Anthony Bourdain in Laos

You can actually find the whole show broken into sections on youtube or it's on iTunes for $1.99

He talked quite abit about the bombing that happened in Laos. (quote "as you see i'm not my normal snarky self this episode...") Not getting into politics but sticking to history it is a fact that from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped 260 million cluster bomblets over Laos in 580,000 bombing missions--equivalent to one planeload every 8 minutes, 24 hours-a-day, for 9 years. It earned the distinction as the most heavily bombed country in history.

Planes returning from Vietnam were encouraged to drop their extra bombs on Laos. Kinda like how commercial planes portion out fuel so there isn't too much left when they land. Only many of these bombs weren't just regular bombs but cluster bombs. "The CBU (cluster bomb unit) 26, which was widely used in Laos, is an anti-personnel fragmentation bomb that consists of a large bombshell holding 670 tennis ball-sized bomblets, each of which contain 300 metal fragments...It's estimated that some 90 million CBU-26 bomblets were dropped on Laos (and the CBU-26 is just one of 12 different kinds of cluster bombs that have been recovered there to date)" The things you don't learn in school. At least not in any of the history classes I took. (and I was rather a geek in school...)

A good documentary about all of it is called "Bombies" by Jack Silberman. It's kinda hard to track down, a library might have a copy of it. I came across an old VHS of it a few years back.

It really doesn't get talked about very much. I've learned many of the older ones living here don't want to talk about it... I respect that.

One person J visits often once talked to us about this. Mostly, about being unable to farm because of the bombs. I wanted to learn more, to know more, but sometimes you just need to let a person talk and you be the listening one. The subject never came up again.

I can't imagine not having hope... when we were in Laos we saw empty bomb casings being made into all sorts of everyday things. Being me, I particularly noticed the flower planters.

It feels good too show that someday there will be a GRAND uxo cleanup. : ) Into plowshears... or small shovels for planting dok mai. (flowers) : ) I hope I get to help.




Today however, I have to work. Yuk. : P