We had a nice French breakfast at the hotel and then we drove to the opium den we had heard about. We ended up spending the entire day in the opium den laying on the cots having the old man or woman fill and light pipe after pipe of opium for us. The old woman kept telling us that we should not be there smoking opium because it was just for old people to help them with the pain of getting old. We had to tell her that we had pain too even though we were young. It cost us 7 cents American each to enter the den and there were no in and out privileges. We got ripped to say the least.
The next day, very early in the morning, the three of us, Kirsten, our friend and I took the car out for a drive. We drove about an hour up into the hillside and stopped at a remote river to swim and do the wild thing. We had to walk a ways to the river from where we parked our car. At the small river we stripped down and went swimming in the refreshingly cool water. We were in the middle of the river doing the wild thing and all of a sudden in mid stroke 14 guns made clicking sounds and I looked up to see a patrol of soldiers with all their rifles pointing at us. My dick immediately went from up inside of Kirsten to just as far back up inside of me. We put our hands up and froze. The leader put his finger across his lips in the international symbol to stay quiet so we didn’t talk at all. I pointed at our clothes and he went over and checked our clothes for weapons and then motioned that it was ok to put them on. We got dressed as quickly and as modestly as it would allow in the circumstances. Then they pointed up the river and had us walk.
I was in front of the line and Kirsten was the second from the last in Line. I was made to shuffle my feet in very small steps so that if there were any land mines I would be killed first. The Americans had dropped thousands of land mines and listening devices from the air all over Laos. We walked for about two hours in total silence. I found it interesting that Kirsten was able to keep her mouth shut because she was usually very outspoken. I wasn’t allowed to turn around and look so I had no idea what was going on behind me. We finally arrived at a cave and we entered. The leader motioned for me to be seated in a lone wooden chair in one of the rooms carved out of the cave. I was alone. There was a lone naked electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling to illuminate the room.
A few minutes later a man wearing a tee shirt and jeans came into the room and spoke English to me. He asked me, in his most friendly tone, what I was doing in this part of Laos and I responded that we were tourists just looking around a beautiful country with beautiful people. He didn’t like that response so he tried asking again and again in slightly different ways hoping I would tell him what he wanted to hear. Finally he tired of the banter and told me he knew that I was a "sneaky pete" and he wanted to know where my backpack of transmitters and reflectors was. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. So he explained it to me. Sneaky petes were American special forces that went behind enemy lines to mark targets for the bombers and guns to hit. Then he very calmly and coldly told me that if I didn’t tell him where my pack was he was going to tie me to a tree and slowly peel off my skin and leave me there for the fire ants to eat me. He got my attention.
He was very polite through all of this and never raised his voice or made any intimidating moves at me other than his single intimidating threat to skin me alive that is. I told him that I didn’t think Laos was considered a war zone. Why President Nixon was just on TV a few days ago telling the entire world that America was not operating in Laos or Cambodia I told him. It was true. He had just lied to the American public on national TV about his covert bombing raids in Cambodia and Laos along the Ho Chi Ming Trail. My interrogator laughed at my statement. Then I told him that I knew that Nixon had lied because I have personally seen American planes buzzing overhead and I had seen the little yellow land mines called pineapples on the ground and all the small round listening devices too. Pineapples were anti personnel mines that were small and meant to maim not kill anyone that stepped on them. American planes dropped them from the air by the millions along places suspected of being on the supply route supplying the soldiers in Viet Nam. They listened using the devices to try to find the route through the sounds made by people moving through the jungles. That is why we weren’t allowed to talk until we were well inside of the cave.
After about two hours of our bantering I finally told him why we were there. We were tourists but that we came here to Ho to smoke some opium in an opium den. I told him about our experience the day before smoking opium. When I finished saying that he did not say a word he just looked at me deeply for a couple of minutes and then spun and left the room. I was afraid I had said the wrong thing and was on my way to get skinned alive and then eaten by fire ants. A couple of minutes later we were again silently walking through the jungle trails.
This time we came to a small cluster of well cared for houses up on stilts and the soldiers pointed for me to go up into one of the houses which I did. Then Kirsten and our friend appeared and they were directed to join me. The soldiers got to work preparing some coconuts to drink. Then they came up to the house and we all sat there in silence for a few more minutes. I was sort of surprised by the next thing because the man that had been interrogating me walked up the ladder to the house we were all sitting in. He was wearing a full, obviously high ranking, uniform of the North Vietnamese Army with ribbons and pins all over it. He walked over and sat down on the edge of the room with the light to his back. He stared into my eyes with a calm piercing stare. I calmly stared back into his eyes being careful not to challenge him but not backing down from him either. I wasn’t sure if I should back down and avert my gaze or take up his stare down challenge. I was nervous and unsure of myself but I kept staring back at him in as friendly a stare as I could muster.
The officer reached into his pocket and pulled out a Thai stick joint the size of a very large cigar. Without taking his gaze off of me the officer placed the large joint in his fingertips and held his hands together as if in prayer with the giagantic joint held in the fingertips and the next lower ranking officer lit the huge joint with a stick match. He puffed through the hole made where his thumbs lined up next to each other. He was smiling at me now as he held in his big hit then handed me the huge joint to take a hit off of. I was a little worried that they were setting me up for something or some sort of trick but what the hell you might as well be stoned if you are going to be skinned alive and fed to ants. I imitated his hand made chillum style of smoking and we all smoked until the joint was gone. We were all smiling silently. I quickly got pretty high off of the Thai stick combined with all the adreneline pumping through me all day long. Then we drank some fresh coconut juice and the soldiers got up and left us there. I was very sneakily taking pictures of them smoking the joint and got some great shots when they weren’t looking by firing my wide angle camera from the hip.
Kirsten and I finally talked and she said they just put her in a room and left her there without anyone talking to her at all. She was afraid that I had been killed already. We laughed nervously about our close call and went looking for the car that we had left behind. It took me a couple of hours to find the car using just my sense of direction and remembering our paths we walked with the soldiers. I was worried about landmines now after the soldiers showed me how concerned they were so I stepped carefully. When we got back to our hotel in town we told our friends about our experience and they freaked out over it and wanted to leave for Thailand again right away. We left the next morning.
Hi Jimfrogs!
ReplyDeleteEric Backer