Word: mekong
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...late afternoon many head for the riverbank to watch the sunset and the men building fishing boats, still the town's main industry. It is peaceful by the Mekong. The water provides relief from the scorching heat of the day. Electric power is available only between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., when a few lights come on and residents gather to watch a video in a public hall. Then a curfew clamps down, and like a jungle mist, stillness descends again...
...from Viet Nam, is already a U.S. citizen, and he too did well with a restaurant, the Mekong, at the intersection of Broadway and Argyle Street in Chicago. "When I first moved in here, I swept the sidewalk after we closed," he recalls. "People thought I was strange, but now everyone does the same." Lam Ton's newest project is to build an arch over Argyle Street in honor of the immigrants who live and work there. "I will call it Freedom Gate," he says, "and it will have ocean waves with hands holding a freedom torch...
When the flamethrower on the Navy gunboat burned off foliage along the riverbank of the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam in 1967, recalls Robert Sutton, a ship's gunner, "I inhaled the fumes of the foliage that had been killed by Agent Orange." Before long, he says, he began suffering from diarrhea, vomiting and headaches, and in 1969 was given an honorable discharge. Back in West Babylon, N.Y., the veteran's health deteriorated rapidly; today the unemployed steam fitter's ailments include brain lesions and degenerative joint disease...
Each year during the dry season, small islands and shallows appear in the Mekong River, which forms the border between Thailand and Laos. Normally it is a time for Thais and Laotians to compete in dragon-boat races, attend temple fairs and visit relatives on both sides. This year the ebbing of the great river brought instead an increase in tensions between the two countries. Vietnamese troops stationed in Laos sporadically opened fire on Thai fishermen, causing four deaths. The Thais not only shot back but lodged sharp protests with the Laotian government over the Vietnamese military presence. Underlying...
...good day to die," declared James Gordon ("Bo") Gritz. The date was Nov. 27, 1982, and Gritz, 44, a swashbuckling former Green Beret, was about to lead three American daredevils and 15 Laotians on an improvised commando raid across the Mekong River. Their scheme: a 14-day trek to rescue American prisoners of war in the jungles of eastern Laos. After only three days, however, the bravado of "Operation Lazarus" was abruptly buried when a band of local guerrillas ambushed the raiders, killing two Laotians, capturing an American, and forcing the others to turn tail...