As night falls, the street stalls glow with hundreds of lanterns, lamps that illuminate the passage of foreigners towards the river. And the street vendors, children usually, They meet the bewildered tourist to sell him a candle, an illusion to cast into the river.

"Peaceful", he told me over and over. Pacific sounds like salt and an island, to the endless sea and calm forged in water. It is just a word but it speaks to a time of peace and oceans although in the memory of my days, it's a visceral way of yearning; peaceful is almost a violent concept in the love of my steps.

Each 8 minutes a bomb fell in Lao. so during 9 years. They released 270 cluster bombs million, two tons of ammunition for each Laotian. And Laos was not even in war. Between 1964 and 1973, United States dropped more bombs on Laos than in all of World War II.