A local man examines the bombshell, now used as a prayer bell in rural Laos.

From 1964 to 1973, American bombers dropped over two million tons of bombs on rural areas of Laos, a fiery sideshow to the conflict in Vietnam. About 700 lbs of bombs were dropped for every man, woman and child in Laos.

Here’s a detail of the writing on the bomb.

Some of these bombs failed to detonate on impact but are still active, and continue to kill and maim civilians today.

Often, people are killed while trying to harvest scrap metal from the fallen bombs.

Bombshells are now used as flower pots, as boats and as stilts for traditional Lao homes. The prayer bell bombshell in the photos is located at a temple in rural Khammoune Province.

You can visit the temple on a trek in the Phu Hin Boun protected area.

For more information on the legacy of the secret bombing of Laos, check out COPE, a remarkable organization based in Vientiane.

Other good resources include the films Bomb Harvest and the fantastic (unreleased) documentary The CIA in Southeast Asia: The Most Secret Place on Earth.

Learning about the massive bombing of Laos was an transformational experience for me, and the inspiration for my American Manifesto.

My journey for peacefulness began when I met Nick, early Friday morning on a dirt path outside the travel lodge.

He stood alongside the tuk tuk, quietly chatting with three other guides who would accompany us on our two day trek through the Tham Panchan cave in central Laos. Wearing a neon t-shirt, board shorts, and a leather cap he looked like a nineteen-year-old Lao version of Paul McCartney.

A bombshell is used as a prayer bell at a temple in Laos.

About an hour later we walked on a narrow dirt path, passing through jungle and open fields toward an expansive horizon serrated by magnificent limestone formations.

It did not take long for conversations to sprout and soon our American voices were noisy enough to drone out even the ubiquitous, high-pitched whine of the cicadas.

I walked alongside Nick and practiced a little bit of Lao as he fluently spoke English.

He occasionally pointed out which trees, flowers, and insects were poisonous, but mostly we spoke about our families: what our parents do for a living (“Po het nyang?”) and the ages of our siblings (“Lao annu jack bee?”).

After my repertoire of conversational Lao was exhausted our conversation turned to Nick’s Buddhist faith.

“It is all about peacefulness,” he told me.

“Every day, when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed at night, I focus on my breathing for fifteen minutes. This makes me peaceful.”

I have attempted meditation in the past. More often than not, I am unsuccessful.

Sometimes I fall asleep, but usually I find myself forming mental checklists of tasks to be completed. Or I think about past conversations, turning words over and over in my mind, agonizing over what I should have said or done.

My mind becomes stuck in either the past or the future. And once I’ve reached this point, I simply cannot stay still.

Trekking through rural Khammoune province, Laos.

As we walked out of the jungle and into the fields, I asked Nick if he ever has difficulty staying focused.

He paused before answering my question. With each step we took, moth-like insects fluttered from the prickly grass.

“It must be hard in America,” he said. “There is so much noise.”

Indeed, there is. Day to day life back home is driven by a “places to go people to meet” mentality – cars honking, people shouting, alarms beeping – all fostering feelings of impatience, intolerance, and isolation.

We dwell in our own spheres of self-importance and find ourselves disconnected from the natural world and from each other.

I had to remind myself: I am in Laos. I closed my eyes and listened.

I heard my own footsteps upon the dry earth. I heard a twig snap as an animal moved through the brush. I heard the intertwined chirping of birds and insects.

But mostly, I heard the overpowering sound of the group’s ceaseless chatting, a disconnected stream of conversations, most of which concerned American pop culture.

We were bringing our noisiness to a place where it did not belong.

For the rest of the day, I listened.

We walked through caves that look like castles and swam in lagoons with water bluer than the cleanest pool at the most prestigious country club in all of the United States.

Cooling off in a lagoon halfway through the trek.

By sundown, it dawned on me: I will pass through this earth only once.

I resolved to be a part of it.

Two days later I lay awestruck beneath the night sky. The dark blanket above was dusted with more shimmering stars than my eyes could possibly see.

Better yet, there were no cell phone towers, no blinking airplanes, and no satellite dishes.

I listened to the sound of silence and heard a splendid symphony: the intermittent chirping of insects, the gentle hush of the breeze, and the soft sigh of my breath as I exhaled.

Destinations

Community Connection to Laos

Breath in. Breath out.

I felt my body sink into the crevices of the ground, the dry grass no longer prickly.

Breath in, Breath out.

I focused on the infinite dark spaces between the stars.

Breath in. Breath out.

The sky was my blanket and the earth was my pillow.

I fell asleep, the palm of my left hand touching the earth while my right hand rested upon my heart.

Community Connection

The trek Anna writes about in this essay is described in the Matador article Trekking Central Laos.

You don’t have to go all the way to Laos in order to find peace. Check out The Importance of Quiet Time During Travel and 20 Basic, Fun, Sexy Resources for Beginning Meditators.

Both Anna Mack and Matador editor Tim Patterson were in Laos on the inaugural Mekong Semester gap-year program. For more on study abroad in Laos, check out Where There Be Dragons.

Monks collect morning alms in Luang Prabang.

One hour after landing in Luang Prabang, Allana and I were walking along the bank of the Nam Khan, looking for a fruit-shake and green papaya salad.

Laos is hot in August, and kids jumped from the roofs of riverboats, cannonballing into the brown current. Everything felt soft and slow and easy. “Laos has got to be the most chill country in the world,” said Allana.

It’s strange, how easily I find myself easing back into Luang Prabang. A few flights, a few airports, a night in Bangkok, one last flight up the Mekong and all of sudden I’m squeezing fresh limes into my noodle soup and stopping by Joma for coffee and air-con.

The rivers are higher than I’ve ever seen them before, and there aren’t many tourists this time of year.

Tourists, water – everything flows past Luang Prabang. Sometimes there’s more water, sometimes more falang, but the old woman still fans her cooking fire in the alleyway, and the monks will wake up early to collect their alms.

This town has never lost its calm.

I’m typing on the banks of the Mekong River near the sleepy town of Tha Khaek, a provincial capital in central Laos. It’s dry season now, and children are playing soccer on sandbars that extend into the river channel.

Tomorrow I’ll trek up a tributary of the Mekong into the rugged limestone mountains of central Khammuan Province, one of the most remote parts of Southeast Asia. A major dam has just been built here, flooding a vast region of upland forest and producing electricity that fuels economic growth and rapid modernization.

This fall, I’ll return to Laos with 12 students and 2 co-instructors to lead the inaugural Mekong Semester for the educational youth travel company Where There Be Dragons.

Want to come along?

photo Where There Be Dragons

Dragons programs are rugged learning adventures designed for open-minded students who are willing to sacrifice comfort for the sake of discovery. Semester programs last for three months and feature extended home-stays, trekking and in-depth studies of issues related to development, ecology, culture and politics.

The Mekong Semester will follow the river from the Himalayan glaciers of China’s Yunnan province into Laos, settling into an extended stay in the ancient royal capital of Luang Prabang before wrapping up in Cambodia.

The trip will be challenging, both in terms of travel and academic rigor. We want students who are curious about the world, ready to immerse themselves in foreign cultures and willing to take a hard look at the realities of development in remote parts of Asia.

photo Where There Be Dragons

If you’re a high-school senior looking for a gap-year option, or a college student who needs an adventure, please check out the full program description at Where There Be Dragons. Most of the spots for the fall semester are already full, but there are a few openings left for the right applicants.

You can also feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions – though I’ll be way out of WiFi range for the next few days!