It is difficult for me to remember Vientiane as a place. I remember the people vividly, my Lao neighbours and friends, some of my students and the other ‘Falang’, particularly those who lived along the river in Wattay.  I met an Australian couple, David and Christine Pepper, and we shared a teakwood house on the riverside near Wattay Airport, which was very peaceful as there were few planes. Later, they moved out, and I had the house to myself. Almost half its area was verandah. It was a beautiful house with a deeply waxed floor. I would skate up and down on it on half a coconut shell until it shone. When I finally returned to Vientiane in 1989 I went to Wattay to look for it, but couldn’t find it. Then I recognised Soun, my neighbour, who had been the housekeeper. She was still living there. I asked her about it. Laughing, she said it had fallen in the river ten years before. The river got wider every year.

 

My neighbours were Jon Pennebaker, an IVS volunteer from Mississippi; Paul Mahoney, a VSO volunteer from England; and Charlie, a Peace Corps volunteer from the USA. Then there was the delightful Jack Salt from England, and Rod Stanbrook, a CUSO volunteer from Canada. And there was John DeGallier, a scholar of everything, of whom I never took a photo.

 

Living on the bank of a mighty river is an experience that feeds you energy. You feel its flow day and night, you see the sun rise and set over its waters. Every day in the late afternoon, people come down to bathe, swim or just splash around. The view of the Mekong from my verandah was framed by arching branches of bougainvillea… until my next door neighbour, a nice old man, considerately cut it down because ‘you can’t eat it’.