1588
Dark-skinned, barefoot, and fierce, the mountain tribes, or montagnards, were not hard to distinguish from the lowland Cham. The men wore loincloths and strode proudly with a long-handled machete balanced on one shoulder and a crossbow or flintlock rifle on the other. The women wore colored blouses, heavy pleated skirts, and hammered-out silver necklaces.
Oudone referred to them as Peaux-rouges—redskins—when he pointed out the shadowy figures wandering through the marketplace during the day and melting back into the mountains after the sun went down.
When I mentioned organizing the montagnards as part of the nation-building program, Oudone, changed the subject. When I persisted, he told me I should contact Captain Pang Vao, a Meo and officer in the Cham army. Oudone said he would send a message to the district chief of Ban Ban, who could arrange for me to meet Pang Vao.
Oudone did not offer to go with me.
The Opium Trail
A Filipino Operation Brotherhood (OB) medical team was located in Ban Ban, and I asked Vitoy, a friend in OB, to go with me. Vitoy and I were the only passengers on the Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong, the provincial capital and nearest airport to Ban Ban. Xieng Khuong was also at the crossroads of the poppy trade. The Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong was known as “Opium One.”
The Veha Akhat plane resembled one of those biplanes in an “Eddie Rickety-back” cartoon. Its floppy wings and two “half-engines” were wired to an oil-spattered canvas fuselage. The pilot was a wire-haired Algerian wearing sun-blotched khaki shorts and a wine-stained shirt with torn epaulets. He motioned for Vitoy to sit in the back of the plane on some rice sacks and for me to take the copilot’s seat.
The pilot, Anton, turned the key, sending clouds of blue smoke belching from the engines. When the engines finally caught, the plane went lurching down the tarmac and lifted off about ten yards before the end of the runway. Once we leveled off, the pilot turned and told me to take the controls, shrugging off protests that I didn’t know anything about flying an airplane. He reached over and took my hand, placed it on the control stick, and pointed to the compass: “Fly twenty degrees north.” The pilot then dropped off to sleep.
For me it was an hour of bare-knuckles flying, trying to keep my eyes glued to the compass while maneuvering the stick back and forth to keep the plane on course. When a mountain loomed up ahead, I shook Anton, who woke just in time to nose the plane up into the clouds. When we broke out, the mountains were behind us, and a sprawling mustard-colored steppe stretched out below us. Huge prehistoric urn-shaped boulders, dolmens haphazardly strewn over the plateau, protruded through elephant grass like echoes of a pagan past.
La Plaine des Jarres (The Plain of Jars)
The typical snow leopard has pale frosty eyes and a coat of pale misty gray, enormous paws and a short-faced heraldic head like a leopard of myth.
—PETER MATHIESSEN, The Snow Leopard
Nosing down toward the airstrip, our plane hit an air pocket and almost pancaked when it landed on the dirt airstrip. Anton had to swerve around a water buffalo grazing on the airstrip but finally skidded to a stop at the end of the airstrip, across from the Snow Leopard Inn.
The inn, its mangy namesake tied to a banyan tree out back, sat aside the main junction of the “opium route.” Over the years the inn has been a witness toa number of skirmishes and battles between the French and the Vietminh and has served as victualers to both.
Monsieur Bernard, the proprietor, reminded me of Casablanca’s Sydney Greenstreet, except for Bernard’s white safari jacket, which was caked with red dirt and wine splotches. Bernard walked out to the plane holding out a shot glass of pastis, the licorice-flavored French liqueur, for his old friend Anton. Then, noticing Anton’s passengers, he went back for two more.
After another round of
Dark-skinned, barefoot, and fierce, the mountain tribes, or montagnards, were not hard to distinguish from the lowland Cham. The men wore loincloths and strode proudly with a long-handled machete balanced on one shoulder and a crossbow or flintlock rifle on the other. The women wore colored blouses, heavy pleated skirts, and hammered-out silver necklaces.
Oudone referred to them as Peaux-rouges—redskins—when he pointed out the shadowy figures wandering through the marketplace during the day and melting back into the mountains after the sun went down.
When I mentioned organizing the montagnards as part of the nation-building program, Oudone, changed the subject. When I persisted, he told me I should contact Captain Pang Vao, a Meo and officer in the Cham army. Oudone said he would send a message to the district chief of Ban Ban, who could arrange for me to meet Pang Vao.
Oudone did not offer to go with me.
The Opium Trail
A Filipino Operation Brotherhood (OB) medical team was located in Ban Ban, and I asked Vitoy, a friend in OB, to go with me. Vitoy and I were the only passengers on the Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong, the provincial capital and nearest airport to Ban Ban. Xieng Khuong was also at the crossroads of the poppy trade. The Veha Akhat flight to Xieng Khuong was known as “Opium One.”
The Veha Akhat plane resembled one of those biplanes in an “Eddie Rickety-back” cartoon. Its floppy wings and two “half-engines” were wired to an oil-spattered canvas fuselage. The pilot was a wire-haired Algerian wearing sun-blotched khaki shorts and a wine-stained shirt with torn epaulets. He motioned for Vitoy to sit in the back of the plane on some rice sacks and for me to take the copilot’s seat.
The pilot, Anton, turned the key, sending clouds of blue smoke belching from the engines. When the engines finally caught, the plane went lurching down the tarmac and lifted off about ten yards before the end of the runway. Once we leveled off, the pilot turned and told me to take the controls, shrugging off protests that I didn’t know anything about flying an airplane. He reached over and took my hand, placed it on the control stick, and pointed to the compass: “Fly twenty degrees north.” The pilot then dropped off to sleep.
For me it was an hour of bare-knuckles flying, trying to keep my eyes glued to the compass while maneuvering the stick back and forth to keep the plane on course. When a mountain loomed up ahead, I shook Anton, who woke just in time to nose the plane up into the clouds. When we broke out, the mountains were behind us, and a sprawling mustard-colored steppe stretched out below us. Huge prehistoric urn-shaped boulders, dolmens haphazardly strewn over the plateau, protruded through elephant grass like echoes of a pagan past.
La Plaine des Jarres (The Plain of Jars)
The typical snow leopard has pale frosty eyes and a coat of pale misty gray, enormous paws and a short-faced heraldic head like a leopard of myth.
—PETER MATHIESSEN, The Snow Leopard
Nosing down toward the airstrip, our plane hit an air pocket and almost pancaked when it landed on the dirt airstrip. Anton had to swerve around a water buffalo grazing on the airstrip but finally skidded to a stop at the end of the airstrip, across from the Snow Leopard Inn.
The inn, its mangy namesake tied to a banyan tree out back, sat aside the main junction of the “opium route.” Over the years the inn has been a witness toa number of skirmishes and battles between the French and the Vietminh and has served as victualers to both.
Monsieur Bernard, the proprietor, reminded me of Casablanca’s Sydney Greenstreet, except for Bernard’s white safari jacket, which was caked with red dirt and wine splotches. Bernard walked out to the plane holding out a shot glass of pastis, the licorice-flavored French liqueur, for his old friend Anton. Then, noticing Anton’s passengers, he went back for two more.
After another round of
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