Bus Incident in Laos

[UAL875]

I read a blip of an article in the newspaper the other day about a bus traveling from Luang Prubang to Vientiane (passing through Vang Vieng), which was held up by Hmong bandits who shot and killed at least seven passengers and injured 15 others. The article stated that the victims were Laotian and made no mention of tourists or foreigners. This piqued my interest since I have ridden the busses between these cities (albeit not since 1999/2000) and I tend to recommend this form of transport to the adventurous of my friends, coworkers, etc. I know others on the board have made this journey and are familiar with the route as well. So I am wondering, did anyone else hear about this incident and, if yes, can you provide more detail? Also, does this mean the safety levels in Laos (which I thought were ok in recent years) have been compromised so that it is not wise to stray or travel on one's own by local transport while there? I hope this was an isolated incident and would like to get some color on the situation given my penchant for Laos, Cambodia, and Burma.

[Straycat]

Hmmm. No, I did not hear about that until you mentioned it here. I caught up on Google News about it though. According to BBC News this is the second attack in the area this year...

 

BBC News - Bus Attack in Laos

[lopburi3]

It has been reported as an attack rather than a hold up. Bus pulled over for a toilet break and was opened up upon with AK-47 fire is what I read. Believe there was another incident recently so this route does seem to be less than 100% secure.

[Guest]

I did that route just about a week before the first incedent. I rented a 250 baja bike in vientien. I traveled with a friend, and I would be a bit hesitant to do it solo. We put on over 1200km. I absolutly loved the place. The people where very nice, albiet a bit wary. There is no doubt that some of the more remote areas are scary. The hmong are still a huge threat to the current government, even though they have been moved off of the countyside and into the more developed areas. The gov. says it is to better provide for them, but the truth is it's so they can keep an eye on them. I believe there is a traditional rivalry and warryness between the hill tribes and the low landers. I for one found the sheer beauty of the place overwelming. I would recommed anyone who has the physical capibility and an adverturous spirt to give it a try. But remeber that there is always a chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With that said I will be going back for at least a month on my SEA trip next year.

[Hedonist]

I also read something in the travel section of the Bangkok Post during February. Some time previously, north of Vang Vieng, a bus was shot-up and some locals robbed, then a couple of farangs on bicycles were killed and robbed near the same spot. Sorry I don't have more details. I read the article while sitting on the beach and disposed of the newspaper.

[Hedonist]

Ahh,

the Bangkok Post, Horizons article is here .

 

Trips are becoming red hot in the risk department rather than soft adventure

 

Don Ross

 

It was the classical story of being in the right place at the wrong time. For the two European cyclists who were travelling the highway just 6 km from the popular resort village of Vang Vieng it turned into a tragedy. They died in an ambush, last week, that killed 10 bus travellers and seriously injured 16 other passengers on a section of road used by thousands of tourists every year. It rekindles fears that the popular road to Luang Prabang is again unsafe for travellers.

 

Touring cyclists are probably the most innocuous of all road users. They carry few belongings worth stealing. Local residents often feel sorry for them, assuming they must be paupers or quite potty to opt for such a lowly transport mode. But it didn't stop bandits opening fire, killing the cyclists, passengers on a local bus and the driver of a farm tractor.

 

Vang Vieng is a halfway house, just 150 km north of the Lao capital. It is here overland travellers recharge their batteries, exchange stories and travel information before embarking on the trip through the mountains to Luang Prabang.

 

Laos discovered its niche in tourism with its own brand of the outdoors and active lifestyle experience, all very much in tune with the environment. This kind of tourism by its very nature tends to place tourists in regions that may not be entirely safe.

 

It's not the first time that bandits have challenged law and order on the winding road through the hills to Luang Prabang.

 

Probably the one that came to mind of local travel agents was an incident five years ago when an expatriate travel agent, who was considered one of the pioneers of Laos inbound tourism business, was murdered on the same stretch of road along with five of his Lao staff. He was travelling to Luang Prabang to deliver the payroll to his staff.

 

Very little was reported afterwards on whether the bandits were brought to justice. It was quickly swept under the carpet by government and tourism officials, who described it as an isolated incident.

 

There has been a string of these so-called isolated incidents, particularly in areas that are earmarked for eco-tourism development.

 

It's a tempting option for travellers who like to mix air travel with overland trips. They join an air-conditioned mini-bus for the outward trip, making stops on the way for sightseeing, and then take a flight back to Bangkok after a few days in Luang Prabang.

 

Also the thought of cycling leisurely with a backpack appeals to a new generation of younger travellers, who are bent on exploring a country and enjoying a slice of soft adventure.

 

Unfortunately there are times when Mekong region destinations such as Laos and Cambodia can dish up much more than a manageable slice of adventure.

 

It is just not the way a holiday should end, and regardless of the circumstances surrounding the latest ambush, the blame must stop at the door of the Laos government. It is keen to garner tourist dollars but is painfully slow to provide security on the main route between the capital and the country's most popular destinations.

 

Laos is the host of the 2004 Asean Tourism Forum next January and was just two weeks ago rolling out the red carpet for international tour operators who were attending the ATF in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. It is keen to show its own brand of tourism, but if it doesn't end lawlessness that touches the lives of residents and tourists alike, talk of Laos becoming a niche market jewel of regional tourism is premature and possibly dangerous to those who buy it without knowing the facts.

 

Security in many of the Mekong region countries is not up to scratch. It was pure luck that no tourists were hurt in the riots in Phnom Penh last month. Eventually diplomatic relations will be healed between Thailand and Cambodia, but the incident will leave lingering doubts that there could be more unrest leading up to the July elections in a country that has shown it has a very short fuse in the department of public unrest.

 

Even Thailand has a few security problems it needs to address, particularly in lesser-known destinations. Newspapers throughout Finland last month front-paged the murder of a Finnish tourist who was robbed and knifed to death on a beach in Nakhon Si Thammarat just because he refused to hand over his camera.

 

Tourism officials always say it could happen anywhere in any capital city in Europe. They are right, but it doesn't relieve them of responsibility if they are actively promoting spots that pose a risk.

 

While risks are low in Thailand, the challenge is to manage tourism expansion. A popular TV series, Survival, encourages tourists to embark on a trail to remote islands and lonely beaches, inhabited by almost destitute villagers or fishermen. It can go wrong, especially if the visiting haves show off their wealth to the have-nots. Theres a case for promotional containment where the tourism industry concentrates on places that have adequate police protection, instead of selling every bay of white sand from here to the Malaysian border without a thought for security.

 

Until countries in Southeast Asia deliver a high level of security for their own residents, tour operators would be wise to flag some of their trips as red hot in the risk department rather than soft adventure.

 

Ironically, one of the safest countries to visit in Southeast Asia is the one that most European governments advise travellers to avoid. We are told to stay away Burma, and even hotel chains such as the French-owned Accor group bowed to pressure last year and withdrew its management from the Novotel Mandalay and Sofitel Yangon, all on political grounds.

 

Yet the destination is calm and full of charm for the traveller who leaves political considerations at home.

 

That is becoming more difficult to do and that is why probably even with its reputation as a safe destination still intact, Burma's annual tourist arrivals still languish at the bottom of the regional table.

 

[chilli13]

Thanks for your extensive insights, but on what grounds exactly are you saying burma is that safe? Is it that incidents like those reported for Laos have never happened there being it to locals or the few tourists visiting or is it perhaps that not much information is being leaked from Myanmar at all just a though just a though... ::

 

now back to lao attacts around vieng vang was the name? I've done the full overland route around '2000 starting in northeast thailand crossing the mekong & boating down to luang prabang. then the infamous(LP mentioned those Hmong dangers I guess, but sort of downplayed it I think or suggested going by boat, but around the millenium was when laos finally got paved many of it's main rd's making bus travel a good option?) bus to the capital.

 

then further south by bus & one gets to savannaket, where we the year before had headed west to lao bao vietnam border crossing actually ending up doing savan'-lao bao twice as we we're turned back at the border claiming our visa's we're wrong ah memories

 

this time however we continued south to pakse & eventually crossed the mekong ending up in ubon rat......

 

never even felt remotely unsafe in this quit 'hidden' backpacker budget heaven, but reading thrue this thread it seems there's a remote risk of being at the wrong place/wrong time & I think this is nothing new & happens more in neighboring cambodia - just guessing though

 

to put it a bit in perspective where would you rather go TO MINIMIZE RISK?

china(sars)

indonesia(terror)

us/uk(terror/boredom)

laos(robbing/killing)

cambodia(robbing/killing)

thailand(robbing/killing/ripoff)

africa(hiv)

brazil(robbing/killing)

cuba(quasi illegal for US guys)

phillipines(mall bombings/kidnap among others)

columbia(kidnap)

myanmar(political uncorrect)

finland(catch a cold)

germany(being addicted to fkk)

 

just some thoughs on a boring friday night in england

[Hedonist]

Thanks for your extensive insights, but on what grounds exactly are you saying burma is that safe?

---

 

I have not said anything about Burma. I have merely pasted the article from the Horizons section of Bangkok Post. The true author's name is at the top.

 

I think you are right to question the author's assertion about Burma being safe. I think this relative safety only applies to the limited areas permitted for tourism. I have also traveled by road between Vientienne, Vang Vieng and Luang Prabang. No problem, but things can change! I was surprised when reading this article because I had heard nothing of the events described when they actually happened. I would prefer to know what's going on if making any decision for a return visit.

[chilli13]

sorry I missed the fact that you pasted the linked article instead of you commenting on it suppose I better crack down on those pints

cheers for UK based fellow sanukers who enjoys Laos

[kamui]

There is a background article on the current situation of the Hmong at TIME Asia

 

A really sad story (and a long article, maybe it is easier to read the origianl text), which actually is a result of the Vietnam war. The ghosts of this war still seem to haunt SE Asia. Maybe it is to easy to call the Hmong simple bandits.

 

 

Welcome to the Jungle

Recruited by the CIA to be a secret army during the Vietnam War, the Hmong rebels of Laos fought communism. Now they desperately battle for their own survival

BY ANDREW PERRIN/XAYSOMBOUNE SPECIAL ZONE

 

There were hundreds of them, perhaps a thousand. They wept and knelt before me on the ground, crying, "Please help us, the communists are coming." I had hiked four days to reach this forsaken place deep in the jungles of Xaysomboune, northern Laos. The Hmong rebels prostrate before me were convinced they would all soon die. They knew they were a forgotten tribe, crushed by a military campaign that is denied by the communist leaders of their small, sheltered nation.

 

In all my years as a journalist I had never seen anything like this: a ragtag army with wailing families in tow, beseeching me to take news of their plight to the outside world. I walked among starving children, their tiny frames scarred by mortar shrapnel. Young men, toting rifles and with dull-eyed infants strapped to their backs, ripped open their shirts to show me their wounds. An old man grabbed my hand and guided it over the contours of shrapnel buried in his gut. A teenage girl, no more than 15, whimpered at my feet, pawed at my legs and cried, "They've killed my husband. They've killed my mother, my father, my brother ?" But before she could finish, others were pushing her aside to sob out their own litanies of loss. In this heart of darkness, nobody has a monopoly on grief.

 

Now, for the first time in nearly three decades, this dwindling group of outcasts are completely surrounded by the Lao government troops that hunt them. They are trapped in a narrow swath of jungle, with all avenues of escape blocked by either soldiers or antipersonnel mines. "This time," says Moua Toua Ther, 46, the one-armed leader of the camp and commander of its pitifully equipped fighting force, "we will not be able to run or hide. When the helicopters come we will be butchered like wild animals."

 

What is the crime this ragged bunch has committed? It is simply that they are Hmong, mostly the children, grandchildren or even great-grandchildren of fighters who in the 1960s sided with the U.S. to fight communism in Laos during the Vietnam War. Fabled for their resourcefulness and valor, many Hmong became members of a secret CIA-backed militia that helped rescue downed U.S. pilots and disrupted North Vietnamese supplies and troop movements along the Ho Chi Minh Trail through central Laos. The communist Pathet Lao movement?and its patrons in Hanoi?has never forgotten the Hmong's complicity with the Americans. Shortly after the Pathet Lao took power in 1975?two years after the U.S. had fled the country and left the Hmong soldiers to their fate?a communist newspaper declared the Party would hunt down the "American collaborators" and their families "to the last root." But until TIME recently reached one of the last Hmong outposts, no one truly believed that, after 28 years, the Lao government still meant it. This, then, is the final act of a war that, according to history books, ended in 1973.

 

The Hmong, who migrated to Laos from southwestern China in the 19th century, have always been a proud, warlike people. In the 1920s a Hmong rebellion against their French rulers erupted in much of Laos and northern Vietnam, ultimately failing but leaving thousands dead. When the French left Laos in 1953, the Hmong found themselves fighting again?this time against the threat of communism. Among the resisters was a young Hmong general named Vang Pao, who in 1961 was commissioned by the CIA to set up a secret army to fight the advancing communists. Over the next decade nearly half of the 40,000 Hmong fighters in Vang Pao's army are thought to have perished during the fighting. The reward for their sacrifice? The Paris cease-fire agreement of 1973, which signaled an end of U.S. aid. Vang fought on for two more years, but when it became clear that the Pathet Lao would win he fled to Thailand and then to the U.S. Today, some 200,000 other Hmong live in exile communities in the U.S. But not all Hmong made it to America: 15,000 of Vang's brethren were cut off from escape and were forced to melt away into the mountainous jungles of Laos.

 

Even from California, where he leads the United Lao Liberation Front (ULLF), Vang, 74, casts a long shadow over his people. Moua says he reports directly to Vang?a claim the Californian denies, though he does admit to providing occasional help. From his suburban American home, the exiled general demands democracy and a reinstatement of the monarchy in Laos. Moua and his militia are among the remnants of Hmong rebel groups fighting for that disappearing dream.

 

Moua joined Vang's secret army at age 15. His left arm ends in a stump?his hand was removed in a 1974 jungle amputation. One of only four people in the village with some writing skills, he is a meticulous keeper of village statistics?there are 56 orphaned children, 40 widows and 11 widowers. By Moua's count, 30% of the villagers have shrapnel wounds. In 1975, when Vang fled Laos, Moua recorded his group at 7,000 people. Today there are only about 800 left.

 

Although the Hmong have been on the run for nearly three decades, Moua and others in his village regard the past year as the worst. In October, they say, some 500 ground troops attacked them from four directions in Xaysomboune while a gunship strafed them from above. In all, 216 Hmong were killed. Such assaults can come at any time. Last August, a mortar round landed less than a meter from nine-year-old Yeng Houa's family dinner table, killing both his parents. Yeng survived, but I count 18 shrapnel scars on his legs, his jaw is broken and there is an infected sore on his inner thigh. Since the attack, he has not spoken.

 

The Hmong say they are too ill-equipped to strike back. Most of their fighters are armed with ancient M-16s and AK-47s, and the heaviest weapons at their disposal are two geriatric M-79 grenade launchers. Ammunition is mostly dug up from former U.S. air bases. According to Moua, only a third of the rounds are actually live, negating Hmong chances of launching a viable offensive. As for the Lao government, which declined to talk to TIME, it denies allegations that it is decimating Hmong rebels and blames them for much of the unrest in the country. It insists that Hmong are doubling as bandits. In February an ambush on a bus traveling the busy Highway 13 in the north left 12 people dead, including two Swiss cyclists. A calling card pinned to one of the corpses indicated the deaths were the work of Hmong rebels. And on April 20, gunmen opened fire on a passenger bus, killing at least 13 people. Eyewitnesses to this massacre say the gunmen spoke to one another in the Hmong language. Vang Pao angrily denies claims that his men are responsible for attacks on civilians. "In the past there have been several events like this that have taken place and been blamed on the ULLF," he says. "But it was not us. We believe it was organized by the government using Hmong people who serve in the Lao army." For his part, Moua portrays the Hmong as helpless innocents. "We only defend and run," he says. "If the Lao troops launch an assault, our ammo won?t even last an hour."

 

Back in the mountains of Xaysomboune, Moua and his comrades sleep uneasily on beds of leaves inside banana-leaf huts. Most cannot recall how many times they?ve relocated, but they remember the people they?ve lost. Bhun Si, 42, says his wife and two sons were taken from him last October. His friend Soum Sai saw everything: the government troops came in, he says, and shot women and children from a distance of just five meters. Today, Bhun looks barely alive himself. Only two fingers remain on his left hand?he lost the others in a B-41 rocket attack that killed six of his fellow Hmong. His leg still bleeds from a suppurating shrapnel wound he received 13 years ago. One side of his face is a mask of melted flesh, with black sockets where an ear and an eye should be. "Everybody is dead," he says. "Sixteen people in my family are dead, all killed by the communists." In a heartbreaking refrain I heard repeatedly during my stay in the camp, he adds, "America must save us."

 

Commander Moua, too, wonders where his erstwhile American allies have gone. "We shed blood with the U.S.," he says. "They should remember this. They should find us a land where we?re safe and have food to eat." But as the world has watched in awe of the might of the U.S. war machine in Iraq, the final scenes of a 30-year-old war in Indochina that America would rather forget are destined to play out unnoticed.