Word: usaid
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...them came under attack last week. In Luang Prabang, site of King Savang Vatthana's royal capital, leftist students stormed the compound of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Waving banners and banging drums, they smashed desks and tossed typewriters through windows. During a similar attack against USAID facilities at Savannakhet, a youthful mob looted food stocks and placed three Americans under house arrest. At week's end the demonstrators were refusing to release the three unless senior government officials came to Savannakhet to discuss student demands that Vientiane remove "corrupt" and rightist officials...
...plan would actually be carried out -feelings that were hardly helped by the sight of Nitnoi, Martin's pet poodle, being given its daily turn about the deck. On evacuation day the emergency plan fell apart, leaving stranded hundreds of Vietnamese employees of the U.S. embassy, USAID and USIS. Some were never called, and buses were too crowded or failed to make their way to designated pickup points. In one shocking instance, a senior member of the embassy's Mission Council fled his post for the embassy hours before he should have, leaving his agency's evacuation...
Americans live in the suburbs of Vientiane, complete with villas (left over from the French), servants, and gardeners, and can send their children to school with other USAID children and American teachers...
Even American culture is imported for the convenience of Americans in Laos. The theatre in the USAID compound shows movies nightly. I went one night to see Omar Sharif in "Che," which drew a rather large audience. Many chuckled knowingly towards the end of the film...
...monsoon came while I was in Luang Prabang. One rainy night I went with a young USAID agricultural worker to try out the area's traditional specialty, opium. Laos's opium, which is legal, is reputed to be the best in the world...