The local fishermen love to decorate their boats with scenes from daily life around Alexandria. We are already busy with the underwater Archaeological Excavations, but I have had some free time to try to collect a few images of them.
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With the exception of the fried crickets, I have found a lot of Lao cuisine to be complex, spicy, exotic, and delicious. So imagine how silly I felt skipping the opportunity investigate further, and instead going to a restaurant in Vientiane with a Belgian chef de cuisine.
You might already know that Laos, like Vietnam and Cambodia, had a strong French colonial influence that helped shape their modern cities with architecture, government, and cuisine. So there are several excellent french restaurants, boulangeries, and wine merchants supplying the needs of the "Falang" community. So my decision to dine at Via Via was not a bad one. Not only is the food good, but the atmosphere is exceptional. The expatriot archeaological community gathers here after hours, joined by international journalists, Médecins Sans Frontières , and members of the diplomatic community. I guess I'll have to eat my Lao food at breakfast and lunch from now on. Dear All,
Now that I have returned to Vientiane, I have been lucky enough to borrow some office space for design and construction of a new em survey sled from friend, Archaeological Conservator, and old Laos Hand Marion Ravenscroft. Maz has been kind enough to move a couple of skulls and a collection of gold inlaid teeth so as to free-up a table in her conservation lab for me. This is the corner office, in the low building behind the National Museum, next door to the Javanese ceramologue, and 3 doors down from the police guards coop of fighting cocks. I have requested that any correspondence be forwarded there, especially mysterious parcels containing old maps or undesciferable scripts, as well as the odd smelling wooden shipping crates, plastered with exotic stamps and stencils on the exterior, Most sincerely yours, etc. etc. Eric Wartenweiler Smith After spending some time in remote southern Laos, in an area strewn with hazardous UXO, I have returned to the capitol with a new view of Laos, its people , and the future, both theirs and mine.
When Aqua Survey President Ken Hayes asked me to join him on this trip working with new equipment to detect and map UXO deep in the ground, I was thinking of goals in terms of meters, hertz, and mili-volts. But after having met survivors of exploding leftovers from a war long ago, and hearing about those who didn't survive, it was our concern for the future that provided new goals; to create the technology to find bombs before these kids do. We have finished our work in the field for now, and will return home with a couple of reminders to work hard and try to help find a solution to the problem of UXO that I'm going to put in a frame; This photo of 2 friends outside the village of Vilabouly, and a receipt for a prosthetic leg from the COPE program that, unfortunately, some one is going to need. I never had a clear image in my head of the Laotian capital, so the sights and smells of the city really struck me when I got here. Here are a few snapshots from around town.
Travel outside of Vientiane is hampered by the rainy season. There are very few paved roads in Laos, and even traveling around the capital is a bumpy, muddy slow speed event.
Lao drivers are patient, which is good. So the prospect of covering any distance by road can be a major undertaking. We flew by Cessna Caravan out to the field site, a flight that's impossible as often as not, so the overland route is the mainstay, and takes about 5 hrs. to Savanaket, where the daily flight to Vientiane is more reliable. From the dirt airstrip we rode by Land Rover down to Route 28A, also known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which maintains the title of the most heavily bombed road in the most heavily bombed country on earth. One of the first sites that we visit is an eye opener. A section of free-form rice paddies in a high valley between two ridges overgrown with jungle. It hasn't rained since the morning and the sun is steaming the moisture out of the land and the forest. It's hot. The Lao UXO clearance team is spread out over the field from their makeshift awning to where the creek flows off the edge of the paddy into the forest. A bamboo picnic table is set up under the awning next to the impact crater of a large bomb. We park there and meet the UXO team leader. In the surrounding field are over a thousand shovel sized holes spreading up to the forest's edge one or two every couple of feet, indicating where the team had detected and removed bomb frag. The farmer had been tilling through frag for years. That frag spread, a couple acres in size, was the kill zone of that one, perhaps 500 lb., bomb. In the field amongst the small frag excavation holes were 4 larger holes marked with bamboo poles and red flags. These were larger, deeper targets, over 2 meters deep. They hadn't been investigated or dug down to yet, because they shared the characteristics of other 500 pound bombs that had failed to explode on impact. They might be armed, or ready to arm themselves, or on a timer with a little bit of dirt keeping it from starting; one never knows. And that's what we came here to find. Before going into the field near Xipon to use our bomb detecting equipment, we visited the place in Vientiane where prosthetic limbs are made and fitted for Laotian people crippled by bombs they encountered some 40 years after they were dropped.
It's sad to say it, but the place has plenty of customers. I wont show you pictures of the people we met there, but will try to share some of the good that is being done to help them recover and function physically after their injuries have healed. My best souvenir from Laos so far? A receipt for a prosthetic leg; $75. Don't be jealous, you can get one too online at' http://www.copelaos.org/ The opportunity to cross the country was too much to pass up. In route to a job for Aqua Survey Inc., I loaded up "Pepita" with nearly a ton of scientific equipment, including an underwater Robot, and headed across Highway 50, through the Wild West. Some more photos are posted below the break. |
My Name is Eric and My Job is Scientific Exploration.
That means I'm lucky enough to join expeditions to excavate sunken cities, climb volcanoes, find missing bombs, and Sail old research vessels, while searching for the mysteries of the natural world. Categories
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