Word: mekong
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...those after something more serene, Banna also has plenty to offer. Few people associate China with lush rain forest, Southeast Asian culture and wild jungle elephants, but Banna is more Mekong Delta than Middle Kingdom and has long been a backpackers' stopover between Laos and the "real" China. Because most of the domestic tourists can't get enough of gambling, sex and weird botany, more discerning visitors can find themselves blissfully alone on the many spectacular jungle treks and wildlife and tribal village trips on offer...
...taxi into Jinghong presents an almost eerie surprise after arriving at the airport with the harried hordes of package tourists: a sleepy, tree-lined city along the lazy Mekong, surrounded by low mountains. The tour groups vanish: variances in Western and Chinese tastes work to segregate the city. Domestic tourists stay across the river in glitzy, Vegas-style hotels offering all-day shows of tribal dancing and wild animal routines that would outrage even the mildest environmentalist. Foreigners mostly stay in the many small hotels and guesthouses in the old town, such as the clean and quiet Banna Guesthouse, where...
...generations before us listened to rock 'n' roll to show that they were better--freer, wilder--than their parents. We listened to our music to show that we were better--worldlier, smarter--than our peers. Sure, the '60s had cult bands like the Velvet Underground, but G.I.s in the Mekong Delta and grad students with deferments all listened to the Doors. When Madison Avenue later tried to reach them, it did so with songs like the Beatles' Revolution that were part of everybody's pop-culture patrimony. Only by the '80s could there be a thing called "college rock": music...
...Heart of Darkness, is about an Army officer, Captain Willard (Sheen), sent to find and "terminate with extreme prejudice" the renegade Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has "gone insane" and set himself up in Cambodia as lord of an army of Montagnard headhunters. On his long trek up the Mekong River, Willard learns that in this war, man is ever at risk of becoming the thing he hates, the unknown he fears...
...after a few months in Thailand where she did the usual: raving at full-moon parties down in Ko Pha-Ngan, trekking in the hills around Chiang Mai. Along with three other travelers, she crossed from Thailand into Laos at Chiang Khong and then caught a boat down the Mekong. She had never tried opium before coming to Laos, and she had told herself back in Epsom, England, she would never, ever, try heroin. But she viewed opium, which is the base product from which other opiates like morphine and heroin are derived, as different. This drug, the dried resin...