in a far nicer, but still very basic establishment on the way out of town. All day, whilst cramped up in the car or boiling our brains under the scorching sun; we had herded the contractors through the various sites and I had been looking forward to dinner and a cold beer at a small restaurant overlooking that lake and despite the fact that by the time we arrived, it was down to single figures and drizzling with rain, we wrapped a shivering Eric up in a warm coat and limped down the main street, much to the delight of the local kids, confusion of the local pigs and disgust of the towns dogs, who yapped and snarled at our heels.  It became clear that Eric had got sunstroke during the day and he had a splitting headache and couldn’t get warm until the medication that I had found in my first aid kit and the long necked bottles of medicine I found in the restaurant fridge worked their magic. We ordered spicy pork ribs and speculated that the ribs had come from a family member of the squealing drift of porkers running around under the hut. We decided that they probably had, so at least the ‘from field to fork’ adage was being followed.

As the beers went down, a discussion about Mr. Som (who hadn’t been invited to dine with us) and his driving provoked more and more gnashing of teeth from Eric and more mirth from us. Having known Eric for over 30 years, I had to tell Alan that had hadn’t always been like an angry Rottweiler, in fact, when we joined up together, he was ten years older than I was; he’d been quite a charmer and was always the life and soul of the party. Eric claimed that it was during his time aboard HMS Brazen as a ‘puddle jumper’ or ships diving officer in the Caribbean when he’d been hit by sonar whilst carrying out a ships bottom search that started off his deafness, headaches and short temper.

Alan, who had spent 23 years in the Australian Navy as a clearance diver and in considerably more challenging waters than the Caribbean, laughed like a drain when he heard that Eric had been ‘pinged’ by sonar and we speculated that as sonar has been blamed for the death of marine mammals and reportedly caused Whales to strand, what might it have done to Eric’s brain? “where’s our bloody dinner and who are all those Chinese buggers”? called Eric as a group of Chinese workers pushed to the front of the queue to order. “PINGGGGG” shouted Alan, imitating the sound of a sonar shot. “Bastard” Eric replied, “PINNNGGGGG” I replied –  “Bastards” said Eric, including me in the conversation and the evening went south from there.

It was pretty cold that night and I was grateful for the fleecy blankets that the guest house provided, but I could have done with a couple more of them. I felt pretty seedy when I woke up and gathering up the other two, we repeated our ‘walk of shame’ back to the restaurant for breakfast. The Chinese NGO had beaten us to it and were busy trying to bully the serving ladies into serving them. “what the hell are they all doing here”? said Eric, “they’re even sitting in our seats” “PINNNNNGGGGGGG” we said in unison…….

That night, after a very rough and trying drive back to Pakse, we reached the fine Pakse hotel and after cutting Mr. Som loose, made our way to its 7th floor rooftop bar. The view was amazing and we ordered beers and started to look through the menu, just as the sun disappeared below the horizon and the new moon came up. A cold beer at the end of long hot, dusty day can pretty much cure all ills, even a bad attitude and our first bottle of beer Lao that evening was no exception. Despite all good intentions to the contrary, we stayed up too late and drank too much (again), but it had been a good trip, in a beautiful country with a tragic history and we were all feeling pretty mellow by the time we stumbled towards the lift. “Goodnight all” Eric said, “Goodnight Mr. Ping” we both replied…..

We were recently offered a chance to have a night away at a friends farmhouse in the country around 40 minutes away from our house. They rent it our to paying customers but they were between guests and knew that we didn’t go away over Christmas, so they were kind enough to offer the place to us. We only had a night before our obligations required us to be back at home but we jumped at the chance.

Our friends are very resourceful country people and they would always rather recycle or ‘up cycle’ when possible and when time and money allows it, they plan to move onto the land and live from it. At the moment, they have around 100 acres and 30 sheep on the farm and a small farmhouse that they have extensively renovated.

It’s a lovely place and you can imagine the generations of families who have lived there. At one time, it was used as a rural post office and you can still see the ceramic insulators on one of the outhouses (above) where the telegraph line ran into the homestead.

There’s plenty of room and we found the paddock without the sheep and set up a small target for the small boy and we plinked away with his air rifle.  In the past we have taken home several rabbits for the pot, but the grass was so long, we couldn’t see them this time!

I love the history of the place and the sense of peace that being there brings to you when you sit outside on the seats and watch the sun come up with a cup of tea.

The land also has a swimming hole, that their kids use extensively in the summer months and delicious yabbies (freshwater crayfish) live in the creek just waiting to be caught. A decaying copse of pines that had outlived themselves had to be cut down when they first bought the property in order to put up usable fences and that meant that they have a long lasting supply of firewood for the winter months. It was still a fire ban when we were there, so we didn’t need a fire, but it would be lovely to be there in mid winter in front of it holding a glass of red – or in my case, clutching a bottle of it…

Small boy seen above enjoying the sofa!

As the Christmas and New Year holidays draw to a close, temperatures rise through the roof and anyone with any sense goes and sits on a beach.  It goes without saying that I don’t have an excess of sense and despite a couple of hours yesterday, I don’t go to the beach as often as I should.  There are a number of reasons for that I suppose and one among them is a dislike of crowds.  Ozzie beaches are generally lovely and not as crowded as many in Europe when you can’t get to the water without running the gauntlet of towels designating temporary ‘ownership’ of a million grains of sand, tripping over inflatable toys and sweaty sunburned tourists in way too brief swimsuits.

I have already mentioned that we have a number of pets (3 dogs, a cat and numerous chickens) and of course, they are all grateful for food and water through this period of seasonal trial.  Because of that, we generally don’t go away for anymore than an overnight stay at Christmas.  Our friends know this and we happily volunteer to look after their animals, knowing that ‘what goes around, comes around’ and when we do go away, they will repay the favour.  This Christmas and New Year period has been busier than usual for our unofficial pet nanny role with dogs, cats, a pig, a horse, a sheep, numerous ducks and a huge flock of chickens adding to our daily duties.

Across the road, our friend and neighbour has three large Alaskan Malamute’s who quietly sit and swelter throughout most of the day except when you approach their pen.  They have a sixth sense regarding food and exercise and they know that when someone approached them, they are generally going to get one or the other.  They standup on their hind legs and howl excitedly and given that Canuk, the male stands about 1.6 metres tall on his back legs, he’s pretty imposing and because of his very shaggy fur, he looks as stocky as your average teenage grizzly bear.  I always approach them first and give them an opportunity to sniff, lick and get a scratch behind the ear.  In the evenings, when they are fed, I always walk around the free ranging domestic flock of fowl to make sure that they are safely in their enclosure before returning to the dogs and letting them out for a run in the paddock.  They race around like mad things, teasing the retired racehorse, who lives there and burning up the energy that they have saved during the heat of the day.  I prepare their mountainous daily feed and strategically place it around their pen, before letting them back in.  They immediately gallop over to their own bowls to see if there’s anything different before returning to me to sit and wait for a pat and for me to make a fuss over them.

Other friends, who live on a nearby ridge, have a lovely sustainable plot where they grow vegetables, raise ducks, keep bees and have a sheep, who was supposed to be Sunday dinner, but who instead seems to have become an additional family member.  They recently passed our house with the sheep (Toby) on a lead, trotting happily behind the kids on their evening constitutional.  The ducks (all three of them) lord it up over the sheep and like him are happy to be fed by hand and occasionally stroked when it suits them.  They refuse to be put away in their fox proof house until its dark and I have had many an hour trying to persuade them to ‘get inside you little bastards‘ before they are ready, just because there’s something I want to watch on tv…  They saunter nonchalantly up the ramp into the little house when they are ready and not before.

I have to admit, the pig was a new one on me.  On the other side of the village, other long terms friends have a small holding (there’s just no other way of describing it) and they run a couple of cattle for meat and two pigs.  One of them is already in the freezer and the other is loving the space of her pen and very aromatic wallow without an inkling of what her future holds.  If you know country people and in particularly country Australians, you’ll know that they are both remarkably sensitive and caring over the wellbeing of their animals and yet strangely unsentimental when it becomes time for them to become a more integral part of the family, if you know what I mean.  The pig had been named Claire after their daughter and everyone, including the two legged Claire had been happy with that until a school friend (clearly a ‘townie’) asked if wasn’t it perhaps a bit sick to be eating their daughters namesake?  They decided, with an air of bemused grace to rename her Rosemary instead.  Rosemary is a pig who both likes her food and mud, but also a scratch on the head. Having seen silence of the lambs, I had no wish to be her dinner and so I leaned over the fence and poured her food into the trough very carefully.

Life is much better with animals in it. I have no problem with raising them with love and care, enjoying their company, their eggs and honey but by the same token, tucking into a large bacon butty, knowing that a couple of days before, I’d been contributing to that very tasty belly.

At home, my bees take very little looking after, but I have had the chance to rebuild a couple of hives and adapt them to the new ‘flow’ system.  More about that anon.

Happy New Year.

It’s Christmas eve in Australia.  In country Victoria it’s 21:00hrs: still light and it’s 25 degrees.  We are expecting a high of 34 degrees for Christmas day and suffice it to say that I will struggle to justify an open fire.  Because of that slight inconvenience, I usually crank up the aircon to the point that its actually painful to sit in the living room and before long, the family begs me to light the fire.  Today, I will refuse of course, because there’s a current fire ban.

I can’t help but thinking that there’s something missing?  Have a look back at some of the previous posts to see what my fireplace looks like in full ‘bloom’

Having bleated about my lack of a marsh mellow toaster; last year, a week before Christmas, there was a terrible fire where around 18 houses were lost.  The fire started when a cocky slashed the grass in his paddocks: for the non Australian speakers – that’s where a farmer mows the long grass in their fields with a mechanical cutter called a slasher that’s attached to the back of a tractor and when he finished, he rested the slasher on the ground near his barn.  The grass was so dry and the slasher so hot that within minutes, the grass caught fire.  The farmer had retired for a siesta in his air-conditioned bedroom and then next thing he knew was when the Country Fire Authority (CFA) were knocking on his door telling him to evacuate.

Here’s how it works. On the mount nearby there is a fire watch tower and because of the risk of both the bush and the village going up in flames, whenever smoke is seen at this time of year, the CFA is alerted by the lookout on the hill and the fine volunteers turn out, regardless of the hour or season and battle any fires that threaten us all.

The following picture was taken from a friends deck.  He is a little further from the fire front than we were, but he has more elevation. The front was actually about four kilometres away at this point, but it looked felt and smelt a lot closer.

There have been several fund raisers for those who lost their houses and I’m always careful to put some extra in the tin at collecting time just in case its our house that they are flighting to save.  I have also to admit to some history with the CFA myself as they have been around to our place, more than once….

It wasn’t a fire ban period or I wouldn’t have done it, but we had a spit roast with a whole pig on it for our son’s leaving party a few years ago and whilst the pit was in our brick courtyard and within an old stone tack room; to be honest, it did generate a fair amount of smoke. Something in fact, rather like the entire Imperial German Navy sailing out of the Kiel canal in 1916.  Luckily, the vast majority of the smoke had dispersed by the time the amped up fire fighters arrived on our street. I say luckily because they had hoses, a whole lot of them and they clearly wanted to deploy them.  The lack of a target for their desires quickly led to frustration and with the fire watch tower radioing them “it’s there, I just saw soooo much smoke” they knew they were getting warm; pun intended, honestly.

We have a tall stone wall that blocked their view of the offending and by now, sizzling porker and luckily, the smoke had given way to the glowing embers and they were up wind.   They couldn’t quite smell the thick garlic and olive oil marinade that I was liberally swooshing all over piggy with that huge wand of rosemary either.  Within a few moments of running up and down the street, they quickly overheated and retreated back to the air-conditioned cab and turned the siren on. I smiled and thought that I identified a slightly frustrated tone in that increasing wail.

So, there’s no fire tonight.  Not at my house anyway and with all the lumber currently in the garden, the house wouldn’t last long in any case.  The laser lights, that were a product of my daytime TV shopping habit, are illuminating the property and it’s time to quieten down the house before Santa approaches.  I have finished the last very large G&T of the evening: well, possibly the last.. and its time to scatter the glitter and blow out the candles.

Merry Christmas.

Around 1842 when our house was built, most of the surrounding bush had been cleared and a large orchard was planted.  Several hundred acres of pasture were established and it became a working farm.  The owners, a local Dr. and his wife owned the farm and as he made his rounds on horseback, his wife managed the dozens of staff who cultivated apples, gooseberries and grew potatoes. They also had a 100 cows and a large dairy making milk and cheese, that by the early 1850’s was helping to feed the thousands of diggers scratching around in the bush trying to find gold.

 

This picture shows the farm in its heyday.  The large building to the front right of the scene is the farm office and accomodation for some of the workers.  The house with its distinctive chimneys is just behind it.  All water came from an underground river drawn up by the windmill in the centre of the picture and was then pumped into a deep brick well.  When the Doctor died, his wife Mary decided to auction off the farm and it was advertised as “one of the most desirable family residences in Victoria”  with its ‘dining room, drawing room, parlour and three bedrooms with detached kitchen”   At some time in the late 1800’s, a Monterrey pine seed was planted and you can see the young tree at the right of the painting.

The new family decided to move out of farming and instead, split up the land between the many children and invested in other businesses.  The tree watched over it all. It kept its own council, only occasionally dropping a branch by way of comment as the years passed and Australia moved towards electing its first Prime Minister in Sir Edward Barton. When we moved into the house nine years ago, the tree was fully grown. Its hollows were home to both ringtail and the more common brush tail possums with nesting king parrots and scarlet rosellas making the most out of the smaller chambers in the tree. There was no way of course that anything could grow directly underneath the tree as it created so much shade.  The root plate had spread under the house and the corner closest to the tree had been lifted up slightly as it reached out to claim more of the property.  You could actually feel the shape of the root and the rise in the floor boards under your feet when you walked into the front bedroom.

Over the years, the power company had come along and viciously shaved one side so as to keep falling branches from taking the power lines out. That had caused an alarming lean towards the house and all the weight of the tree hung over the front of the house and the fence with our neighbours. We decided to call in an arborist who would help trim the tree, open up the light to the garden and lighten her load where she appeared to be struggling to hold her many arms out.  There is another tree nearby that is significantly older and has a special place in the culture of the local Aboriginal people.  It’s called the corroboree tree and while its not much taller than the tree, he’s probably around 400 years old and being taller than anything around him, became a focus and meeting point for the Wathaurong people.  A few years ago when the council stepped in to clear up fallen branches and to to trim those that appeared to be next to go, the local historical society, accompanied by local Aboriginal elders lobbied the workers to stop work until a proper explanation of their intent was given.  Our tree, not being a eucalyptus, is not a native and therefore has no legal protection, but nonetheless when the arborist moved in with her chainsaws, the locals gathered and glowered before we could explain that this was just a haircut. Luckily, they put away their pitchforks and returned to their homes before we all fell victim to the mob, metaphorically speaking, of course.

In Australia we get storms, floods and fires of biblical proportions.  Bush fires do happen with alarming regularity and a couple of years ago, one came quite close to home and had us all very worried. On that day, in the very high winds, our tree dropped a branch that only narrowly missed the house, which worried us. There have also been several very scary storms that locally have destroyed houses, blown trees down that have crushed cars and even people.

 Around a month ago, it had got to the stage that when the wind blew, we couldn’t let the kids sleep in the front bedrooms and this large branch almost took out the power line.  Such was our fear of having the tree fall on the house in a storm, we had to take the decision to have the next haircut become a dismemberment. Quotes were sought, kidneys sold and a new arborist arrived and took one look at the tree and said, ‘she’s going to split down the middle and take out your house and probably the neighbours too’.  It was only a matter of when apparently. They swarmed all over the tree and moved the most threatening branches first, before leaving us with an almost unrecognisable lanky stranger.  They then left the scene of the crime for another job, with promises that they would return.  We dried our eyes and instead looked at all the firewood we’d have for the next winter.

Paddy, the ‘tree fella’ and his team have been back and finished the take down of the tree.  They spent two hot and sweaty days annoying the villagers with the noise from the chainsaws and have left the mutilated remains of the tree strewn across the garden.  I dare say that it will take me six months, at least, to break down the huge biscuits of wood (yes, thats what they are called) and render them into manageable chunks that will fit into the fire place.

An english lady out walking her dogs spent quite a while observing the goings on and bearded me on the drive as I was wrangling Christmas shopping and children (trying to stop the latter from observing the former) and getting the packages into the house.  She noted very politely that I had a lovely house and that it was also a lovely tree.  I could see where the conversation was going and so chipped in with ‘thank you, it was such a pity that I had to make a choice between them’  She nodded her understanding and we discussed the recent storms and the number of trees around the village that had fallen.
Well, its done now and we have a pile of wood chips that mountaineers can work off any excess energy on outside the house and a sea of logs that once dried, will keep us warm for the next ten years.  We’ll really miss the tree and I am very sad to see it go, but I would have missed the squashed kids more…

 

It’s still spring and today was a balmy 28 degrees at around the middle of the day.  My bees were working overtime on all the flowers and blossom and the dogs lolled around in the courtyard, far too lazy to snap at the flies.  Having been overseas rather a lot lately, Scarlett, my MG has been rather neglected and today seemed an ideal opportunity to take the top down and roll her out for a run.

We have some lovely friends who live on a (small) mountaintop nearby and the drive up to the mount is just the place to put Scarlett through her paces.  They live on ten acres with a fine view of the countryside and distant Grampians and every year in November they have a huge bonfire of all the branches that have fallen from their many gum trees.  I arrived in time to stuff myself with the BBQ and home made cakes and for the temperature to plummet, relatively speaking, to a nippy 11 degrees as the sun set.

I drove Scarlett down their grassy hill to the site of the fire and parked her up in a line of trees just before the fire was lit. David, our host went through the male ritual of dousing the bonfire with diesel and throwing a crumpled lit newspaper onto the pyre.  With the now strong breeze blowing across the field, it quickly roared to life with the embers leaping up into the tree tops over 50 metres away.  I immediately envisaged a fireball landing inside Scarlett and so with the panicked speed of a thousand gazelles, I jumped in to move her out of the way.

I saw the other, more hardy souls, who owned the large 4WD’s that were sitting alongside my original parking space, glance disdainfully at my example of car preserving timidity and turn back to their beer.  One man, on his own detached from the group, walked past the huddled group of females (remember, it is an Australian BBQ) and wandered up the rise to Scarlett.  I lost sight of him as the fabled ‘red steer’ – an aerial fireball that is created when the superheated air ignites the vapours from the gum trees, exploded in the tops of trees and crackled ominously.  Almost as a man, they glanced nervously towards the shining paintwork of their vehicles and then back to Scarlett, sitting safely away from the conflagration. One by one, they slunk over to their chariots and moved them to a place of safety and then moved back to the now towering inferno, which has always struck me as one of the best of the cheesy 1970’s disaster movies and back to their beer.

The lone (obvious) Scarlett admirer, appeared by my smug side and after introducing himself showed me the photograph that he had taken just as the fire was catching.  It’s about as dramatic as you can get without the next picture being a smouldering shell of 60’s engineering from Mr. Morris’s garage.  It turned out that Steve, who is a local emergency room physician, was originally from Southhampton and like me, has an eye for old cars and self preservation.  It further transpired that he’s somewhat of an expert in pizza oven building having created several in various houses that he’d lived in over the years.  We have decided that I will swap wood chips, (more about that anon) for building advice.  Who said that living in the middle of nowhere doesn’t have its payoffs?  Not me, thats for sure.

I was recently working in the Lao peoples democratic republic and out of all the countries I have visited, this one has to be one of my favourites. I started and finished my trip in the Capitol, Vientiane which, if you haven’t been there, is an old French colonial city, with lots of beautiful buildings and French bakeries.  This old mansion has been converted into a hotel and I stayed here for a couple of nights.  Its was a lot better than the government run guesthouse I stayed in later in the week where I was bitten by bed bugs!

 

Laos, as you may have read, has a huge problem with unexploded ordinance that was left over from the Vietnam war that still kills many people each year when they tread on cluster bombs or dig up ordinance to sell for scrap. One of the reasons that I was there is to find out would have to be done in order to safely construct a wind farm in the mountains there. The answer to that is ‘a whole lot of very expensive ground remediation work’  The following picture shows how ground is searched for UXO’s – 1 metre wide lanes are marked in rope, after the ground has been cleared of vegetation and the operator (a lot of them are female) walkup and down the lanes with the metal detector.  When something is found, the operator carefully digs down to identify the object.  The UXO is covered in sand bags and a small charge is laid on the device and detonated remotely.  If the UXO is too large to blow in situ, the fuse is often cut from the bomb with a linear charge and the bomb carried elsewhere for detonation.

Laos has the unfortunate distinction of being the world’s most heavily bombed nation. During the period of the Vietnam War, over half a million American bombing missions dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos, most of it anti-personnel cluster bombs.  Each cluster bomb shell contained hundreds of individual bomblets, or “bombies” as the locals call them.  They are about the size of a tennis ball and an estimated 30% of these munitions did not detonate. Ten of the 18 Laotian provinces have been described as “severely contaminated” with artillery and mortar shells, mines, rockets, grenades, and other devices from various countries of origin (not just the US). These munitions pose a continuing obstacle to agriculture and a special threat to children, who are attracted by the toylike devices.

This is helicopter fired rocket that had failed to explode and the operator is preparing to attach a charge for eventual destruction in place.

Some 288 million cluster munitions and about 75 million unexploded bombs were left across Laos after the war ended. From 1996–2009, more than 1 million items of UXO were destroyed, freeing up 23,000 hectares of land for farming. Official statistics state that between 1999 and 2008, there were 2,184 casualties (including 834 deaths) from UXO incidents.  When I asked a doctor at one of the regional hospitals how many people he saw a month who had been injured by UXO’s, he said ‘an average of three per month” which horrified me.

The sad thing is that the Lao people almost seem embarrassed about having disabilities and its quite rare to see maimed people moving around in the towns and villages. They are there, of course and there are a surprising number of them, but you don’t see the disabled people on the streets begging as you sometimes do in Cambodia. I don’t know why, but its clear that the international community has really helped the communities affected by the bombs and the family groups seem very close. In Cambodia, so many people were murdered by the Khmer Rouge that perhaps those extended families just don’t exist any more.

There is an attached picture of a met mast, the 140 meter high tower that we put up to measure the wind at different heights. The tree in the centre is growing in a bomb crater…

The ground site is 1 hectare in size (2.5 acres) and it took 16 days to clear of explosive ordinance and fragmentation from bombs that did go off, which still sets off an alarm in the detectors and has to be removed, or it continues to give false alarms. In this 1 hectare there was 26 cluster bomblets, 1 x 24mm rocket, 22 x 52mm projectiles fired by aircraft , 1 x 37mm anti aircraft round and an entire anti tank cluster bomb round. There was even an M79 grenade round and lots of 5.56mm ammunition dug up at the site. They were used by the Americans and it shows the lie that there were no US ground troops fighting in Laos during the war.

There are so many remnants of war littering the ground that you can see shell casings and cluster bomb containers being used as piling for huts, fences and even very large jet fuel tanks that were jettisoned during raids have been repurposed as canoes.  This MK 82 500lb ‘general purpose’ bomb has been defused and  the object sitting on top is actually a cluster bomb.  Here’s a closer picture of it;

The area I was working in was directly along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The trails (there were a number that all ran along the border) roughly follow the spine of the mountain range that runs along the Lao and Vietnamese sides of the border and they were used by the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese Army to resupply their soldiers who were fighting the Americans (and some Australians). The Americans dropped so much ordinance on the land trying to disrupt the transportation. The trails varied from literal tracks where ammunition was carried on foot and sometimes by elephant to roads that enabled trucks and even tanks to travel along them. We saw a wrecked tank (possibly a T55) alongside the trail, along with an unexploded 500lb bomb that had been displaced during the road clearing. The Leatherman tool is placed there for scale.  It’s a good guess that the tank had been wrecked by one of the bombs that did go off on the same mission.

This strange looking vehicle is what passes for a horse/Ox cart here and its nicknamed an “Iron Buffalo” and if you look at them from the side, thats exactly what they look like; a buffalo head. They unhitch the trailer and put big paddle wheels on it and use it to ‘rotivate’ the rice paddies. I have even seen one on a stand and being used to power a house.

You can also see lots of small pretty horses wandering around in the countryside; they aren’t necessarily wild and it surprised me that the locals don’t use them to tow carts, carry firewood, or even to ride them. According to my guide, they eat them, along with dogs, monkeys and all manner of snakes and lizards!  This handsome fellow is a stallion and was very protective over the mares, stamping his hoof whenever we got too close.

 

It’s nearly the end of the week and I am sitting, nursing a beer in the rooftop bar of the Renaissance hotel in Saigon.  I haven’t been here for a number of years and it’s been refitted and is now very elegant.  It wasn’t so smart the last time I was here, but it had lovely bones, as they say.  There’s nothing quite like very cold beer on a hot day unless its a very cold beer on a hot day at home and seriously, that trumps it every time.

I’ll be home in the morning, but for now, because of the beer, I will put up with the jack hammers, the honking horns and the screeching of brakes – all still deafening, even when you are on the 21st floor.  Not that the noise makes any difference because on this trip, I have had around five hours sleep in the last 48, so I am feeling very relaxed, so relaxed in fact, that I may just slip off the stool, sound asleep.

The past two days I have been working up country, near the town of Khe Sanh in the Annamese cordillera; the mountain range that runs down the spine of Laos and Vietnam.  Khe Sanh is well known amongst both Americans and Australians, but for different reasons. The Yanks know of Khe Sanh because it was a US Marine base that was besieged by the NVA for 77 days during the Vietnam war or as the locals term it, the ‘American war’  Most Australians know of it because of the fantastic song of the same name by the band Cold Chisel.  It’s a bit of an anthem for Australians of a certain age, of which I am now one.

My reason for being up country was to ascertain the situation regarding Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) at a site just outside the town.  Being a besieged former US base, the US bombed the hell out of the surrounding area and of course, around 40% of the ordinance didn’t explode at the time.  There has been a great deal of (American guilt) money and effort spent in order to make the area safe for the people to live and farm, but the land has been cleared down to the depth of a plough, but not deep enough to dig foundations.  I have been working with a professional UXO clearance company, whose job it is to tell me if the place is safe enough to work in or not and from what we have seen, it most certainly isn’t – not in its current state that is.

Anyway, back to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh city, if you prefer.  It was renamed after the war for the leader of the time, who was also known as ‘Uncle Ho’  There’s a statue of him in one of the many squares in the city.  There’s still a number of landmarks from the French colonial period, such as Maxim’s, named after the legendary Paris nightclub and the Caravelle Hotel, which was a favourite of foreign journalists during the war, largely because of its bullet proof glass and back up generator, which guaranteed cold beer.  It does have a pretty good roof top bar as well.

The traffic in Saigon is outrageous and its almost impossible to cross the road on the riverfront at almost any time of day.  Forty years ago it would have been largely bicycles of course, but now it’s anything with wheels and a motor.  Last time I was here I tailgated an old lady who was crossing and the traffic miraculously parted like the red sea in order to avoid her.  This time I couldn’t find an old lady, or my insurance policy to check for coverage in the event of being hit by multiple motorcycles, so I had to be satisfied with looking at the river from the other side of the road.  I finally came to terms with walking the city by staying on one side of the road and standing at intersections for some human shields to come along.

Whilst searching for a patisserie and the perfect chocolate croissant, I came across the Saigon opera house.  It’s a good looking building built by the French and it opened in 1900.  There were a number of years where is was used as a government assembly room and a temporary shelter for French civilians who were evacuated from North Vietnam, but it has been refurbished and looks brand new..

I did eventually find that cafe, with the best French pastries and whilst I was a little late in the day for them to be warm from the oven, the proprietor kindly gave them 30 seconds in the microwave.  This is my first and possibly my last picture of food on this blog – unless I find something really good to show and tell about!

And yes, I ate both of them myself….