River of slow return

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm way late on this blog and I've been busy readjusting to the States and, frankly, being lazy the past couple weeks. I've got some actual writing in the works to wrap things up on this blog but, in the meantime, here are some pretty pictures...

NAM OU RIVER, Laos - Everything moves slowly in Laos (except the leeches), especially on the rivers, and I didn't want my seven-hour ride up the Nam Ou River to go any faster. Stretched out in a rickety wooden boat with an even more rickety outboard engine, we puttered upriver toward the village of Nong Kiaw surrounded by pristine jungle, karst cliffs, and peace. More on this ride and the characters I met there later, but for now, this ...

Looks sturdy, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Don't worry, he's not jumping onto a rock - there's water on the other side.

The village of Nong Kiaw, where not much happens, which no one is complaining about.

The genius of Lao engineering, Nong Kiaw.

The carpet-bombing of Laos during America's secret war pushed many people - and fighters - to the vast cave systems in the country's rocky, mountainous terrain. This cave, just outside of Nong Kiaw, was used as a hospital. No doctors on hand these days and fortunately I made it down and back up this ladder unscathed (it's not an optical illusion - it really is that treacherous).

For a country defaced and demoralized by a war still etched in many peoples' memories, most Lao I met were surprisingly free of bitterness. These are the benches, made of two halves of a 500-pound cluster bomb, at the guesthouse where I stayed in Nong Kiaw. When the jovial, middle-aged proprietor asked me where I am from, I told him "America." "Oh," he said with a big grin, laughing and pointing at the bomb benches. "These are from America, too."