Prelude to an Overland Trip -2
About fifteen months later (although it seemed like years) I was in Vientiane, Laos, working as a teacher at LAA (Lao-American Association). I was not a bad teacher. I enjoyed my work, I liked the students and the students liked me. I got along well with the assistant coordinator, John Cornell, who was astute, helpful and efficient despite his predilection for opium. The coordinator, Penny Khounta, was a little less likeable and easy-going, but she was also efficient – and fair. When she criticised my teaching, she did so with good reason, and our relationship was positive yet spiced with a touch of healthy sarcasm on both sides.
One day, one of my students invited me to a wedding. She was of the Hmong ethnic minority (in those days they were usually called ‘Meo’, which was not yet recognised as pejorative), and her uncle was General Vang Pao. He was the leader of the CIA-trained ‘clandestine army’ of guerrillas fighting the communist Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese, and he was based in Long Cheng. Everyone knew about the not-so-clandestine army, but it was supposed not to exist. Long Cheng was inaccessible to outsiders. So here I was, with a written invitation from ‘Mr. & Mrs. General Vang Pao’ to a wedding in Long Cheng between a certain Larry S. Martin and Vang Pao’s sister, Mai Sy, at 1800 hours on Saturday 7th November, 1970 (I still have the invitation). Larry’s mother, who was a ‘window’ (sic) would also be attending the ceremony.
I was excited. Maybe I could get some good pictures of opium being sold in the market place. All I had to do was get on the plane with the rest of the guests. The day arrived. We boarded the plane, it took off and we landed in Long Cheng. I was not the only foreigner on the plane. There was also a journalist, Carl Strock. After we landed, he moved faster than I did, and jumped into a jeep on the landing strip. I alighted in a rather more leisurely fashion, sniffing the mountain air (for traces of opium?) and, before I could proceed further I was whisked off my feet by two enormous Americans, one of them looking like John Wayne in a cowboy hat and dark glasses. (I later found out he was the infamous Tony Poe, renowned for his habit of collecting ears – luckily he didn’t collect mine). They literally carried me by my elbows to a small building next to the airstrip, where they examined my passport, and asked me the purpose of my journey. When I showed them my invitation, they waved it away as being of no worth at all. I had to wait in a small room with a map on the wall, then (after I started looking at the map), another small room without a map. A few hours later, I was on the next flight back to Vientiane.
Within a few days, the director of LAA, a pleasant enough fellow whose name I forget, called me into his office and informed me that I should resign. I asked him the reason and he looked uncomfortable. It was difficult for him to fire me for accepting an invitation to a wedding. It was at this point that the redoubtable Penny Khounta gained my eternal respect by sticking up for me. My teaching was exemplary (she said), and I did my job well. I could hardly believe it. Two weeks went by in a stalemate as I stubbornly refused to quit without a reason being given. Finally, I was called to the director’s office once again. “Mr. Grafton, we have discovered that you lied on your application form when you stated you had no criminal record.” I truly had no idea what he was talking about. The trivial business with the car seat had never really registered in my mind as a criminal offence… but now, on the other side of the world, my murky past had finally caught up with me. The CIA, Interpol, MI5 and the British secret police had traced my vile misdeeds, doubtless at great expense to the taxpayer, in a matter of weeks. Thus the wheels of Fate had turned, and I was fired.
Finally, I should note smugly that I was almost immediately offered a job by the British International School of Vientiane, which was better paid and less demanding. And as a further irony, it was later rumoured that “The Lady of the Wall” in Dartford had been fined for abandoning a derelict vehicle in a public place.
Footnote from Carl Strock, whom I heard from a few years ago…
“Jumping Jehosophat! Plane to Long Cheng for a wedding! I remember very well. In fact I still wear the ring that Vang Pao gave me -- he gave them to everyone -- on that occasion. The only photo I got that was memorable was of VP himself crawling on his hands and knees across the floor, with a big grin on his face. Now the tiny print of it is faded and tattered but I still have it. What do you do in Phnom Penh?”
I reminisce, Carl, I reminisce about lost opportunities. And I envy you your ring and photo of a paralytic Vang Pao… because all I got was Tony Poe.