For once this was not to be a battle with fingers pointing on maps. He told us he picked up his English working with the Americans, about 30 years so ago. The curiosity was too much. Instantly, his comprehension of any English went and that was the end of our conversation. It was not the only time that conversations about the past in Laos came to a sudden halt.
Recent decades are something of a taboo.
Luang Prabang Billie Holliday may have sung about a Foggy Day in London town, but clearly she had never been to Luang Prabang. Nestling alongside the Mekong river Pick the wrong time of the year, February through to May, and you hit the slash and burn season, when the tribe people, the Hmong, set large tracts of the mountains on fire in order to develop new rice paddies, or probably, opium growing fields. Courtesy of Lao Aviation, not a global leader in air travel, you reach this unique mountain city. Air travel is best in Laos, primarily because you have little choice. There are no railways and the roads are either extremely poor or on occasion have been prone to rebel hold-ups.